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Eli Lederman, ESPN Staff Writer
NEARLY 15 YEARS have passed since Chris Henry last stepped foot on a football field prior to his tragic death in December 2009. Some mornings at Southern California’s Golden West College, T.J. Houshmandzadeh still catches glimpses of the tall, reserved wide receiver he once knew during their playing careers with the Cincinnati Bengals.
On the turf, there’s a skinny 16-year-old pass catcher who runs just like Henry did when he emerged as a downfield favorite of Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer in the mid-2000s. There’s something familiar in the way the kid drops his weight and operates his long, lanky frame. At 6-foot-6 and 200 pounds, the young wide receiver plucks passes out of the air with the grace of a power forward soaring for a rebound, boxing out opposing defensive backs.
Everything Houshmandzadeh sees when he watches Chris Henry Jr., one of the top prospects in the high school class of 2026, he has seen before.
“[Houshmandzadeh will] just be struck by how similar I am to my dad,” Henry, the No. 2 player in the ESPN Junior 300, told ESPN. “We’ll just be reminiscing and stuff like that. It’s reassurance for me.”
Houshmandzadeh remembers plenty about “Slim,” the quiet teammate he understood better than most did. And its stories like the ones Houshmandzadeh can now tell Henry, in between reps on the field at Golden West, that have helped one of the nation’s most promising prospects come to know a father he hardly knew while charting his own rise to football stardom.
Henry is behind only five-star defensive end Jahkeem Stewart in ESPN’s 2026 player rankings. He is the No. 1 wide receiver and one of only nine five-star recruits in the 2026 cycle.
Committed to Ohio State since July 2023, Henry stands among the highest-rated commits in program history, expected to arrive in Columbus in two years as the next wide receiver in the Buckeyes’ recent pipeline of elite pass catchers, dripping in all the same hype that followed Garrett Wilson and Marvin Harrison Jr. before him. Even as Henry plans to visit Oregon and LSU this summer, he remains firm in his commitment to arrive at Ohio State in 2026.
Now surrounded by elite talent in Southern California after transferring to powerhouse Mater Dei High School, Henry is ideally placed for the type of development he’ll need to carve his legacy when he arrives at Ohio State. As he embarks on a new chapter, Henry looks ahead, spurred not only by a dream and the memory of a father he knows through stories and highlight reel touchdowns, but also the hands of two former teammates who knew his dad best.
“I think everybody in his life wants to see Chris Henry Jr. play on Sundays,” Mater Dei wide receivers coach James Griffin said. “The kid has everything — he’s just like his dad. He’s working his butt off to be elite like that every day.”
HENRY LANDED AT Mater Dei in January after two years living with Adam “Pacman” Jones in Ohio, one of his dad’s old West Virginia teammates. The 13-year NFL vet regaled Henry with countless stories of Chris Henry, the good and the bad. The subsequent move to California that landed Henry at Mater Dei, his mother, Loleini Tonga said, was a “leap of faith” tied to family and an expansion of her home health care business.
The move undoubtedly fits Henry football aspirations, too, arriving just as the critical years of his gridiron development come into focus.
Henry thrived in Ohio, where he spent his freshman year at West Clermont High School, before jumping to Withrow as a sophomore, setting a school record with 1,127 receiving yards on 71 catches with 10 touchdowns in his only season on campus. At Mater Dei, he’s attending his third school in as many years, competing alongside, and against, a higher caliber of talent than he’s ever seen on a football field.
The Monarchs’ roster this fall includes six seniors ranked inside the ESPN 300. Mater Dei’s junior class includes another five ESPN 300 prospects, led by Henry and top-30 offensive tackle Kodi Greene.
When Henry runs routes in practice, he’s going against Penn State commit Daryus Dixson or Alabama commit Chuck McDonald III with a pair of linebackers, Nasir Wyatt and Abduall Sanders Jr. bound for Oregon and Alabama, respectively, waiting over the middle. And the Monarchs’ schedule will allow Henry to compete against the country’s top talent with matchups against fellow national powers, including Bishop Gorman (Nevada), Kahuku (Hawaii) and Southern California rival St. John Bosco.
“It’s a night and day difference for Chris,” Griffin said. “He’s going to get the best games he can get until he can get to college. That’s the preparation for a caliber kid like himself.”
Henry considers the new surroundings a welcomed challenge. He knows the standard inside Brian Hartline’s wide receivers room at Ohio State and models his game for a program that has had four receivers drafted in the first round in the past three NFL drafts.
“I’m trying to go to Ohio State and to be a guy,” Henry said. “I’m trying to go there and play, just show what I’m able to do from the start. I’m here to prepare myself for the next level.”
NOT LONG AFTER Henry arrived in California, Houshmandzadeh learned that the son of his former teammate was suddenly living 15 minutes away, so he fired off a text to Henry and made the family a simple offer: “If y’all need help, I’m here to help you.”
Some days at Golden West, Henry trains with the wide receiver corps from Oregon. On others, he’ll catch passes from Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud. During a session with Houshmandzadeh, the 11-year NFL vet who coaches several pro receivers in the offseasons, Henry is as likely to work alongside Indianapolis Colts‘ Michael Pittman Jr. and Detroit Lions‘ Amon-Ra St. Brown — two of the game’s highest-paid wide receivers — as he is to run into some of the top passers in the sport such as Jalen Hurts, Josh Allen, Bryce Young and Dak Prescott on Houshmandzadeh’s list of regular clients.
Among the pros and top college talents who come to learn from Houshmandzadeh at Golden West, Henry seldom appears out of place.
“He would start at every college in America right now and he still has two years remaining in high school,” Houshmandzadeh said. “That’s how legit he is.”
