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Little Fanfare For an Uncommon Man
"I'd prefer to play in an empty stadium," Marvin Harrison says softly. "It would be, um, not less embarrassing, but I don't like the focus directly on me, not anything, no one, no cameras. If I had to I would just play in front of no fans."
(Andy Lyons - Getty Images)
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The track man never had a chance. In a 40-yard race, Harrison beat him by 15 yards. Then he walked away. They're still talking about it at Roman Catholic.
Harrison, of course, didn't mention it again.
"That was really the beginning of Marvin," Watson says.
Always Open
Whenever Dungy runs into his old friend James Harris, the Jacksonville Jaguars' vice president of player personnel, they have the same conversation.
"I don't understand how the best receiver on your team gets wide open all the time," Harris says. "Everybody knows he's going to get the ball. How does he get wide open, with no one around him?"
On each play, the defenders know Harrison is going to line up on the right side, because it's where he's always lined up. And on each play, they know he's likely to be Manning's featured target. "And he still has four or five plays in the game where nobody's around him," Dungy says. "It seems impossible. But that's what he does, and he does it in such a way that he doesn't draw attention to himself."
Pure talent is one explanation. Harrison has explosion, guile, vision, hands and courage. Also, he has uncanny body control. He can disguise each route so they all look the same; defenders never know whether he's running a stem, out, curl, streak or comeback. By the time you figure out what he's running, he'll freeze you with a single shake of his shoulder, and then vanish.
"He'll just run right past you and make you look stupid," McNabb says.
A catalogue of Harrison's catches includes pirouettes, twists, dips, twirls, lunges, tips, stabs and sleights of hand.
"What he does is so exceptional and so subtle that you can't see it unless you see it on film," Polian says. "There are very few times when, with the naked eye, you will say, wow, how did he do that? You only do that when you look at the tape. And then you say, 'My God, how did he do that?' "
As with all great magicians, the answer lies partly in practice. Behind every catch is hours of tedious rehearsal. Harrison practices the same way he comports himself in every other area.
Back in 1996, on NFL draft day, Harrison sat with friends and family as he waited to see what team would pick him. In four years at Syracuse, Harrison had set the all-time receiving record, and he had legitimate hopes of going among the first 10 players chosen. Instead, team after team passed on him.
