Does NIU’s Harnish have the right stuff for the NFL?
INDIANAPOLIS — While the marquee quarterbacks — Stanford’s Andrew Luck and Baylor’s Robert Griffin III — battle it out to see who will be the top pick in April’s draft, NIU’s Chandler Harnish just wants an opportunity to show that his skill set will play in the NFL.
Luck and Griffin are considered can’t-miss prospects by most draft evaluators because of, among other things, superb athleticism.
RG3 ran a blistering 4.41 40-yard dash Sunday and had a 39-inch vertical jump. Luck had a 36-inch vertical and beat Griffin’s 10-foot-2 broad jump by 2 inches. But Harnish ran the fastest 20-yard shuttle among quarterbacks (4.15 seconds), faster than many running backs, and he had the second-fastest three-cone shuttle (6.78, two-hundredths faster than Luck).
But scouts know Harnish is an excellent athlete. He rushed for 2,983 yards as a four-year starter at Northern and averaged 5.5 yards per carry while leading the Huskies to four straight bowl games.
Much like Tim Tebow, the 6-foot-1½ inch, 219-pound Harnish has to prove he can throw well enough to play in the NFL, even though he passed for 3,216 yards last season with 28 TDs and just 6 interceptions.
“I have a chance to prove my critics wrong,” he said. “There are a lot of people out there that don’t believe I have enough arm strength or am accurate enough or have great footwork because I was a shotgun quarterback. So I want to prove to those people that I can do those things, be comfortable, show that I have a good throwing motion and then just show my ability to interview and kind of let these coaches know what kind of person I am.”
The importance of throwing the ball at the Combine is minimal, since quarterbacks are throwing to receivers who aren’t being covered. But Harnish’s maturity, leadership and intelligence are sure to impress prospective employers. He was a three-time Academic All-MAC selection, led his team to a 22-5 record his final two years and was poised and well-spoken in interviews.
Harnish believes the recent NFL infiltration of athletic quarterbacks benefits his style of play.
“Being an athletic quarterback coming out of college is something I can use to my advantage because the NFL is changing,” he said. “Quarterbacks are able to move out of the pocket more and more, and that’s a good trend for me. But I still need to show that I can do the (same) things from under center and make the different dropbacks to prove that I can play in this league.”
Taking the snap directly from under center rather than in shotgun formation is something all shotgun college quarterbacks have to learn, and it’s not always easy. That’s why Harnish has been working with two quarterback coaches: Jeff Christensen, at his Chicago-area Throw It Deep Academy; and former Bengals QB Turk Schonert.
“You’re always trying to sell yourself to everyone,” Harnish said of the Combine experience. “But at the end of the day, it only takes one team to love you. I want to show people I can do a lot of things that NFL quarterbacks are asked to do.”
Most draft publications project Harnish to be a middle-to-late-round pick. But scouts who saw or watched tape of him in the Huskies’ loss to Kansas last season would probably be tempted to take him earlier.
He completed 27 of 33 passes for 315 yards and 2 TDs and ran for an additional 89 yards and 3 touchdowns.
“We ended up losing,” Harnish said, “but I think offensively, myself and our team played about the best that we did all year. We executed our game plan, and I felt comfortable. I felt like I did a lot of things in that game that can show the different kinds of throws I can make.”
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