LA Chargers: Five reasons to not re-sign Hunter Henry

As of now, the LA Chargers shouldn’t re-sign Hunter Henry.

Hunter Henry will be an important free agency decision for the LA Chargers. The decision to extend him became more difficult on Thursday when it was announced that both Travis Kelce and George Kittle got contracts of about $15 million per season.

With Henry playing on the tag, the Chargers will have to wait until free agency to re-sign him if they choose. It’s likely that they’ll be competing against many suitors for the former Arkansas tight end, especially if he has a solid 2020 season.

2020 can change a lot if he puts together a solid campaign, but I’m not sure that it’s likely that the season will play out in Henry’s favor. In the last two seasons, Henry has played 12 of a possible 32 games. He’ll need to shake off the injury bug if he wants a big contract.

1. Hunter Henry’s injury history

Whether Henry is necessarily injury prone is open to interpretation. Our own Jason Reed went waged into the debate, going as far as to not call him injury prone.

Personally, whatever exact terminology that we use to describe his injury situation doesn’t matter much to me. We’re talking about a tight end who has only been able to play 41 out of a possible 64 games in his career.

Does he have to play all 16 games per se? Not really. At the very least though, I’d like to see Henry play 14 or 15 games before the Chargers invest $14 or 15 million per season into a contract. And as always, not all injuries are equal. Henry tweaking his hamstring during the season and missing a few games would be very different than say a third straight season with a big knee injury.

I hope Henry proves everyone wrong and shakes the label of being injury prone. As of now, there’s no guarantee that will be true. The bottom line is really that you can’t devote a significant portion of the remaining salary cap to Henry if he can’t stay healthy.