Hassan Haskins
It was a rocky ride to start for Hassan Haskins, the Eureka (MO) product that was severely under-recruited.
After breaking records at the high school level at running back, he was quickly switched to linebacker, and then back again just before the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl in December 2018.
Haskins emerged as a starting-caliber running back on the road at Illinois, when he put up 125 yards on just 12 carries. Two weeks later, he further showcased his ability as the lead back against Notre Dame, running for 149 yards on 20 carries against a defense that knew what was coming and was prepared to stop the run at every turn.
Harbaugh spoke at length about his emergence and why he managed to become stronger as the year progressed.
“Hassan had a great attitude throughout, and that’s the great thing about him,” Harbaugh said. “He comes back over to offense, he works his butt off, he misses spring. So now, he’s a little behind a little bit and he’s gotta put in the extra work walking through in the summertime, learning the assignments. Fall camp comes about, he continues to work, he continues to learn, but there aren’t really opportunities. And the cool thing about him is he just keeps his mouth shut and he shows up. And he was healthy from that point on. Every single day just got a little bit better. It gets to the point where it’s like, ‘Okay, let’s give this guy a shot.’ And he starts doing some good things and he just continues to build confidence when he’s in there and you see a guy running more decisively, more violently to the point where you can say, ‘Hey, that really looks like him. That looks like the guy who can do a backflip, who can squat over 400 pounds, endless amount of reps.’ That’s when you really know a guy is in the zone, when you see what he can do physically, you actually see it in the play. That’s probably true of all positions.”