Photo: Brady Klain/WCSN
Arizona State junior wide receiver N’Keal Harry announced his intention to forgo his senior season and enter the 2019 NFL Draft at a press conference Monday morning.
Flanked on the podium by quarterback Manny Wilkins and head coach Herm Edwards, with ASU athletic director Ray Anderson, teammates and family in attendance, the Chandler native was candid and honest about what being a Sun Devil for the last three seasons has meant to him.
“I would like to say thank you to everybody in Sun Devil Nation, coaches, my teammates, all the media all the fans,” Harry said. “This has been a great ride, this has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, something that I’ll take with me for the rest of my life.”
After three spectacular seasons in Tempe in which he’s compiled 213 receptions for 2,889 yards and 22 touchdowns, Harry said that he felt the time was right to make this decision.
“I tried to wait until after the last game to even get that far, cause my mindset was, ‘I have games to play, I have a team that’s depending on me,'” Harry said. “After the U of A game, that’s when I really decided that it might be time, especially leaving with a win at the University of Arizona, that’s when it became clear to me.”
With one more game left to play this season for Arizona State in an undetermined bowl game, Harry and Edwards said that the plan moving forward will be for Harry to prepare to play, and a decision on whether to sit out or suit up will be made at a later date, with input from Anderson.
Harry is poised to be the first Sun Devil chosen in the first round of the NFL Draft since Damarious Randall in 2015, and just the second since 2003 when Terrell Suggs went 10th overall to the Baltimore Ravens.
Edwards, having been in NFL war rooms as a head coach on draft day for eight years, says that Harry has set himself up for success quite nicely in the eyes of NFL executives.
“There’s a lot of boxes that he checks off, and probably the biggest box of all that he checks off that I’ve discussed with the pro guys is that, he loves to compete,” Edwards said. “It’s a different football at the next level, it’s all about competition, and you gotta compete every day. It’s no longer a hobby, it’s your career.”
Having made the decision to stay close to home after a successful prep career at Chandler High School, Harry said that Arizona State always came back to his mind when going through the recruiting process.
“This state has given me so much. Being just a kid from a small island, ending up in Arizona, this state means the world to me,” Harry said. “When I was going through my recruiting decision, I was weighing my options and thinking to myself, ‘Why not Arizona State? Why can’t I accomplish my dreams at Arizona State?'”
“When I first came into this university, I feel like I was a boy trying to find his way, trying to figure out how to become a man. Because of all the resources this university has, because of all the people around it, how much support there is, I feel like I’m really leaving this place as a grown man.”
Bobby Kraus is a football beat writer for the Walter Cronkite Sports Network. You can follow him on Twitter @bobbykraus22
