I’m reluctant to declare a young, touted player in any sport a bust, but especially so in the NFL.
I think we chronically underestimate how high the level of play is, how fast and vicious it is, and how it teeters on the impossible to absorb a playbook in your first or second season in the league to the point that you execute every call to the coaches’ satisfaction on game day.
Many young players somehow manage to make it look easy. It is so, so hard.
N’Keal Harry? Oh, that guy is a bust.
I don’t like saying this, because he occasionally drops clues — in between the dropped passes, misguided routes, and indifferent blocking — about what the Patriots saw in him when they used the 32d pick in the 2019 NFL Draft on him. He’s ’90s home-run-hitter large. He’s tough to tackle with a head of steam. He will fight for the ball and even win a few. There are shades of Anquan Boldin and Brandon Marshall in his … well, he’s big like they were. And that’s where the comps and the semi-compliments end.
He’s a bust. El busto. Sixteen games into his NFL career, it’s just not happening. Playing a position, wide receiver, where the Patriots remain desperate for someone to break through even with the contributions of Jakobi Meyers and Damiere Byrd, he has managed just 24 catches for 213 yards (a Marv Cook-like 8.9 yards per catch) and a touchdown this season.
He has his opportunities. He lets them slip. If Eminem wrote songs about him, he’d still be living in Salem’s Lot.
In his entire career — which amounts to a full season, 16 games — he has 36 catches for 318 yards and three touchdowns. Not to dwell too much on what they missed out on by taking him, but Seattle force of nature D.K. Metcalf — taken with the last pick of the second round in ’19, 32 picks after Harry — has nearly three times as many receiving yards this season (1,039) as Harry has in his career.
Bill Belichick and Nick Caserio couldn’t have gotten that pick more wrong if they’d let — Google “worst GM in NFL history” — Matt Millen make the pick.
I don’t declare Harry a bust with any ease or satisfaction, and I hope someday he proves me wrong, not that I expect him to here. To me, a bust is not a player that underachieves for his draft position, but one that never contributes.
Sony Michel probably should not have been a first-round pick, but he scored six touchdowns in the playoffs two years ago, including three in one game against the Chargers and the only TD in the Super Bowl. The last time we saw him in sustained action, he ran for 117 yards on nine carries against the Raiders. He can be maddening. It’s weird that he can’t catch. But Sony Michel is not a bust.
Bethel Johnson didn’t last long as a second-round pick in the 2003 draft, playing just 39 games over three seasons with the Patriots. His indifference drove teammates nuts. But he’s one of the fastest players the Patriots have ever had, and he contributed some crucial plays along the way, including two huge catches (one for a touchdown) in the 2003 playoff win over the Titans, and a 92-yard kick return for a touchdown just before halftime in a 2003 win over the Colts. Bethel Johnson was not a bust.
So often, players we regard as busts are actually promising players that were beaten up and discarded by the game at an early age.
Hart Lee Dykes had 795 receiving yards as a rookie before brutal leg injuries and immaturity derailed his career. Not a bust.
Andy Katzenmoyer made 79 tackles, had 3.5 sacks, and returned a Dan Marino interception 57 yards for a touchdown during his rookie season in ’99 before a neck injury abbreviated is career. Not a bust.
Laurence Maroney ran for 1,580 yards and 12 touchdowns and averaged 4.4 yards per carry over his first two NFL season (2006-07). In the 2007 playoffs, he delivered back-to-back 122-yard rushing games. He wasn’t the same after breaking a bone in his shoulder early in the 2008 season. Not a bust.
Yes, the Patriots have had many busts at receiver. Harry joins an ignominious group that includes Chad Jackson, Tony Simmons, and Aaron Dobson, all of whom were chosen in the first two rounds. Only six receivers in Patriots history have been drafted higher than Harry’s No. 32 overall selection in ’19: Irving Fryar (1, 1984); Ron Sellers (6, 1969); Terry Glenn (7, 1996); Dykes (16, 1989); Darryl Stingley (19, 1973); and Stanley Morgan (25, 1977).
Sellers lasted just three seasons with the Patriots, but made the AFL Pro Bowl team as a rookie, gaining 705 yards and averaging 26.1 yards per catch. The argument can be made that Harry is the biggest receiver bust in Patriots history.
The biggest issue the Patriots will need to address in the offseason is quarterback. Wide receiver might be the second most-pressing issue, and there should be some enticing options available in free agency, among them the Bears’ Allen Robinson and the Lions’ Kenny Golladay.
Perhaps the Patriots will add one of the big-ticket receivers for once. Or perhaps they’ll draft one (please, not in the second round, Bill) and add some under-the-radar names in free agency.
But one answer is apparent already. N’Keal Harry isn’t part of the solution. He’s part of a problem that his selection was supposed to help fix.
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