Team Speed Kills’ College Football Facts Countdown Series: Day 84

College football season is well within reach!

With less than 100 days until kickoff, we here at Team Speed Kills are introducing a brand-new, quotidian countdown series to help you prepare for the first slate of college football action on August 26th.

In this series, we will post a daily SEC-related fact and/or story that corresponds to the number of the day in the countdown. Hopefully, you’ll find this series enlightening and entertaining. If you do, click that ‘share’ button we all know and love. If you do not, quit lying to yourself.

The Mackey Award is relatively new. Since its inception in 2000, only 17 tight ends have been given this fine piece of hardware. Of those 17, only 3 have been from the SEC. Of those 3, 2 have been Arkansas Razorbacks.

One of those two was Hunter Henry.

In college, Henry was a star. Nearly every accolade imaginable belonged to him, and he never stopped improving in terms of both skill and statistics. Unfortunately, he was never on any Arkansas teams that were particularly outstanding, but he did his part to ensure that the teams were always as good as he could help make them.

In all three of his seasons in Fayetteville, Henry was named as an All-SEC player, and he was even named a consensus All-American in his final year. In his senior season, he managed to net 739 receiving yards from 51 catches, all while hauling in 3 touchdowns.

Just watch some of his best college moments:

He was a model of excellence from start to finish, and while Brandon Allen was fantastic, I really can’t help but wonder what it would have been like to see him catch throws from Tyler Wilson or Ryan Mallett.

It was no surprise that he was picked in the 2nd round of the NFL Draft.

Since being drafted by the Chargers, Henry has wowed NFL fans who are not used to seeing a tight end be so successful early on in his career. He was named to the All-Rookie team in 2016 after catching 36 passes for 478 yards and 8 touchdowns. Similar to his first season with Arkansas, Henry played a key part of the offense of a team that was way below .500.

Look at what he was able to do in just his first year:

I’m not really a huge NFL fan, and it’s very hard to watch teams that play outside of my market (I get Bengals games—it’s great). Still, if the Chargers are ever on national tv, I’ll be tuning in to watch Hunter Henry make the great plays he has been making since his college days.