TreVeyon Henderson sees the light
Sleep paralysis. Demons. Suicidal thoughts. The New England Patriots running back opens up to Go Long on the turning point of his life.
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — The horror began when he was a child in Hopewell, Va., and proceeded to stalk him — nightly — right into college at The Ohio State University. Laying in bed, TreVeyon Henderson’s body would completely lock up in a state of sleep paralysis. That is, he couldn’t move his arms. He couldn’t move his legs. It felt like something was pinning his entire body to the bed.
Worst of all is what Henderson could hear and see in this state of helpless immobilization.
There were voices. Evil voices. And when he looked up, Henderson insists he could quite literally see dark spirits floating at the top of his room. Demonic spirits.
“It’s a fight to break out of it,” Henderson says. “I can tell when I’m starting to go into an episode of sleep paralysis. It really feels like something is just trapping you down and you can’t move. Sometimes my eyes are open, sometimes my eyes are closed. But I’m still awake. And it’s a fight, man. It’s one of the hardest things ever to try to break out of. Once you break out of it, sometimes you go back to sleep and you start to go back into the same thing. And sometimes, it’ll be a constant. A constant fight. Back then? I had no answer back then.”
Half the time, he was experiencing a bad dream and it all felt exceptionally real. “Vividly clear,” he adds, “as if I’m awake.”
Half of the time, he was fully conscious. His eyes were wide open. He says he saw those spirits “all the time.”
Doctors in Virginia could never help. Same for the trainers at Ohio State. That’s because all solutions from all experts were shared through a medical lens. Only later — when he learned more about the devil — did Henderson become convinced he was dealing with something much more sinister.
While dealing with depression.
While battling suicidal thoughts.
When his parents split, Henderson struggled to cope. Multiple times, he considered taking his own life.
Today? He’s seated in the corner of the New England Patriots locker room, smiling. That tray of sushi in his locker is for his beloved fiancee. Yes, he’s getting married soon. Life is sweet. Go Long spent last week at Patriot Place to sift through the ruins of a bygone dynasty and see how Mike Vrabel plans to create a new one from scratch with his bare hands. Players here genuinely believe something special is building. We’ll get to that story soon. But when I asked Henderson why he thinks the new coach would choose him — what drives him? — the team’s new running back couldn’t wait to bare his soul.
Football is football. The 5-foot-10, 204-pounder could be the fireball these young Patriots need Week 4 against the Carolina Panthers, and beyond. But Henderson is adamant: he does not want to be defined by a sport.
Instead, he’s driven to help anyone tormented by their own darkness today.
One mysterious injury in Columbus, Ohio and one decision to pick up a Bible completely changed the trajectory of his life. This is not an athlete perching himself atop a virtual pulpit. By no means does the Patriots running back want anyone reading this to think he’s perfect. He shares his darkest days in this conversation because the TreVeyon Henderson who got to the other side is fully committed to serving as a beam of light for anyone who’ll listen.
He views his transformation from those sleepless nights to this state of pure bliss as more of a testimonial.
“I reached a point,” he says, “where I had to surrender.”
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Gangs and gun violence were pervasive in Hopewell. The poverty rate in this small town of about 23,000 residents is 24 percent.
Shootings broke out almost daily. Growing up, Lakeesha Hayes-Winfield wouldn’t let her three sons walk the streets on their own. If they were headed to a friend’s house, she’d drive them. Once, Henderson sprinted through the front door and screamed to his Mom: “Get down! They’re shooting!” It’s rough now. It was rough then.
Step outside and there’s no telling what TreVeyon would witness.
“We saw a lot of things,” he says, “we shouldn’t see at an early age.”
When his parents split, Henderson was at high risk of being ejected into those murderous streets.
However, the scenes inside his home somehow proved to be more traumatizing. Raised predominantly by his single mother, Hayes-Winfield, Henderson became full of anger. Unbridled rage. Day… to day… to agonizing day… he watched his mother work two jobs and still struggle to put food on their table. He describes her life as more of a 24/7/365 sacrifice. Hayes-Winfield emptied her tank every day — exhausting all sweat, all tears — and there was nothing he could do. A crippling helplessness.
