The dominance of young Derrick Henry
THE RUMORS ABOUT the kid are so ridiculous that everybody in Yulee, Florida, believes them. Because who could even make this stuff up?
A little, 12-year-old giant who powers up with Snickers bars before and during games? A running back who is so untackleable that area football coaches agreed he has to leave the game every time his team gets a 21-point lead? A sixth-grader everybody calls “Shocka” because he has been shocking the world since before he was born?
These are the kinds of tall tales that traveled quickly along the dirt roads of Yulee, a countrified suburb 24 miles outside of Jacksonville near the Georgia line. By the mid-2000s, just about everyone in Yulee counted down the days until Derrick Henry arrived at the newly opened high school.
Henry was a surprise to his entire family. His parents had him when they were teenagers, and his dad’s mother, Gladys, immediately called her new grandson Shocker, or Shocka, because nobody was expecting him. It’s a nickname he came to love and embrace, because it was theirs. The whole town eventually started using it. But every time he heard Shocka, he thought about his grandma.
Gladys ended up being Henry’s main caretaker for much of his life. She raised 14 kids of her own, so even into her 60s, she knew how to bring up one more. Gladys was the first person to watch Henry run down the dirt road in front of her house, barefoot with a football in his hands, and say, “This kid is going to be a great athlete.”
It isn’t just that he was fast and huge for his age. Shocka had a drive in his eyes that made the whole town feel like he had something special in the works. Once he started organized football as a 6-year-old, he was so powerful that Gladys made sure whoever took him to the game also had a copy of his birth certificate. Even then, opposing parents crossed their arms and shook their heads. Even his birth certificate was a tall tale.
Within a few years, Henry was playing up an age level because he couldn’t make the required weights of his actual age group. So the 7-year-old was running all over the 9-year-olds, and when he was 9, he was rumbling through all the 11-year-olds, and on and on for the entirety of grade school.
Eventually, the buzz about Henry got to Yulee High School’s head football coach, Bobby Ramsay. The school had only opened in 2006, and the football program limped to a 7-13 record in its first two years before hiring Ramsay. Almost immediately, people started telling him about how good Shocka would be for the program.
Ramsay just shook his head, because, sight unseen, he thought the kid was most likely overhyped. But then one day in summer 2008, after a so-so practice with his new high school roster, he pulled his car out of the lot and started driving home. He noticed the middle school team out on the field. About 25 kids were lined up across the 50-yard line, warming up and stretching side by side.
His eyes began to scan, as a football coach’s gaze often does, from one helmeted kid to the next with an eye on their size. “Five-foot-4 … 5-5 … 5-2 … 5-8,” and then he stopped. He almost had to pull over when he got to the 6-foot-2 kid in the No. 2 jersey. The kid looked like he weighed about 200 pounds.
“That has to be Shocka,” Ramsay said to himself, and even he found himself excited about the upcoming arrival of young Derrick Henry.
GLADYS HENRY LIVED toward the end of Kutana Drive in Yulee, in a red house with a fenced-in porch that was open to anybody and everybody. Kutana was a dirt bumpfest, so anything over about 8 mph could blow a head gasket in a hurry. “You could really get some air going to pick up Derrick,” said former Yulee quarterback Austen Wagner.
Gladys was 60 when Derrick was born. But she was feisty as ever about her core values — church, school, family, kindness, staying out of trouble — and both the feistiness and the core values rubbed off on Henry then and now. She’d work all week at the Holiday Inn cleaning rooms, then come home and make time to watch cartoons such as “Arthur” and “Clifford the Big Red Dog” with her littlest buddy. Then Shocka would want to ride his bike up and down the dirt road, so she’d sit outside on the porch with Derrick’s grandfather, Benjamin, and watch him cruise around.
From day one, Henry’s blend of size and athleticism was both extraordinary and perplexing for a running back. Even as early as kindergarten, Henry had adults telling him it was fine if he played running back for now but he could forget about it as a long-term goal. He looked too much like a defensive end to be a running back, they’d say.
