Calling Marvin Harrison Jr.’s first NFL season a disappointment might be a bit of an overstatement.
Then again, the former Buckeye has expressed that emotion himself to fellow Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Michael Wilson, as Wilson discussed on the PHNX Cardinals podcast in January. But Wilson was equally confident in Harrison’s ability to take a year-two jump.
“If he was sitting in my seat right now, he’d say that he didn’t have the year that he wanted to have,” Wilson said. “And he’s very frustrated. He communicated that to me all the time. But I know the way that he works and the way that he goes about his business. Eventually, the production is going to show in the way that he wants it to.”
Harrison established himself as a factor in Arizona’s offense as a rookie, with 62 receptions for 885 yards and eight touchdowns, but he caught a team-low 54.4% of his targets per Pro Football Focus. He only dropped one pass but had issues gaining separation, as 61.1% of his targets were considered contested by a defender, again according to PFF.
It wasn’t a bad season. But not as efficient and productive as some expected right away from the No. 4 overall pick in the 2024 NFL draft.
"I wouldn't call it success," Harrison said in January. "I'm very grateful that I got to play all 17 games. I was able to stay healthy, besides the Green Bay game. I kind of left that one early. But I'm definitely blessed and grateful for everything I accomplished. But I wouldn't call it a success.”
This offseason, Harrison is sifting through his game to find impurities and ensure – much like when he was at Ohio State – his sophomore year in the NFL comes with a big leap.
“After every practice, I'm evaluating myself,” Harrison said in May. “I think that's just a thing that you can do consistently to be the best version of yourself that you possibly can be. So I'm always evaluating myself, and obviously I take the coaches’ input as well, and we kind of come together with a plan on what we may agree on, what I need to improve on. But, yeah, definitely just always evaluating myself, and I just want to be the best player I can be.”
This offseason feels like another level of development from last year’s for Harrison. He’ll have spent all of winter and spring with the Cardinals, plus the lawsuit against him filed by the apparel and collectibles company Fanatics in May 2024 was settled in March.
“It's kind of the first NFL offseason (for me), so it's been good,” Harrison said. “Enjoyed some time off after the season a little bit and then got back to work.”
Part of Harrison’s plan of attack this offseason has been to pack on some more weight to handle the brutality of the NFL season. He’s “packed on some pounds” while adding muscle, which he credits to the fact he’s eating a lot more than he did in college. It should help him to win some more contested catches, too.
Harrison has also taken on a new mentor in future Pro Football Hall of Fame wide receiver and Arizona great Larry Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald amassed the second-most receiving yards (17,492) in NFL history, trailing only Jerry Rice, playing each of his 17 seasons with the Cardinals.
“Fitz is like, he's even a better person than he is a player,” Harrison said. “That's very hard to do, obviously. He's just a great guy. I talk to his son a lot. I obviously talk to him a lot as well. So I know he's always there for me and just whatever questions that I may have, I know he's always available. I can go to him whenever I want. I'm very thankful for that too.”
Harrison’s rookie season felt like drinking from a firehose, and the time it took to learn Arizona’s scheme hurt him in terms of the separation setbacks mentioned above. It wasn’t as simple as knowing which route to run on a given play, it was knowing how to diagnose coverages and leveraging defenders in his route running to create space.
“For me, it being a new system last year, just kind of, ‘What route do I have?’ ‘Okay, what's the defense? Where do you get to?’ It might be last progression, it might be first progression. How you run your route based on that thing instead of just, ‘OK, I have a dig. I'm just going to run a dig now.’ I feel like that's the next step that we're kind of taking now,” Harrison said.
Confidence is another key factor, Harrison said, as he considers himself a naturally humble character. There's a competitive switch he's been able to flip on the field throughout his career, however, and the hope is he can let that side show more in 2025.
Arizona quarterback Kyler Murray has seen Harrison’s growth in both regards. Murray is coming off one of his better seasons in 2024, completing 68.8% of his passes for 3,851 yards and 21 touchdowns with 11 interceptions while rushing for another 572 yards and five scores.
“I was telling you all last year, the game’s got to slow down for him,” Murray said in June. “I'm not in his head. We're not in his head. Everybody watching the game from the TV or on the couch, they don't know what he's thinking. Only he understood how fast the game was moving and each week, obviously, I hope it slowed down for him. But now he's at the point where he's definitely more comfortable, and I can see it out there on the field. And I think that'll only allow him to play faster, be the guy that we all know he can be.”
The Cardinals as a whole didn’t achieve what they set out to last season, which was their second under coach Jonathan Gannon. They lost five of their final seven games to limp to an 8-9 finish and miss the playoffs. Arizona was middle-of-the-pack passing-wise with 214 yards per game through the air, ranked 18th out of the NFL’s 32 teams.
Harrison’s intense work ethic has been known since his college days, and if he can match the hype he entered the league with in year two, it should give the Cardinals the dynamic aerial assault they need to reach the postseason in 2025.
“I'm very confident in what we have offensively from top to bottom, quarterback, the line, the skill positions,” Harrison said. “I definitely think we have everything we need to be able to go out there and accomplish the goals that we have.”
