FORT WORTH, Texas — Drew Henson has been with two of the most storied franchises in professional sports. He was supposed to be the next great New York Yankees third baseman and then the next great Dallas Cowboys quarterback.

But Henson had only nine major league at-bats, getting one hit, with the Yankees; he made only one start with 18 attempts and one touchdown with the Cowboys.

Now, he is the fifth quarterback on the winless Detroit Lions' roster.

Henson, though, insists he is in a "good place."

He was married during the summer to Madeleine Easley, a Highland Park graduate whom he met in Dallas. He is back in a familiar place, 48 miles from where he went to high school, on a team he grew up rooting for, and with the same quarterbacks coach he had at the University of Michigan.

Even though he is 28, and buried on the Lions' depth chart, Henson believes he still can become the player everyone else once thought he would be.

"I feel better than I have in a long time," Henson said in a telephone interview. " . . . People don't have a whole lot of expectations for me right now except for myself. You just go about your business and believe at some point that you're going to get an opportunity to see what you can do, whatever that may be."

Henson was one of the nation's top prospects when he signed with Michigan in 1998. He nearly beat out Tom Brady as a freshman but ended up backing up Brady for two seasons before earning the starting job as a junior. In eight starts, he completed 131 of 217 passes for 1,852 yards with 16 touchdowns and four interceptions while leading the Wolverines to a share of the Big Ten title.

Henson was projected as a Heisman Trophy candidate in 2001 and a possible first-round NFL pick in 2002. But he quit football before his senior season, signing a six-year, $17 million deal with the Yankees, who tabbed him their future third baseman.

Henson struck out too often in the minor leagues and reached the majors only briefly in 2002 and 2003. Henson's baseball struggles prompted the Houston Texans to use a sixth-round pick on him in 2003, with the intention of trading him if he decided to give up baseball.

In 2004, the Cowboys dealt a third-round choice for Henson's rights. The Cowboys guaranteed him $3.5 million, the most ever for a sixth-round pick, in hopes Henson would become their next marquee quarterback.

It now is almost four years to the day that Henson made his only start for the Cowboys, a Thanksgiving Day game against the Chicago Bears in 2004. He was pulled at halftime by then-coach Bill Parcells after he completed only 4 of 12 passes for 31 yards with an interception that R.W. McQuarters returned 45 yards for a touchdown. Henson didn't play in 2005, and Parcells released him before the 2006 season.

Henson, though, said he has no regrets about anything.

"I had a great experience in New York, certainly learning experiences that are invaluable, and Dallas, too," said Henson, who makes his off-season home in downtown Dallas. "Those are all things where it may not have turned out how you wanted it to at that time, but maybe it wasn't meant to be, and it'll lead you down a path that was meant to be. I'm going to enjoy that and realize that there will come some point in time where you can draw on all that and it makes you stronger."

Henson agrees he probably would have been further along in his NFL career had he not spent three seasons playing baseball, but he doesn't look back. His future is now, and Scot Loeffler, the Lions' quarterbacks coach who was Henson's quarterbacks coach at Michigan, is trying to help resurrect Henson's career.

Loeffler has gone back to the basics with Henson, returning him to the natural release he had at UM instead of the high release he had developed since entering the NFL. Henson said he is as comfortable and confident as he has ever been in the NFL.

"I think all the experiences he had throughout his career with baseball, the ups and downs, his mentality and his approach to life and to the game is unbelievable," Loeffler said in a telephone interview. "I think he's just in a really good place. Very similar to all the good quarterbacks I've been around, you have to struggle before you get to the point where you want to be. Tom Brady was an example. I think Drew went through that process. It's really kind of exciting to watch him start over and develop into a quarterback."