As Henry got deeper into elementary school, Yulee was still a feeder town into the larger Nassau County School District system. But in 2006, Nassau established Yulee as its own high school, with its own sports teams. With a roster of 30-some players, Yulee went 5-5, then 2-8, before Ramsay took over. In his first year, he went 5-5, and he found himself thinking the team was one big playmaker away from being good.
In middle school, Henry was as ridiculous as he ultimately would become in high school. He rushed for 200 yards in most games, with long touchdowns when the biggest kid on the field also looked like he was the fastest kid. Rival Nassau County coaches asked Yulee to consider pulling Henry any time the Hornets went up by three touchdowns — so, the unofficial Shocka Henry Rule went into effect.
Even then, the chirps about Henry’s future made their way to his young ears. And truth be told, the next 6-2, 200-pound, 13-year-old star running back is going to face the same skepticism. Football has always been and always will be a comforting place for fast 5-11 running backs who fit the mold that has existed for decades. But any future Derrick Henry, if one ever makes it out of junior high, will have to fight to stay at running back.
Ramsay never seriously considered moving Henry when he arrived at his first varsity practice in summer 2009. But he, his staff and even many of his teammates just weren’t so sure that the legend of Shocka Henry would translate at the high school level. At least not as a freshman, anyway.
In summer workouts, Henry impressed the coaches with his relentlessness right away. He was incredibly powerful for his age, and he loved to do the kind of outdoor stuff that his over-the-top State Farm commercials now lean into. He did tire-flipping and sled-pushing back in the day, and he also enjoyed the Yulee tradition of pushing an F-150 truck around the track. Coaches would put one guy in the driver’s seat and throw it in neutral, then players would push the truck for 50 yards or so. “He was the only guy who could push it by himself some days,” said Zac Camp, his good friend and former teammate.
But Henry initially struggled with more intricate workouts. The school brought in former world-ranked sprinter Almon Gunter, a renowned trainer in the Jacksonville area. He immediately saw Henry’s potential but thought it would be months before he could help Henry grow into his body. During shuttle runs and agility drills, Henry constantly got tangled up by his own feet. Henry kept working and working and working, and in a matter of weeks, he began to connect with his body more. “One thing about great athletes is that they are willing to kick their own asses,” Gunter said. “Derrick kicked his own ass that summer, and he hasn’t stopped his entire career.”
As the preseason wound down, Gunter was watching the team practice when Henry first started getting carries. Even with the hype, the weight room prowess and a need for a dynamic playmaker, the Yulee coaching staff planned to ease Henry into the lineup with low double-digit carries.
On one of his first full-contact plays, though, Henry got the ball and half his offensive line whiffed on their blocks. Three defenders hit Henry as soon as he got the ball. He powered through them and broke free for a big run. When Ramsay blew the play dead, the coaching staff couldn’t believe what they just saw. “It looked like Optimus Prime shrugging off stuff,” Ramsay said now.
That play — and many others like it in August 2009 — convinced the coaches they had found their starting running back. Teammates sometimes complained that Henry’s stiff arm was so violent that it would jar their contacts loose from their eyes. As Gunter watched from the sidelines, he remembers thinking, “That’s Eddie George.”
In his first game, teammates weren’t sure what to expect, especially after they watched him wolf down a Snickers right before kickoff. He ate another one at halftime, starting a new ritual that Yulee people still talk about to this day. “When that guy needed a Snickers, one always magically arrived,” Camp said.
But by the end of the second quarter, Henry was pulled after having played only the first half of a 48-6 blowout that was a blowout because he had 190 yards and five touchdowns. He was off and running as a football player, and his entire support system rejoiced.
There was Gladys, of course, in the center of that universe. Henry’s grandfather, Benjamin, was instrumental until he passed away in 2000, when Henry was 6. Then Gladys relied on his parents, a steady stream of aunts and uncles and a Yulee school and football program that became the foundation of Henry’s life during the school year.
