FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — While Hank Hendrix's would-be Fayetteville High School classmates combated the Sunday Scaries on Sunday afternoon, the 17-year-old quarterback was busy leading a pair of touchdown drives inside Razorback Stadium in Arkansas' first fall scrimmage.

Hendrix marched the Razorbacks down the field as many times as AJ Hill and once more than Cade Trotter and Braeden Fuller, which may be enough to lift Hendrix to the third-string role when Arkansas' season-opener comes around.

Regardless of where he is on the depth chart in 19 days, it's the long-term future of Hendrix that should have Razorback fans excited. Come 2028 or 2029, Hendrix, who reclassified from the Class of 2027, should be in the mix for the starting job, if he's not the unanimous starter.

That's assuming the Fayetteville native sticks around at UA for at least two or three more years, and given the current nature of college football, that's not a given.

But everything Ryan Silverfield, Mitch Stewart and Tim Cramsey have said about Hendrix so far indicate that they'd be willing to pay the price for him to remain at Arkansas.

"Hank Hendrix struggled a bit early today, and then showed why he is such a touted young man and what we think about what he's doing moving forward," Silverfield said Sunday. "So that's great to see him make some steps. Obviously, he's young."

In addition to the obvious positive on-field implications of Hendrix playing QB for the Hogs, there's also something special about an Arkansas kid, especially one who played high school football just a few hundred feet from Razorback Stadium, being the most popular athlete in the Natural State.

Not since Charleston's Ty Storey in 2018 have the Hogs had a starting quarterback from Arkansas start in a majority of games.

"He does not get rattled," Stewart said of Hendrix. "Y'all [have] probably seen it. We've done some things where we've pulled him off of one field and put him up there and thrown him into some situations trying to see if he would wet his britches, so to speak, and he did not.

"For a guy who's 187, 188 pounds, he can produce a lot of power out of that body in his arm, and he makes really good decisions. He's a fun one. He's really fun, and he ain't scared of nothing. He gets in that huddle, he yells at people he gets them going. He ain't scared of nothing."

Prior to his reclassification, Hendrix was a highly touted 4-star prospect ranked as high as the No. 5 prospect in the country at his position for the 2027 class. He may not see the field much this fall, but he has shown during camp that he is capable of living up to his potential.

Between stints at Boerne (Texas) High School as a freshman and sophomore, and Fayetteville for his junior season, he started 34 games while recording 9,425 yards of total offense, completed 67.4% of his passes, 102 touchdowns and just 13 interceptions.

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