Young TreVeyon had no clue how to control this anger.
Depression was severe. He describes himself as “suicidal” then.
To this day, he can see scars from the times he took a knife to his own wrist and forearm.
“You’re seeing how much it’s breaking her,” her son adds, “and it broke me.”
Mom realized her son desperately needed to find an outlet, needed a way to unleash these emotions inside because — clearly — these emotions weren’t going away. Football became the perfect escape. Pigskin in-hand, TreVeyon could juke and spin and sprint away from his problems en route to the end zone. It also helped watching his older brother, Ronnie Walker, earn straight A’s and receive scholarship offers to play Division I ball. TreVeyon started to realize there was a path out of Hopewell. I can do the same thing, little bro told himself. In the classroom, TreVeyon buckled down to earn A’s and amassed 50+ offers as 247Sports.com’s No. 1-rated running back in the nation.
The football world was his oyster. Henderson started to view this sport as his golden ticket to millions of dollars, fame, a better life. Henderson chose Ohio State University and, in 2021, he shattered the record books. His 19 touchdowns were the most ever for a Buckeye freshman. As were his 270 rushing yards vs. Tulsa. In all, he gained 1,248 yards on the ground and a Big Ten-best 6.8 yards per carry.
“But even with all of the success,” he adds, “I was still broken inside. I was still hurting.”
Nights remained Hell on earth. During spring ball, he’d need to wake up at 6 a.m. for workouts and meetings. Not ideal when you’ve been awake literally all night long dealing with sleep paralysis. He still encountered those evil spirits, too.
The next year, the sport was stolen from him.
As a sophomore, Henderson fully expected to dominate. And then he experienced something for the first time on a football field.
An injury.
There was just one problem. Nobody seemed to know what happened to him in that 77-21 win over Toledo, the Buckeyes’ third game that season. He tried to gut through the pain and his performance suffered. After nearly every game, he’d need to wear a boot. He barely practiced all season. Whenever he did, Henderson needed to wear specialized cleats that more so resembled basketball high tops. He slipped nonstop, practiced terribly and it was always a crapshoot if he’d be able to play on Saturday.
Rock bottom was an 11-carry, 19-yard day against Maryland on Nov. 19 that season. He couldn’t explode. He felt like a shell of himself. After sitting out Ohio State’s showdown with Michigan, he tried to rehab in time for the playoffs but could hardly walk. His body was failing him and his mind was worse. Finally, Henderson vowed not to step another foot inside the Buckeyes facility until he knew the truth. He met a doctor outside of the university and that’s when he discovered he was playing with a broken foot the whole time. Surgery was needed immediately.
“Football was my everything,” Henderson says. “That was my God at the time. That’s who I was. That was my identity. And playing through a broken foot, I’m all about my performance being on the field. And when my performance started to go down, that’s when my life just really started to go downhill as well. Because this was everything at the time.”
For years, he wondered what his purpose in life would be without football.
Now, he was living that nightmare scenario.
“It was tough,” he says. “When football was stripped away from me, it really left me vulnerable.”
Injured players at Ohio State worked out in a place dubbed “The Pit” which was actually more strenuous than normal practice. Guys couldn’t wait to get out of there, Henderson says. But it was through those darker days that a strength coach handed him a New Living Translation of the Bible. Growing up, he wasn’t very religious. For the first time, Henderson started to learn about Jesus Christ.
One day, post-surgery, he sat down on his bed and says that God sent him vivid “visions” of his “sinful past.”
When I ask directly what those sins were, he doesn’t hesitate.
“Serving false idols,” he says. “Serving football. Idolizing money. Living a life being sexually immoral. Having sex outside of marriage. And that’s kind of the norm nowadays. But I had no knowledge of that. And I was blind. I couldn’t see at the time before I met Christ.”