Pat Dunlap Sr. had been a part of the middle school coaching staff that kept telling Ramsay to watch out for Henry’s arrival. When Henry got to varsity, Dunlap and his son, Pat Jr., came up to help coach the high school offense. Henry trusted the Dunlaps like family, and one of his favorite memories of his childhood is going out to unlimited wings at a local restaurant with Pat Sr. The dinners were the event, but their organizing principle was that Pat Sr. showed up for Henry as much as anybody ever did. “Pat Sr. was like a father figure to him,” Ramsay said.
It wasn’t just the football department that flanked Henry and moved him forward in life. At one point, Henry had quit basketball to focus on football but wanted to add another extracurricular activity. So he asked if he could work in the Yulee High office, answering phones and greeting visitors. Yulee teachers still chuckle about specific memories of parents picking up a sick kid and doing a double take when the star of the football team asked them to make sure they didn’t forget to sign the early dismissal sheet.
He had everything around him to allow an ascent as a football player that ranks among the fastest, most viral in modern football history. Video clips showcasing his size and speed made the rounds on social media, and his usage rates were a hot topic underneath those social media posts. Friends swear back then, if you started to type “Derrick Henry” into Google, one of the first search suggestions included Bobby Ramsay’s name in the most unflattering terms. “People thought I should be arrested,” Ramsay said.
He became the villain in the story of Derrick Henry’s rise, and he doesn’t run away from his decision to ride Henry as far back as his freshman season. That year, Henry carried 313 times for 2,465 yards and 26 touchdowns in 11 games. Ramsay ran him another 313 carries as a sophomore, for 2,788 yards and 38 touchdowns. Think about that career stat line for a kid who was 15 years old: 626 carries, 5,253 yards and 64 touchdowns.
The numbers and memes generated more interest than Yulee was ready for, and much of the criticism was aimed at Ramsay. He said the team’s best strategy to win revolved around an undermanned roster leaning hard on Henry, who wanted the ball on every single play. Henry hated leaving games when his team was up 21 or more points in middle school, and he didn’t understand why an uninjured freshman and sophomore who was averaging 8 yards per carry should be load-managed. “He never got tired, and he never got one carry he didn’t want,” Ramsay said. “If he needed a break, we gave it to him.”
By the end of his second season, in 2010, college recruiters began to flock to the northern tip of Florida, with two main goals: recruit the best sophomore running back in recent memory … and convince him to play defense.
BY THE TIME college offers started flooding in, Henry developed a thick skin and an even thicker resolve about what coaches, teammates, fans and now college recruiters were saying: He was a defensive end or linebacker temporarily playing running back.
But in his mind, Henry was a running back. He had no patience for the defensive conversion talk, and after two astonishing years at Yulee, he had an outside chance at toppling the nation’s all-time prep rushing record (11,232 yards, set by Texas’ Ken Hall in the 1950s). For Henry, it was running back for good, not for now.
Even his teammates swallowed the skepticism whole. One of his best lifting buddies, linebacker Gunnar Cox, once asked him about eventually switching positions.
“What’s your backup plan someday?” Cox asked.
“I’m going to play running back in the NFL,” Henry said.
“No, I mean a backup plan to that,” Cox said.
“I’m going to play running back in the NFL,” Henry said.
There was never any debate. He was a running back.
After his sophomore year in 2010, Henry’s highlights traveled throughout the entire football ecosystem, especially in SEC country. He represented a prime example of how we’d entered a new era of viral highlights in sports. Henry was one of our first “this guy is gonna be a problem” superstar kids on the internet.
Colleges saw a star, even if they had reservations about his position. Almost every school in the nation was after Henry, who’d become a consensus five-star recruit (even though many services, including ESPN, projected him as an “athlete” prospect rather than a running back).
When he met with recruiters, Henry told them he had four specific goals for college: play running back, win a national title, win a Heisman and go to the NFL. Three schools — Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee — zoomed to the front of the line, and Henry’s inner circle came to believe that he wouldn’t end up seriously considering any other offers.
The attention was awesome from a practical perspective but incredibly unfun to him as a human. Henry ultimately started saying he was hoping to commit early, perhaps before his junior year even started. And that’s exactly what he did.
