NFL Draft Prospects 2019: Wide Receiver - N'Keal Harry, Arizona State
N'Keal Harry, a native of the island of Saint Virginia, moved to Arizona with his grandmother at a young age and turned into a top 20 national recruit. He decided to join the Sun Devils and became the team’s number one receiver instantly with 728 yards and seven touchdowns from scrimmage.
In year two he was a first-team All-Pac 12 selection with over 1200 yards and eight scores, leading the conference in receiving yards per game. He put up almost identical numbers as a junior and decided to go pro after repeating as first-team all-conference.
Harry is a competitive player, who scares DBs as soon as he steps off the bus with the build of a Greek god.
He is a master in 50-50 ball situations, where his QB just lofts the ball up his way. That way he just killed those smaller cornerbacks in the Pac-12 on back-shoulder fades and overall came down with 17 contested catches last season.
Harry shows outstanding body-control, tracks the ball over his shoulder exceptionally well and makes some circus one-handed catches.
He previously had to deal with a lot of badly placed balls, needed to fight harder for it than he should have had to or didn’t get the opportunity at all. Despite that, he caught two-thirds of the passes thrown his way and recorded almost ten yards per target last season.
He had a great battle with Michigan State cornerback Justin Layne and was the only one to score on that guy all year long.
Even though Harry has that classic X-receiver type body, he also has experience catching bubble screens out of the slot, can snap his hips out of breaks really well for such a big body and makes his cuts at full speed.
Arizona State put the ball in his hands quickly on hitch routes or tunnel screens as well. Harry is a physical runner with the ball in his hands, won’t go down easily and runs through armbars and spinning off tacklers.
He also has a way of avoiding contact with a multitude of moves in the open field and a strong stiff arm. As a blocker for his teammates, he uses that large frame and puts it right in front of defenders, forcing them to try to go through him, even though he overextends at times.
When the ball is going away from him or the ball-carrier gets past him, Harry turns and runs downfield with him.
With that being said, Harry rarely created major separation from the guys he was lined up against. He relies heavily on his physical advantage and needs some technical refinement.
In contrast to many of the prospects in his draft class, Harry has yet to learn how to stack DBs on his vertical routes by using his big body to control the pace, allowing them to instead catch back up on the route.
He shows some wasted motion and unnecessary steps when trying to release, plus he doesn’t always dip his near shoulder to avoid contact by the defender and lets that guy ride him out wide even though Harry is physically superior.
I thought he drifted a little into some of his routes and allowed defenders to get into the throwing window.
I thought Harry might be in the high 4.6s at the combine’s 40-yard dash, but he went for 4.53 and put on a show at the ASU pro day, including a spectacular one-handed grab.
I didn’t think he played as fast as he measured and he still has a lot to learn, but he beats up defensive backs with size, strength and will.
While I would definitely have liked to see him detach from defenders better, there wouldn’t be a lot of open catches in the NFL anyway and I like what he does with the ball in his hands.
Grade: Late second