On the spot, he started reading the Bible religiously to drastically alter the course of his life.
It wasn’t easy — at all.
“One of the hardest things is surrendering,” Henderson continues. “Letting go of your way. Giving up your way and following Christ. And man, I just remember how hard it was for me to turn away from idolizing football, turn away from idolizing money, turn away from having sex outside of marriage. But the more I started to grow closer to Christ, the more I started to grow in love for Christ. And I started to grow in love for the things that He loves. Which is righteousness. And I started to hate what he hates. Which is sin. He set me free from being sexually immoral and serving false idols.
“That was the turning point in my life right there.”
Growing up, Henderson heard about demons and the devil but admittedly knew very, very little beyond pop culture. Now, he was learning how Jesus cast out demons in The Gospel of Luke. After all those years, his terrifying encounters at night started to make sense. Henderson prayed for Jesus to set him free from whatever had control over his life at night and says the sleep paralysis ended the very next day.
Suddenly, he could sleep in peace.
“He set me free,” Henderson says, “just like that.”
No longer was Henderson shacked by anger. Or depression. Or suicidal thoughts.
Henderson realized why doctors couldn’t help him his entire life. To him, this was all spiritual.
“I was dealing with an evil force,” he says, “and things that are in this world that people can’t see and people don’t recognize. I started to realize in my own life that these were actually demons attacking me late at night. … The biggest thing that people don’t realize is, man, the devil is real. The devil doesn’t care at all. The Bible says he comes to kill, steal, and destroy. And that’s what he was doing to me since I was a kid. He was destroying me until I met Jesus and I became His.
“There’s power in him. Jesus is real.”
But… why? Why was TreVeyon selected as a target?
He honestly has no clue, repeating that the devil doesn’t care who you are.
“Jesus saved my life, man. He set me free from the power of sin that had ahold of my life. Not saying that I’m perfect now. But his spirit lives inside of me. Now I can actually pursue righteous living.”
Understandably, his faith only grew. And grew. And grew. To the point now where Henderson proudly dons a t-shirt that reads “Jesus Won.” When Henderson learned that Jesus laid his life down so all humans could be forgiven, it struck a chord. His core desires changed. He couldn’t stop reading and researching and reorienting his life through the 2023 season. And when he returned to Columbus for his senior year in ‘24, Henderson started to share his story with teammates, coaches, the public.
Henderson cannot hold this all in because he’s certain there are countless people out there who also feel trapped.
Piece by piece, he’s willing to share more.
One day his senior year of college, Henderson was reading his Bible near the window of his bedroom and the sun’s rays shined directly onto those cuts along his arm. His mind raced back to his childhood in Virginia. “Back when,” he adds, “I used to get really angry and slit my arm or my wrist.” He stared at those scars and contemplated what he’d say to kids at an uncoming event in Upper Arlington, Ohio.
Right then, Henderson realized it was time to share this sensitive chapter of his story.
His talk went exceptionally well. He made sincere 1-on-1 connections.
Success on the football field became a natural byproduct. That senior season, Henderson led the Buckeyes to their first national title in a decade, rushing for 1,016 yards on 144 attempts with 10 TDs and a Big Ten-best 7.1 yards per carry. In the College Football Playoff vs. Texas, Henderson left thousands at the Cotton Bowl slack-jawed in shock. After a Longhorns touchdown knotted this semifinal contest up at 7-7 with 29 seconds left in the first half, No. 32 in red cradled a screen pass from quarterback Will Howard, carefully weaved through blocks and slammed the gas pedal 75 yards to paydirt. Ohio State won, 28-14, and then smashed Notre Dame in the final
Next thing he knew, Henderson was at The White House passing off the championship hardware to the Vice President of the United States. (Even if part of that trophy broke off.)
