(EDITOR'S NOTE: This is R.J. Harvey's profile from the Harris Football Almanac, which is on sale right now: 230 profiles, film grades, research projects and many, many jokes about the upcoming 2025 season.)
R.J. HARVEY
age: 24; 5'9"; 205 lbs
NFL comparison: Tyjae Spears
I don’t watch college film on the University of Central Florida Citrus Farmers. (Oh, and I am touching my fictional earpiece and being told that the University of Central Florida are actually called the Knights.) I failed to ask Matt Waldman about R.J. Harvey on the podcast back in April, and so the first time I ever really considered this running back in any great detail occurred when the Broncos selected him late in the NFL Draft’s second round.
I’ve sure been forced to consider him a lot since!
Because (and stop me if you’ve heard this before) THEY NEVER WOULD’VE SPENT THAT PICK ON HIM IF THEY DIDN’T PLAN ON USING HIM AS THEIR LEAD BACK RIGHT AWAY.
Let me see if I can succinctly rebut that statement: Trey Benson. Blake Corum. MarShawn Lloyd. Zach Charbonnet. Kendre Miller. Tyjae Spears. Tank Bigsby. Tyrion Davis-Price. Trey Sermon. A.J. Dillon. Ke’Shawn Vaughn. Lynn Bowden. Darrynton Evans. Darrell Henderson.
I grant you, most of the foregoing players were third-round picks (Charbonnet and Dillon went in the second), but I maintain that if Harvey had lasted five more picks and gone in the third, the hype on him would be the same.
Yet before the draft, the best we heard about R.J. Harvey was that he might be somebody’s exciting third-down back. I heard Tarik Cohen as his ceiling. I heard Darren Sproles as his ceiling. I heard Tyjae Spears as his ceiling. It’s absolutely possible that the construction crews that installed these ceilings were mistaken. But please at least tell me you’re past the point where Sean Payton momentarily heaping praise onto the new RB to which he’s tied himself moves your personal needle! Especially when a few weeks later, Payton also goes out and signs J.K. Dobbins!
I’ll admit: yes, of course, Payton drafted Harvey because if everything works out, he expects the kid to be better than your resident Jaleel McLaughlins (who seems a lot like R.J. Harvey, too!) and Audric Estimés. If the drumbeat out of Broncos training camp—not out of your hype-master podcast hosts!—becomes undeniable, I could see myself biting down a bit harder than this rank. But if that happens, Harvey’s ADP is jumping higher, too, so I know I’ll never get him. In college, in the hobbled Big 12, this kid was already known for lacking power, he never caught more than 20 passes in a season, he’s a converted quarterback, and he’s already 24 years old. The idea that he’s guaranteed to be Denver’s starter is patently false, plus given his draft profile before he had a landing spot, I’m not sure I even buy that his upside is actually all that exciting. At the moment, I slightly prefer Dobbins and all the injury risks that entails. This is simply an instance where, given the likely price, I’m willing to miss out on a potentially good rookie season.