When the Los Angeles Rams took Jacob Harris with the 141st overall pick in the 2021 NFL draft, they took him intending to deploy him as a hybrid tight end/wide receiver. But with Harris entering his sophomore season in the NFL, the Rams are intrigued by the idea of having Harris transition to playing wide receiver full-time.
In a fantastic piece by The Athletic’s Jourdan Rodrigue (check out the full article here), she highlights the process in which Harris discovered he’d be making a move to wide receiver on the depth chart.
“They kept it real,” Harris told The Athletic this week. “I showed up one day and they were like, ‘Hey, we see you more as a receiver right now.’ That doesn’t mean that I can’t go back to tight end, because I do have a unique skill set. But as of right now, I’m a receiver. I’m here to embrace whatever role they throw me in.”
With training camp underway, receivers coach Eric Yarber likes what Harris has shown, calling him “a weapon” thanks to his speed and size, which you can’t teach.
Harris has an uncanny build at the wide receiver position, standing at 6-foot-6 and weighing 210-215 pounds while having a massive wingspan. The decision to make Harris a wide receiver technically came last season, but Harris suffered a season-ending knee injury that derailed his rookie campaign.
Besides making the transition to wide receiver, Harris now has a locker next to Allen Robinson during training camp.
“For one, he’s a big-bodied receiver and I hadn’t really been around a big-bodied receiver in our locker room yet,” Harris said. “I’m happy he’s an addition to that. Not only that, but he’s a vet. He’s got years of experience that I can feed off of.”
Just a few days into training camp, Harris is relishing the opportunity to get pointers from an experienced wideout, which is something the veteran wide receiver wishes he had when he entered the league.
“I try to give him as much knowledge as possible,” Robinson said, “talking through different route leverages, different techniques. Sometimes he asks me ‘what did you do on this route?’ or things like that … some of the things that I wish (someone had) said to me early on in the league.
Cooper Kupp, Robinson, and Van Jefferson are expected to head the wide receiver room for the Rams entering the upcoming season. But with Los Angeles needing depth behind those guys, Harris is hoping to prove that he can contribute at the wide receiver position moving forward.