In July 2011, Henry had an awesome visit to Georgia. Then-coach Mark Richt was arguably his favorite person that he’d met in recruiting. Richt had a gentle, family man persona that belied he was an SEC football coach, and yet he could be a hard-nosed driver that produced a steady stream of NFL players. By the end of the trip, Henry felt reassured that Richt wanted to keep him at running back, so he announced publicly that he was going to be a Bulldog. “I wouldn’t be doing this so early if I wasn’t sure,” Henry said, 18 months before he could officially sign.
Well, 18 months can be 100 years in recruiting time. Bama didn’t back off, and with three national titles under his belt at the time, Nick Saban was a hard man to turn down. Couple that with the fact that Henry began to feel like he had gotten swept up in the moment at Georgia, and it wasn’t a surprise when Henry thought he shouldn’t have committed so early in the process.
As the 2011 high school season opened, Henry remained the jewel of Georgia’s recruiting class while prepping for a battle against one of the Peach State’s best teams, nationally ranked Buford. The game was broadcast on ESPN and was Henry’s biggest national showcase. He ran for 100 yards in every high school game he had played, but Yulee hadn’t faced an opponent loaded with as many Division I prospects as Buford.
Sure enough, Henry was bottled up like never before. Buford went up 28-0 in the first half, and Henry found his 100-yard streak in serious jeopardy late in the fourth quarter. He was at 18 carries for 28 yards with 46 seconds to go in a 49-0 wipeout. That’s when Henry busted a 76-yard score, ending the shutout and keeping his streak intact.
Henry was relentless, both with the ball and when he didn’t have it. In fact, he could be a total nag in the huddle. He wanted the ball on every single play, and Yulee had many games in which the starting quarterback didn’t even throw five passes.
One time, Ramsay called a sweep to Henry but whispered to quarterback Conner Petty that he should not tell anybody and instead fake it and bootleg around the other side. Petty followed orders, and the entire offense and defense flowed one way while he went the other direction for 80 yards and a score. When he got to the end zone and looked back, he saw Henry with his arms raised.
“What happened?” Henry asked him.
“Coach told me to fake it and not tell anybody,” Petty said.
“Fine,” Henry muttered as he shook his head.
Then he celebrated a score he wished was his.
Henry rushed for 2,610 yards as a junior, and suddenly the national record for a prep running back was within reach. But Hall’s 11,232 yards had stood for 59 years, and Henry would need 3,369 (about 300 yards per game) as a senior to get it. Possible. But not likely.
Henry and his coaches talked in earnest in the offseason about whether they could get him close. He liked the idea of setting the record but didn’t seem too preoccupied with it. Especially because Henry had become hyperfocused on what he had begun to consider a mistake — committing to Georgia.
Tennessee stayed after him but was down the list behind Alabama and Georgia. Saban and his staff had kept in contact, and Henry accepted an offer to visit Tuscaloosa in June 2012, right before his senior year began. He had a blast there, which confirmed for him that he’d made a rash decision picking Georgia. A few days after the visit, Henry said he was back on the market, though he didn’t rule out recommitting to Georgia.
His former teammates still shake their heads about what happened next. During offseason lifting sessions, Henry would say he still wasn’t sure where he wanted to go for college. Then he would walk over to the locker room stereo system and play one song on an endless loop: “Sweet Home Alabama.”
HENRY’S SENIOR SEASON got off to a huge start, with 31 carries for 336 yards in the opener. Then he romped for 252 in Week 2, and 303 yards in Yulee’s third game. Suddenly the rushing record was legitimately in play, so Henry and the coaching staff began talking about what it would take, which was essentially that exact pace for the duration of the season.
The chase became the biggest storyline in Florida. That led to the highest level yet of criticism of Ramsay — he kept Henry in some blowouts for the sake of piling up yards — and nonstop chatter about how Henry would not be able to play running back in college.
