Ohio State RB TreVeyon Henderson will miss College Football Playoff
Ohio State backed into the College Football Playoff after losing to Michigan in its final week. The Buckeyes benefitted greatly from USC losing to Utah in the Pac-12 Championship Game, and they leapfrogged ahead of the 11-2 Trojans as a result.
The good news for OSU is that even after the blowout loss to Michigan, the Buckeyes were able to secure the No. 4 spot in the CFP thanks to their 11-1 record.
The bad news? They'll be playing the No. 1 team in the nation and the defending national champions, Georgia. They'll also be playing without star running back TreVeyon Henderson, who has elected to have season-ending foot surgery rather than try to play in the CFP matchup.
Henderson hurt his foot in Ohio State's Sept. 17 win against Toledo. He went on to play the next five games despite the injury, but he apparently made the injury worse by trying to gut it out.
“I have to have surgery on my foot because it's gotten that bad since the third game,” Henderson told the Columbus Dispatch's Bill Rabinowitz. “I’ve just been making it worse going back out there.”
“It’s real painful," he continued. "I barely practiced all season. I went through a bunch of different cleats to try to push through it, but the pain was crazy. I really don’t know how I was able to push through it in the games I did play in. I just tried to do the best I can.”
Henderson will finish the 2022 season with 107 rushing attempts for 571 yards and six touchdowns. That's not bad for a running back basically playing on one foot.
He'll be coming back for his junior season and should be expected to be one of the better running backs in college football once again. That, of course, assumes he'll be able to come back from this injury, but he's young and athletic, so that shouldn't be a problem.
Henderson's surgery is scheduled for Friday. The Buckeyes will play Georgia in the CFP semifinal at the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl on Dec. 31.
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