Henry has been working with Houshmandzadeh since April, long enough for the former Pro Bowler to see that Henry moves like receivers his size rarely do. Ditto for the suddenness Henry flashes when he cuts out of a route.
“I saw Calvin Johnson live in the flesh. And I saw Larry Fitzgerald. I saw Chris’ daddy, too,” Griffin said. “To see somebody like him with that long frame move and get out of a cut like he can, I was like, ‘Wow.’ He’s Plaxico Burress mixed with Calvin Johnson and a little bit of Charles Rogers when he was at Michigan State. He is freaking special, bro.”
Houshmandzadeh understands the comparisons. He saw all sides of the older Henry.
A fifth-year pro by the time Chris Henry was drafted in the third round out of West Virginia, Houshmandzadeh watched him burn bright on the field, hauling in 15 touchdowns across his first two seasons in the NFL. But Houshmandzadeh saw Henry struggle, too. He was arrested five times in four years and faced a series of league suspensions from 2005 to 2008. Around the same time, Henry was building a family with Tonga amid the off-field trouble clouding his football career.
With Tonga and a growing family at home, coaches and teammates saw Henry turning a corner. Then, on Dec. 17, 2009, Houshmandzadeh stood in front of a TV in Seattle, devastated.
The night before, Henry and Tonga had gotten into an argument at a family home in Charlotte, North Carolina. Tonga drove off in a pickup truck; Henry jumped into the truck’s bed, then tumbled out of it. Doctors pronounced him dead at Carolinas Medical Center at 6:36 a.m. on Dec. 17, leaving three young children, including two-year-old Chris Jr., behind.
A medical examiner confirmed that Chris Henry, 26, died of blunt force trauma to the head.
“I think Chris was grossly misunderstood as a person,” Houshmandzadeh told the Springfield News-Sun (Ohio) two days after Henry’s death. “… I knew a different Chris Henry than his public persona would indicate.”
A decade and a half later, Chris Henry Jr. carries all the same potential his father possessed but never got to fully realize, maybe even more of it. On the field at Golden West, Houshmandzadeh will watch his former teammate’s son train and contemplate the opportunity sitting in front of Henry Jr.
“T.J. was a mentor to Chris when he came to the Bengals,” Tonga said. “It’s almost the same situation now. For my son, T.J. is one of his people that he can trust.”
That matters as Henry Jr. stares down a future in college football with colossal name, image and likeness potential. Signed with agent David Mulugheta since May, brand deals such as the one Henry Jr. signed with Adidas last month are just the start. In five years, Houshmandzadeh is confident Henry Jr. will be a top-five NFL draft pick.
“From a professional standpoint, it’s a business for him,” Houshmandzadeh said. “You have to approach it as such. Your business is your body and you have to maximize it. I want to see him Man-Man — as they call him — succeed. If I can play a part in maximizing that, I’m willing to do it.”
WHEN OHIO STATE offered Henry in June 2022, everything changed. The calls came more frequently. More offers rolled in.
Over the next two years, attention was constant as Henry cemented himself as one of the top recruits in his class. It was one of the many times when he might have wished to lean on his father for perspective.
Instead, as the family navigated the recruiting process, it turned to one of Chris Henry’s former teammates.
Pacman Jones shared a bond with Henry from their earliest days together at West Virginia in the early 2000s. After Henry’s death, he became “Uncle Pac” to his former teammate’s children, hosting them for Thanksgivings and trips to Cincinnati. When Henry Jr. became a nationally coveted prospect, Jones felt an urge to help and pitched Tonga on moving her two sons to live with him in Ohio.
Tonga saw value in what Jones could provide her children in a formative moment, so the boys moved in with Jones, his wife, Tishana, and their four children ahead of Henry’s freshman year. In Cincinnati, Jones pushed Henry’s sons just like he pushed Henry at West Virginia. He introduced Henry and his brother, DeMarcus, a class of 2027 basketball prospect, to elite training. And while Henry fielded offers from the top programs in the country, Jones was a key player in navigating the recruitment through Henry Jr.’s commitment to Ohio State.
Contrary to other reports, Jones never formally adopted the boys. But, Tonga, who joined her boys in Ohio shortly after the move, still considers Jones part of the family nucleus.
“I feel like Uncle Pac helped him a lot,” said Henry’s older sister, Seini, a freshman basketball player at Ohio State. “He was the father figure guiding Chris through all of that stuff.”
Jones had critical wisdom. Even more crucially, Pacman had stories about Chris Henry, the kind of memories that for Chris Henry Jr. keep a father who passed nearly 15 years ago still alive.
Henry heard them from his mom and grandmother growing up in North Carolina. They told tales of a quiet sweetheart and legendary prankster. In Ohio, Jones could spin a yarn on his and Henry’s wild times at West Virginia. In California, Houshmandzadeh tells Henry Jr. stories about watching his dad become a man in Cincinnati.
Another link from father to son comes through the highlights Henry left behind. Every other week or so, he will sit in bed scouring YouTube for the familiar clips of his dad torching opposing defenses. An 83-yard score against Rutgers. A grab over Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback Ike Taylor. Chris Henry’s first career touchdown. A 67-yard dash against Syracuse.
From a vault of big plays, Chris Henry Jr.’s favorite highlight is one of his dad’s simplest, a game-winning score in a 19-16 overtime victory over Maryland on Sept. 18, 2004.
Henry runs a slant into the end zone and hauls in a seven-yard pass from Rasheed Marshall. West Virginia’s Milan Puskar Stadium erupts and Henry launches the ball into the air. As Henry Jr. watches No. 5 in blue and gold bask in the scene before a mob of teammates arrives to celebrate, his father is a hero.
“I just picture myself there,” Chris Henry Jr. said. “I see myself in those moments. I see myself in those videos. I see myself in him.”