But Henry had been so adamant about it for so long that recruiters began to know better. He saw himself as a running back, and they needed to see it that way or they’d have to watch him play somewhere else. Saban and the Bama coaching staff were insistent that they wanted him as a running back. Gladys really liked Saban and trusted him, and at the end of September, Henry eliminated his college choice as a constant question mark in his life: He verbally committed to Saban, who he thought gave him the best chance at his goals: running back, Heisman, national title, NFL career. “Sweet Home Alabama” played louder than ever in the Yulee weight room.
Henry was a little surprised that recruiters kept calling and writing, but with signing day a few months away, there was still a chance he could be wooed to reconsider again. Henry, though, turned his focus to the rushing record and getting himself ready for the next level. He had sixth period free every day, so he latched on to an old friend as a lifting and wing-eating buddy: Pat Dunlap Sr.
Dunlap had nurtured Henry throughout his entire childhood, first as a football coach but then as more than that. The steady presence of the entire Dunlap family made them Gladys’ most trusted adopted family members. Dunlap moved up to varsity when Henry arrived, and he brought his son with him. Pat Jr. was 6 years older than Henry and like a big brother to him. Henry had lots of guardrails around him within the Yulee community, none sturdier than the Dunlap clan.
Pat Sr. was in his late 40s, a career Navy man and volunteer coach by then and a weight-room junkie himself. So he would work all day at the local Naval Air Station, then grab Henry to go to the kid’s favorite gym, Anytime Fitness, during sixth period. Teammates used to laugh about Henry’s relationship with his gym, because he was the exact reason a gym might consider being open for 24 hours.
He’d go on his own at all times of the day or night in a way that went beyond trying to get into better physical shape — Henry was one of those gym guys who squatted and deadlifted for fun on a Friday night while his friends were sneaking Mike’s Hard Lemonade in their parents’ basements.
With Dunlap, Henry spent his senior season lifting during his free period, going back to school, attending football practice, then returning to Anytime Fitness after practice to run on the treadmill together. Other kids would wobble out of the locker room after an excruciatingly hot practice only to marvel at Dunlap and Henry as they hopped in the car to go run.
As the season wore on, the rushing record became more and more of a foregone conclusion. Henry was unstoppable and actually ended up breaking the Florida state record for yards in a season (4,261, with 55 touchdowns, in 14 games) as he blew past the career rushing record. He finished with 12,124, shattering the old mark.
In his final game, a 45-35 state semifinal loss to Bolles School, Henry ran 45 times for 337 yards and four scores. His last high school carry was a 63-yard romp for a touchdown that made the loss slightly more respectable. He walked off the field that day with cameras all over the place to document the end of one of the best high school football careers of all time. By then, his friends and family were still calling him Shocka, but the rest of the world had gotten to know him as “King Henry,” a name that has stuck ever since.
A few weeks later, Henry got together with Dunlap Sr. to welcome a visitor: Saban. Henry was verbally committed to Bama, so Saban was just making a quick check-in as national signing day loomed. It never hurts to show up in December as your team is getting ready to play Notre Dame for the national title, either.
Dunlap welcomed Saban but made it clear the Tide coach was shaking hands with a die-hard Fighting Irish fan. “I think you’re going to lose to Notre Dame,” he told Saban. Dunlap rattled off what headaches QB Everett Golson and linebacker Manti Te’o would be for Bama. Saban listened as Henry and Dunlap Jr. laughed in the background — Henry was amused that his mentor was so unintimidated by a legend in Saban.
Saban was even more amused. He’d already won over Gladys, so he leaned into the conversation with Dunlap Sr. He asked for his full breakdown of the game, one coach to another, and Dunlap appreciated the courtesy. Dunlap got rolling on Te’o and how the combination of Gholson, running back Theo Riddick and tight end Tyler Eifert would be a nightmare for Saban’s defense.
“Good luck,” Dunlap said in a tone that indicated he didn’t really mean it. He wanted Henry to have his dreams come true with Saban and Bama … right after the confetti cleared from a Notre Dame national title.
The two talked for a while, and Dunlap Sr. eventually circled around to the lingering question about Henry.
“How do we know that you’re not just telling him he can play running back now and later you’ll convert him to defensive end?” he asked.
