Be Wary, Wake Forest: This Guy “Tackles Everything”

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Pennsylvania is known for its football heroes. A few of the greatest quarterbacks ever, Joe Montana and Dan Marino, came from there. The state is also where plenty of great linebackers grew up such as Jack Ham who went on to star with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The state now can be proud to have another football star who plays linebacker, one of the greatest tacklers in the history of college football. In his sophomore season playing for Old Dominion University, Jason Henderson, from Dingmans Ferry, Pa., led the entire college football universe last year in total tackles with, get this – 186. That’s 39 more than the nation’s number two tackler and one of the highest total ever in one college football season. All this tenacious tackling – an average of 15 per game — earned him All American honors. This made him Old Dominion University’s first to earn this prestigious Football Bowl Subdivision honor.

There’s more. He broke his school and the Sun Belt Conference record for tackles in a season. He was the only player in the NCAA’s Football Bowl Subdivision to record more than 20 tackles in multiple games. Oh, and in high school he set a school record with 529 tackles.

“This guy tackles everything,” said Wake Forest football coach Dave Clawson during his press conference yesterday talking about his team’s opponent this Saturday.

In ODU’s first two games, he’s on his way to another terrific tackling performance with 28. Wake Forest will face a herculean challenge trying to keep this guy from racking up big tackling numbers.

How is this guy so terrific at tackling? He says being a high school wrestler in high school – one of the best in his home state — helped him refine the craft of wrapping up guys and taking them to the ground.

He obviously has a chance of becoming a linebacker in the NFL. But if that doesn’t work out, he could easily become the next “Office Linebacker”: