Wow!
Damian Harrell uses that expression often when he starts a sentence. It works when describing Harrell in the Arena Football League.
This Crush receiver has made 46 touchdown receptions. Because he has caught a touchdown pass in an AFL-record 62 consecutive games, it is safe to presume that he will catch at least No. 47 against Orlando at the Pepsi Center on Sunday.
In the AFL’s 20 years, no one has done that in a season.
Yet, Harrell cannot catch a sniff from the NFL.
He is 6-feet-3, 182 pounds. He competes. He makes plays.
But the NFL says he is too slow for their game. That he plays on a field half as long. That the NFL field is four times as wide. That he gets a running start at the line scrimmage in the AFL. That NFL defensive backs will plant their hands all over him at the line and slow him up and shut him down.
That is their projection.
That is their belief.
NFL teams usually keep between four and six receivers. Harrell is 30 now. He turns 31 in September. With three regular-season games left, he is on pace to earn 57 touchdown catches before the AFL playoffs.
He is on pace to score a league-record 339 points.
I find it astonishing that NFL teams are not taking a second or third look at Harrell.
How could they not bring him in to actually see if their projections are reality?
“First of all, he is from Florida State, and most of their receivers are quick but not very fast,” said Ozzie Newsome, the Baltimore Ravens general manager. “It must be the speed thing with him. Once you get him on our field, that has to be the detriment. He has been in that league for eight years. The scouts in the NFL are too good to miss him. I’m up to my knees with alligators getting ready for the draft. But, I’ll tell you what, when it is over, I’m going to take another look at him because you’ve raised my interest.”
Harrell said he has heard that before.
The beauty about this player is that he has learned to bloom where planted.
“I stopped worrying about the NFL thing about five years ago,” Harrell said. “I know that if I got a good three or four days in any team’s camp, if I got that kind of audition, they would know I was on the field. The AFL has been good to me. It is how I have supported my family. The Crush have been a top-of-the-line organization. And we’re trying to win another championship. That’s my focus.”
He is called an offensive specialist in the AFL. He specializes in production. Besides touchdown grabs, Harrell leads the league in scoring (276 points), receptions (123) and receiving yards (1,558).
He injured both his left and right knees in college and was hurt during the 1998 NFL draft, his draft time. No invitation from the scouting combine. He spent two years with the AFL’s old New England franchise. That one folded. Then two more with the Toronto franchise. That one folded, too.
He has settled nicely with the Crush for the last four seasons.
How does a player so talented feel when NFL draft day rolls around this Saturday and another crop of green receivers are drafted, receivers who are not as productive nor, in several instances, as skilled?
“I’m happy for every one of those guys,” Harrell said. “I’m glad they get to experience that. I never had that. But those guys earned their chance and it is a great opportunity for them.”
In Harrell’s shoes, would you be as charitable?
I asked Rick Smith, the Broncos assistant general manager, how the Broncos could pass on such a player in their own backyard.
Smith said: “He is a heck of a football player. We don’t think his skills transfer to our league, but that is our projection. I won’t be the one to say his skills do not transfer to our league at all. To be in position to break a record like that, to shatter it, speaks volumes. That franchise has found solid ground here and he is a big, big part of it.”
Harrell was struck by lightning on a football field during his junior year in high school in Miami. He remembers going to practice that day. He remembers one or two plays.
“That’s it,” Harrell said. “I woke up in the hospital and the nurse said I had been hit by lightning. I tried to get up. My ankles were too swollen and sore. I was in the hospital for about two weeks. But I overcame that. I kept playing football.”
And produced lightning of his own.
Too bad we may never see what he could do in an NFL game.
But we do know what he can do in the AFL game.
Wow!
Staff writer Thomas Georgecan be reached at 303-820-1994