At the NFL Combine, he ran the 40-yard dash in a sizzling 4.43 seconds and soon realized that being so vocal about his personal odyssey led to many questions from scouts. He felt as if those raw stages of his life — sleep paralysis, depression, suicidal thoughts, etc. — were all being framed as “red flags” by teams. And he was undeterred. No skepticism from anyone will stop him from speaking out because Henderson cannot pretend like those haunting nights as a kid never happened. He was lost.
Now, he finally has clarity.
“There’s people out there — children — who are experiencing the same thing that I experienced,” Henderson says. “People need answers. I just remember me being a kid. I didn’t know the answers. I didn’t have any hope. And there’s not only children, but adults as well. These people, they’re searching for answers and they’re looking for hope. But they’re looking in the wrong places.”
Truth is, Henderson was widely respected by scouts as a presence you want in your locker room.
New England selected Henderson with the 38th overall pick in the 2025 draft and he quite obviously fits the Vrabel mold as a high-character, high-effort foundational piece. From Day 1, the new coach has aggressively reconstructed the roster in his image. Henderson has the raw talent to be a star in this league. His 0-to-60 acceleration cannot be coached and, psychologically, it’s easy to see why any coach setting a new culture would want him in this room.
Not that Henderson is envisioning Pro Bowls and fame and multi-million-dollar contracts. All proceeds from those “Jesus Won” shirts go to Columbus ministries.
He no longer derives his self-worth from a field. If he wants to know his worth, Henderson says he looks at the cross and reminds himself that Jesus Christ died for sinners like him. Losing is not easy. He doesn’t want fans to interpret his newfound peace as complacency. Rather, adversity is a guarantee for all NFL teams, all NFL players and he knows he’s built to handle anything.
No hit from any linebacker will ever compare to the pain he’s endured.
“This game comes with a lot of ups and downs,” Henderson says. “My life is going to be a whole lot of ups and downs. But I’m no longer building my life on the foundation of football. I’m building my life on the foundation of Jesus Christ. And Jesus says, those who build life on his foundation is like a wise man who builds his house on solid rock. And when the rain and the storms of this life come crashing, the house is still standing. No matter what challenges this game comes with, no matter what challenges this life comes with, I can still be standing.”
These Patriots are already navigating through their own storm. Last week, five turnovers spoiled what should’ve been a surefire win over the Pittsburgh Steelers. There’s a reasonable chance Henderson receives more touches on Sunday after costly fumbles by both Rhamondre Stevenson and Antonio Gibson.
An opportunity at a breakout performance likely awaits. New England may put the fate of their offense in the rookie’s hands. Maybe he seizes the opportunity. Maybe not. He knows 2025 is a long season through what he hopes is a long career.
After everything, TreVeyon Henderson does not want the general public to view him as a running back for the Patriots or a football player, period. As he walks these hallways, as he gets involved with the community, his sights are set higher.
“I was in darkness,” he says. “I was actually headed down the wrong path. And I started to see the light. The light that is Jesus Christ. And he snatched me out of the darkness and brought me into the light. And now I know which way I’m heading. Now I can see so many people who are in the darkness, and I can go tell them that I was once there — that they’re heading the wrong way — and I can encourage them to follow the light.
“That is my purpose.”
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I'm not religious at all. But I respect TreVeyon and am absolutely thrilled for him that he's found his peace. I live in Columbus and I'm a Buckeye alum. My wife and I have season tickets. That 2022 season was gutting and now finding out all of what he was going through is heartbreaking. He seemed like a much happier and healthy person, let alone football player, last season. On the field, I'll never forget the TD against Texas in the CFP. He hit the 50 and turned on the afterburners. Off the field, it's just wonderful that he's doing so much better. I wish him and his fiancée all the best. Pats got themselves a fantastic football player but an even better human being.
That's a beautiful story and article. I've had sleep paralysis throughout my life too but not nearly at the same consistency as Henderson did. It's such a scary and frightening feeling! I can see both of the scientific and spiritual explanations of where and how sleep paralysis happens.
May God always be with you young man ❤️❤️❤️