Saban smiled, and in his steady, confident tone said, “I don’t mean to brag, but I’m pretty good at recruiting. If I wanted a defensive end, I would recruit the best defensive end in the country, not a converted running back.”
It was a mic drop moment, oozing the confidence of a man who was about to mangle Notre Dame 42-14, for another national championship and also devout in the idea that Derrick Henry might get him one or two more. When Henry talked about his goals — running back, national title, Heisman, NFL — Saban nodded along. Those were his goals, too.
He’d eventually get all four. But not without a big hiccup as a freshman.
HENRY ENROLLED EARLY at Alabama, starting school just a few weeks after the last Saban visit. He had eyes on playing right away in 2013, and the coaching staff was open to it. But the whole time, they were honest about a depth chart that had vets T.J. Yeldon and Kenyan Drake at the top.
Even as an 18-year-old newcomer, Henry immediately impressed teammates and coaches in spring ball. He was now close to his NFL size of 6-foot-3, 243 pounds with 4.5 speed, and generated nonstop wide-eyed looks during practices. In the weight room, teammates would just say, “That is a man,” as he racked 45-pound plates one after the other.
So Henry played as a freshman but not as much as he wanted. Bama used him on special teams (he had two tackles on kick return duty). When he got chances in the backfield, he looked great. He finished the regular season with 27 carries for 282 yards. For a guy who had 45 carries in his last high school game, though, he didn’t know what to do with himself as a third-stringer who got about two touches per game.
Henry consulted with Dunlap Sr. throughout the year but didn’t bring up his restlessness with the Alabama coaching staff. Henry is a fairly reserved person (he declined an interview for this story), and as demanding as he can be about getting the ball, his old Yulee friends said it came from a place of wanting to win games, not pad stats. Dunlap encouraged him to have a measured conversation with Saban but not until after the season.
Bama ran the table from August to late November at No. 1, with 10 double-digit wins, before the infamous Kick Six derailed their title hopes against No. 4 Auburn on Nov. 30. Henry took Dunlap’s advice, scheduling a meeting with Saban between the Iron Bowl on Nov. 30 and the Tide’s Sugar Bowl date against Oklahoma on Jan. 2.
In their meeting, Henry aired out that he’d been struggling with his role, that he was stuck idling too much on the sidelines when he knew he could help the team win. Saban mostly just listened, and at the end, he said he understood. “Let’s talk again in a month,” Saban said. “Stick with us through the bowl game.”
Saban had earned Henry’s trust. So he nodded and said he would wait to make any decisions. But privately, Henry expressed to his inner circle, including the Dunlaps, that he was contemplating his options. Yeldon would be back the next season, so Henry thought there was a good chance he might still be splitting carries.
Henry talked to both Dunlaps, Pat Sr. and Pat Jr., and they told him he should take his time, play in the bowl game and see what happens. But both of their brains started racing. Pat Sr. mentioned to his son that maybe Henry would ultimately take a good look at Notre Dame, and Pat Jr. said his fingers were crossed for his beloved Florida State to pull Henry as a transfer.
Both schools had been among Henry’s final list of 8-10 schools, but the Dunlaps got a sense from Henry that if he left Bama, he might lean toward coming back to Florida and becoming a ‘Nole. Pat Jr. was ecstatic as he fantasized about a backfield of Henry and Dalvin Cook. “For about three days, I believed with my whole heart that we were going to see him in a Florida State uniform,” Pat Jr. said.
The bowl game wiped out that belief. Henry didn’t start but got his most burn of the year, outrushing the entire Oklahoma team 100 yards to 81. He had a 43-yard breakaway touchdown run and threw in a dazzling 61-yard TD reception, too. Bama lost the game 45-31 but walked away knowing it had a sophomore rising star.
In his second season, Henry shot to 172 carries for 990 yards while sharing the workload with Yeldon. And the Derrick Henry launch was on. From there, Henry hit every goal — running back, national title, Heisman, NFL — in a remarkable junior season. The Titans stole Henry in the second round of the 2016 draft, mostly because teams worried about the same things he’d been hearing for a decade.
Too big for the position.
