New England Patriots: N’Keal Harry now a late-season hidden weapon

The New England Patriots placed first-round pick N’Keal Harry on injured reserve, which sidelines the talented receiver for the first eight games of the NFL season.

Fans are going to have to wait awhile to see 2019 first-round pick N’Keal Harry make his NFL debut in a New England Patriots uniform.

As first reported by NFL Insider Adam Schefter Sunday, the team has placed the big wide receiver on injured reserve with an eligibility to return to practice after week six. This is obviously a disappointing start to Harry’s NFL career despite still having the opportunity to play the latter part of the season.

While the team did re-sign veteran receiver Demaryius Thomas in a corresponding move, not having Harry at the start of the season to build chemistry with Tom Brady is the biggest negative of the move.

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The Arizona State product, who impressed with a couple of athletic catches in the first preseason game, has been battling ankle injuries throughout the rest of the preseason. Though he was at the team’s first practice on Sunday, he was a candidate to be placed on IR mostly because of the depth at the wide receiver position the team suddenly has with Josh Gordon, Julian Edelman, Phillip Dorsett, Jakobi Meyers and Gunner Olszewski.

Still, not getting the reps on the practice field and in live games is a setback that hopefully will not linger into next season as was the case with 2018 second-round pick Duke Dawson who the team ended up trading to the Denver Broncos.

It is unlikely the Patriots would give up on Harry that easily considering the high expectations the team has for the big, athletic wide receiver.

There are some positives

The positives of sidelining N’Keal Harry are that he could take the time to sit back and study the offense from the sidelines. Despite not physically being able to participate, the first-round pick will have the opportunity to learn from Gordon, Thomas and Edelman while seeing how the veterans work with Tom Brady.

Speaking of both Josh Gordon and Demaryius Thomas, having N’Keal Harry eligible to return in Week 8 of the season is a nice insurance policy if Gordon finds himself on the suspended list again or either of the veteran receivers go down with injury.

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Again, while Harry won’t be available to make the kind of rookie impact some of us projected, he could be a big factor going down the stretch. If Tom Brady establishes a nice chemistry with the trio of Julian Edelman, Gordon and Thomas, adding another big target to that group of weapons late in the season would strengthen the New England Patriots offense when the games really start to count.

In other words, stay tuned NFL.

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