UFL executive vice president of operations Daryl Johnston calls the organization “the league of opportunity,”
After a three-year stint with the Cleveland Browns ended , in August of 2022new Dallas linebacker Willie Harvey Jr. had to wonder if he had squandered his opportunity.
But after recommitting himself to two seasons of spring ball, Harvey has gotten a rare second chance at making his NFL dreams come true.
“I’m honest with myself,” the 28-year-old said. “I knew I probably didn’t work as hard as I should have and put in the work. So getting a chance in the spring league, I was like, ‘Hey, I’ve got another chance to perfect my craft and be a better linebacker, get smarter, get faster, get stronger. That’s kind of what I did my first year and I felt like it wasn’t enough, so I came back again and did it again.”
Harvey was drafted by the St. Louis Battlehawks (then of the XFL) in late 2022 and retained for the team when they migrated to the new merged league. This spring, his efforts landed him on the All-UFL team.
Johnston, the former Cowboys fullback, was among his biggest fans and says he could see the former Iowa State Cyclone deserved another chance at the NFL.
“He kind of jumps out to you,” Johnston said. “You think he’s undersized until you see him play. He was great in our league.”
Now the 5-foot-11-inch Harvey will have the chance to be great in the NFL, but he’ll have to complete the same long gauntlet of spring-to-summer-to-fall back-to-back football seasons that fellow Cowboys KaVontae Turpin and Brandon Aubrey endured in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
If Harvey is worried about the physical toll, he’s not letting on to his new squad.
“I’m slowly working myself back into the working out phase and the running phase,” he said in a recent interview on 105.3 The Fan. “But I’ll be fine; I’ve done this before. I’m a year-round guy.”
If Harvey will be coming into training camp hot after a 7-3 season that saw the BattleHawks suffer a crushing upset in the conference finals, maybe the extended warmup will help him compete in Oxnard with the likes of Cowboys defensive standouts Micah Parsons, DeMarcus Lawrence, and All-Pro linebacker Eric Kendricks.
“They’ve got a lot of good guys, and they let them thrive,” he said of his new defensive teammates in Dallas. “That’s something I want to be a part of.”
The fact that they’ll all be starting from square one in a new defensive scheme under first-year coordinator Mike Zimmer will perhaps help. Harvey likens the system- at least as he understands it thus far- to what he ran in St. Louis under Donnie Abraham.
“It’s like a linebacker-driven defense,” he explained, “keeping the linebackers free, letting them be athletes and make plays.”
Harvey led the entire UFL in tackles and set the pace for linebackers with the most tackles for loss, passes defended, and forced fumbles.
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Linebacker play will be key to the Cowboys’ goal of stopping the run, something they struggled to do throughout the 2023 season. The defensive letdowns against Arizona, San Francisco, Buffalo, and Green Bay- all embarrassing losses- were compounded by personnel issues, with coordinator Dan Quinn opting to plug safeties into traditional linebacker slots and hoping they’d hold their own.
They largely did not, helping contribute to a growing notion held by many around the league that linebackers, like running backs on offense, simply don’t matter in today’s game the way they once did.
Don’t tell that to Harvey.
“We’re a very grimy, hard-nosed group of guys who really don’t get the respect we deserve,” he opined. “We play all special teams, we command the whole entire defense. I think that’s important. When you take us out of the picture, it can get a little cloudy.”
It got downright dark and stormy when the Cowboys’ de facto linebackers fell apart last year.
Harvey plans to help sweep those clouds over Dallas away and make the absolute most of his second chance in the NFL.
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