Too much wear and tear over the years.
Runs too tall.
Almost a decade later, the Titans let Henry go to sign Tony Pollard. Now, with the Baltimore Ravens, Henry is one of the favorites for Offensive Player of the Year. Not bad for a for-now guy, huh?
ONE GAME INTO his NFL career, Henry suffered the toughest loss of his life when he found out Gladys died in Yulee. She’d gotten a respiratory infection that kept getting worse. By the time Henry was able to visit her, she had a breathing tube in her throat and couldn’t speak. So the two exchanged handwritten notes. She said she loved him and he reciprocated, and then she made him promise to go back to Alabama and get his communications degree, which he did in 2018.
A few weeks later, she died. She had 14 children, 24 grandchildren, 23 great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren, and she’d been an instrumental part of so many of their lives. On the day he got his degree, Henry published an essay to her on The Players’ Tribune titled, “I did it, Grandma,” he wrote, “You were my best friend… You took a piece of me with you when you passed, Grandma.”
Dunlap Sr. again emerged as a key part of Henry’s life when Gladys died. As a young backup in the NFL, hundreds of miles from Yulee and Tuscaloosa, Henry again needed his support. He’d call his old mentor and talk to him about life in the NFL.
But during one of those calls in 2018, Dunlap delivered some devastating news to his Anytime Fitness buddy: Dunlap had lung cancer, and the diagnosis wasn’t good. Over the next year, Dunlap underwent treatment, with almost daily pep talks from Henry on FaceTime. He’d begun wearing a shamrock chain around his neck during games as an ode to his old coach who couldn’t resist hyping Notre Dame to Nick Saban’s face.
On those nights, usually around 7:30 p.m., Dunlap dropped whatever he was doing and picked up a call from Henry. He was with the Titans at the time and at the peak of his football powers. Yet, he still called Dunlap to see how he was doing and offered words of encouragement. In the other room, Dunlap’s son would often hear Henry asking his dad if he could take a look at his game film. Dunlap Jr. would hear his dad’s voice go up an octave, like he was 25 percent more alive, and it would make him tear up thinking about what Henry was now doing for a dying man. Henry was in the middle of leading the NFL in rushing for back-to-back seasons, with 3,500-plus yards, and had the best coaching in football to rely upon. It meant the world to Dunlap Sr. that his former player still wanted his advice anyway.
Fourteen months after his diagnosis, Dunlap died in 2019. He’d gotten slowly worse for a long period. Yet his family — and the entire Yulee community — felt broken by the news that he was gone. That included Henry, who flew back to Yulee for the funeral and then left later that day. Nobody knew it at the time, but Henry decided he wanted to get a puppy for the Dunlaps as they mourned the loss of their patriarch.
Henry drove to Ocala, Florida, himself and adopted the same kind of dog that he had, a mini doodle. He named the dog “Coach,” in Pat Dunlap, Sr.’s honor, and he brought the dog to Dunlap’s widow, Christina. He explained to her how much he loved his own mini doodle, which had grown to its adult size of 30 pounds. He said he felt certain that Coach was going to be a spiritual boost for the Dunlaps, a way to remember both Pat Sr. and the impact he’d had on young men like Henry.
But then a funny thing happened. Coach started to grow, and grow, and grow. He blew past 30 pounds, and then 40, and then 50, and he just kept going. When kids would be around the Dunlap house, they’d try to play with the growing boy pup, and Coach would plow right through them. “It was like Terry Tate, office linebacker,” Pat Jr. said.
The Dunlaps would text and call Henry with updates, so he generally knew what was going on. But when he next visited, he couldn’t believe what he saw. There was Coach, now 90 pounds and fast and agile. Henry realized Coach was actually a regular golden doodle. Every time he sees the Dunlaps now, he still fake-grimaces and says, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
But everybody loves Shocka, and they love Coach, too, and to this day, when they’re together, the whole group can’t help but belly laugh at the hilariousness of the big little kid from Yulee shaking his head as he stares at the big little dog. Just two tall tales rising higher than anybody could have ever imagined.
