Ladarius
Henderson.
Ladarius
Henderson.
Michigan· 6'4"· 309 lb
"Tackle length, championship starts and no position to call his own — the kind of seventh-round lineman a team keeps in the building for two years and never puts on the field."Pre-draft read
Five-year offensive lineman who played four seasons at Arizona State and then transferred to Michigan for 2023, where he started at left tackle for the undefeated national champions. He is a technician before an athlete: patient sets, quick eyes to the twist, and a feel for angles that let him cover a shaded defender without lunging.
Pass protection is the calling card and the reason he stuck outside. He mirrors interior games cleanly, passes off stunts with the guard and rarely gets caught leaning. The run game is flatter — he positions and sustains more than he displaces, winning by leverage, not torque. The signature is versatility: tackle experience on a guard's frame, coaches' first-team All-Big Ten in his only season in Ann Arbor.
Zone-based, quick-game offense that asks its linemen to reach, climb and mirror rather than to displace bodies at the point of attack.
Year 1: developmental swing lineman and emergency tackle on gameday. Ceiling: low-end starting guard in a wide-zone offense that keeps him out of short-yardage isolation.
Gap-and-power run scheme built on down blocks and goal-line displacement, where his inability to move a nose tackle off the spot becomes the whole rep.
The tackle background is the roster value: he is the depth piece who covers three spots, not a lineman you build a run identity around.
LaDarius Henderson 2023 Highlights
Left tackle reps from Michigan's undefeated national championship season.
LaDarius Henderson Highlights
Arizona State tape showing the pass-set patience that defined the profile.
Texans rookie OL LaDarius Henderson Breakdown
Post-draft film breakdown of his projected fit as interior depth in Houston.
Henderson is a technique-and-versatility lineman whose value comes from where he can line up rather than from what he moves. At 6-4 and 309 pounds with 35-inch arms, he has genuine tackle length on an interior frame, which is why boards listed him as an IOL prospect while his last college tape came at left tackle.
The résumé carries the profile. He played all four years at Arizona State through a program in freefall, then transferred to Michigan and started at left tackle for a team that went undefeated and won the CFP national championship, earning coaches' first-team All-Big Ten honors along the way. He was rarely the reason a play broke down. The flags are power and data. He is a positional blocker who does not generate displacement in short yardage, his base narrows against a true bull rusher, and there is no verified testing battery — no published RAS, no confirmed pro day numbers — so there is nothing athletic to argue with the tape.
He was a Combine and Senior Bowl invitee with a consensus seventh-round projection. Houston, hunting cheap line depth, took him at 249 with its final selection of the draft. The pick matched the board exactly; nobody in the building was calling him anything other than a developmental body.
- 01
Pass-set technique
Patient, balanced kick and quick redirect that kept edge rushers from turning the corner on a Big Ten championship line.
- 02
Positional versatility
Interior frame with tackle experience, the swing value that decides which lineman survives final cuts.
- 03
Length for the position
Thirty-five-inch arms let him land first and stay attached even when a rusher wins the initial step.
- 04
Stunt and twist recognition
Passes off games with the guard cleanly and rarely lets a looper come free through his gap.
- 05
Big-stage résumé
Started at left tackle for an undefeated national champion and was coaches' first-team All-Big Ten in his only season there.
- 01
Lack of displacement
Positions and sustains rather than moves people; short-yardage and goal-line reps do not create new ground.
- 02
Anchor under true power
Base narrows against a straight bull rush and he gets walked backward before he can drop his weight.
- 03
No verified testing
No published RAS and no confirmed pro day battery, leaving zero athletic data to project traits beyond the film.
- 04
Position uncertainty
Last played tackle, projected inside, and had no college guard tape to prove the transition would take.
| Yr | Team | G |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Arizona State | — |
| 2020 | Arizona State | — |
| 2021 | Arizona State | — |
| 2022 | Arizona State | — |
| 2023 | Michigan | — |
| Career | — | — |
Offensive linemen do not accumulate box-score statistics. Only verified figures are listed: 10 starts at left tackle for Michigan in 2023 (Texans.com). Arizona State published participation but no per-season games/starts breakdown, so those cells are left unverified rather than estimated.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Honors
- 2023 CFP National Champion (Michigan)
- First-team All-Big Ten, coaches (2023)
- 2024 Senior Bowl and NFL Combine invitee
Seventh-round swing lineman who lives on the roster fringe, active for jumbo packages without ever locking down a spot.
Late-round interior lineman with college tackle reps who turned patience and technique into a real starting role — the optimistic branch.
Drafted lineman who never made a 53 and rotated through practice squads before falling out of the league — the branch Henderson actually took.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
The NFL career never got started. Houston waived him in July 2024, during his first training camp, before he played a regular-season snap for the team that drafted him — the first member of Michigan's championship draft class to be released. He spent more than a year off NFL rosters before Cleveland signed him to the practice squad in October 2025, where a foot injury interrupted the stint. Indianapolis claimed him off that practice squad in December 2025, kept him through the offseason program, then waived him on June 1, 2026. Through August 2026 he has zero career games played and zero starts.
In hindsight the pick was defensible and the outcome was the likelier branch. A seventh-rounder with tackle length, national-championship starts and no testing profile is a lottery ticket, and Houston paid lottery-ticket price. What the evaluation underrated was how narrow his path was: a lineman without displacement power has to be technically perfect at a defined position to make a 53, and Henderson arrived without a settled one — too light in the run game for guard, too short-armed in the pro mind for tackle. The championship line kept him in buildings for two years. It never got him onto a field.
Data note: Offensive linemen do not accumulate box-score statistics. Only verified figures are listed: 10 starts at left tackle for Michigan in 2023 (Texans.com). Arizona State published participation but no per-season games/starts breakdown, so those cells are left unverified rather than estimated.