No. 1 Ohio State’s trip to No.
4 Texas this week could put true freshman receiver Chris Henry Jr. on a massive stage early in his college career. For the Buckeyes, though, Henry Jr.’s story stretches far beyond what happens on the field in 2026.
He is the son of former NFL wide receiver Chris Henry, whose career with the Cincinnati Bengals was marked by explosive production and repeated off-field trouble before his death in December 2009 at age 29. Henry Jr. also has a direct tie to one of his father’s closest former teammates, Adam “Pacman” Jones, who later became a legal guardian for Henry’s two sons.
Chris Henry was a fifth-round pick in the 2005 NFL Draft and spent five seasons with the Bengals. As a rookie, he played in 14 games and finished with 31 catches for 422 yards and six touchdowns. His second season was even more productive, producing 605 yards and nine touchdowns while averaging 16.8 yards per catch.
That promise was repeatedly overshadowed by trouble. In December 2005, Henry was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana, pleaded guilty to avoid jail time and completed a 28-day rehab program. Former Bengals coach Marvin Lewis sat him for a game against Detroit after the arrest.
The issues kept coming. Henry was arrested in January 2006 on possible felony gun charges after allegedly possessing a firearm outside a nightclub in Orlando, Fla.
He was arrested again that June for speeding and a suspected OVI in Ohio. In September 2006, Bengals linebacker Odell Thurman was arrested for a DUI, and Henry was in the backseat when it happened.
Lewis then benched Henry for Cincinnati’s game against the Patriots the next week.
At the start of the 2007 season, Henry was suspended eight games for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy related to those arrests. Then in June 2008, he was suspended indefinitely after his fifth arrest in a little over three years, this time on assault charges after a man accused him of punching him in the face and breaking his car window.
The Bengals released him, then brought him back for the 2009 season. That year, he played in eight games and caught 12 passes for two touchdowns. Over his Bengals career, he finished with 119 receptions for 1,826 yards and 21 touchdowns.
Henry died in December 2009 after falling from the bed of a moving truck driven by his fiancée, Loleini Tonga. The investigation determined he died of blunt force trauma to the head and found that Tonga was not driving recklessly or at excessive speed.
At the time, Henry and Tonga had three children together: Chris Henry Jr., Seini and DeMarcus. Seini now plays volleyball at Ohio State.
In 2010, West Virginia’s Brain Injury Research Institute released a report saying Henry had chronic traumatic encephalopathy throughout his career. That diagnosis was later confirmed by autopsy.
Henry Jr. was raised by his mother, Loleini, but Jones also played a major role in his life and in the lives of Henry’s two sons. The boys saw Jones often over the years, including at Thanksgiving and on trips to Cincinnati. Jones and his wife, Tishana, became the boys’ legal guardians in 2021, nearly 12 years after Henry’s death, working with Loleini to make it happen.
As Jones later told the story in 2023 through The Athletic, he saw the boys growing up without their father and decided they needed more support, especially as college programs started to take notice. He stayed in touch, checked on their mother, brought the boys to football camps and sent them boxes of Nike and Under Armour gear.
Still, he said he believed Henry would have wanted more. So he called.
“Y’all need to uproot and move up here with us,” he urged Loleini Tonga, the boys’ mother. “We’ll help you out.”
Henry Jr. would have been around 14 when the adoption was finalized. Jones has three children of his own.
Jones and Henry were teammates at West Virginia in 2003 and 2004 and became close friends. Jones later spent 12 seasons in the NFL from 2005 to 2018, including eight with the Bengals, though he did not arrive in Cincinnati until 2010, after Henry had died.
“Everyone know me and Chris was best friends in college,” Jones told Shannon Sharpe via Cincy Jungle in 2021. “I’m still close with his whole entire family.
I’m still close with Loleini... we’re inseparable. We’ve been working on this for three-[to]-four years, and we finally got it done like six, seven months ago.”
Jones also said the moment meant a great deal to him because of his late friend.
“For me, it’s heartwarming, because I know my man up there is sitting up there smiling like ‘man I really appreciate you man.’”
Before Ohio State, Henry Jr. attended high school in Ohio and then transferred to Mater Dei in Santa Ana, Calif., for his final year.
His father’s college résumé came at West Virginia from 2002 to 2004 under Rich Rodriguez, now back as the Mountaineers’ head coach. In his last two seasons there, Chris Henry piled up 1,878 yards and 22 touchdowns. His sophomore year also included a notorious moment against Rutgers, when he was ejected after multiple unsportsmanlike penalties and Rodriguez called him “an embarrassment to himself and the program.”
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