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The New England Patriots basically gave Damien Harris a redshirt year in 2019. The team drafted him in the third round, and Patriots director of player personnel Nick Caserio intimated they picked Harris because he was the best player available. Even so, there simply wasn’t room for him in the offense, which featured running backs Sony Michel, James White and Rex Burkhead.
This year, it’s different. Harris isn’t buried on the depth chart. To the contrary, he’s floated to the top, with Michel starting the season on the physically unable to perform list after a disappointing 2020. Recent-signing, Lamar Miller is recovering from an ACL repair, and is also on the PUP list. That has left the Patriots to rely heavily upon Harris through the first few weeks of training camp.
Harris was asked how he got past his rookie season, which featured just four carries all year, and avoided negativity.
“The easiest way to get past that — that’s last year. It has nothing to do with this year,” Harris said during a videoconference call on Tuesday. “It has nothing to do with what’s going on right now. That is something that I don’t even think about because it does me no good. All I can focus on is how I can continue to focus this year, this training camp. [I’m] going out there with the right attitude, right mindset, and just try to keep stacking days together. That’s my focal point right now”
In fact, Harris noted that there were some silver linings. He found a way to turn his lack of playing time — a product of a deep group of impressive running backs — into a positive.
“It’s a lot of things that have helped me, last year having the opportunity to just learn and absorb as much information as I could, learn from the older guys, Sony, Rex, Brandon, James, being able to learn from all those guys and being a sponge soaking up as much as I could last year and then translating it this year … doing whatever I can to help this team be successful, there have been a lot of things that have helped me in my transition from year 1 and year 2, and every single day I come in with the mindset, how can I get better? What can I do to improve?”
Harris’ body of work seems to be impressing his coach, who uncharacteristically issued high praise to the youngster.
“He’s a smart player and he has a lot of skills that I think we’ll be able to utilize,” Bill Belichick said last week. “He’s had an opportunity to get quite a few reps here in the work that we’ve done to this point, so I think that’s helped him, but he seems like he’s in good shape and ready to go. Looking forward to seeing him.”
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