Memphis Tigers QB Seth Henigan is in a pivotal year. . He is in his second year, a highly recruited quarterback from Denton Texas, where he led his team to the state championship. This year he was in a quarterback battle against Grant Gunnell. Gunnell decided to transfer out, and the third-string quarterback is now Henigan’s backup.
There’s a couple of ways you can project Henigan’s improvement for this next year, compared to last year.
One way is to look at his high school statistics at MaxPreps, and see if there is a marked jump. He made a marked improvement in his sophomore to junior year, and then yet another jump in his senior year. Remarkably his completion percentage remained .1 different, only from his sophomore to his senior year. Let me repeat: In his first full year as QB, he was 67%. In his second full year, 67% completion percentage. And in his third full year, 67%. So is that a plateau?
Seth Henigan in his first year had a modest number of TD passed, but by his senior year 42 TD passes helped his team to a state championship. So either his weapons were better (and a state championship team, that’s possible) or he was taking more chances and throwing deep more often.
This year’s Tiger team has lots of weapons. The return of a running back, who at the time of his injury, was leading the nation in rushing yards. It was early, but there was definitely promise in that running game. Henigan was also without running back Kenneth Gainwell during last year’s games, who sat out over Covid concerns. And the best receiver by stats was Calvin Austin III, an amazing speedster, but who at 5 foot 7 was often outmatched in physicality and excelled purely on speed and technique.
This years team had the return of Jaden Ivory on the outside, and several other highly touted transfer receivers (read my WR preview here) Also new is offensive coordinator Cramsey. Henigan was without 3 of his top 4 offensive running-mates last year. And you could see a drop in the offensive production when cornerstone offensive lineman Dylan Parham went down.
Looking at these overall factors, Henigan should have a great offensive year.
It’s going to be whether he lives up to former quarterbacks like Brady White and their notable comeback efforts that determine the important thing. Will this be a very good (for certain) or very great (hopefully) year for one Seth Henigan.
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