Things didn’t necessarily go as planned for Marvin Harrison Jr. during his rookie season. Considered one of the best wide receiver prospects in history, Harrison was expected to hit the ground running and become a star wide receiver right away. Instead, he was … pretty good.
He caught 62 passes for 885 yards and eight touchdowns. Those are solid numbers. But his catch rate was just 53.4%, his yards per route run average of 1.74 ranked just 75th in the NFL, and he had several games where he seemingly disappeared from the offense. The talent was clearly there, but it wasn’t always accessed in the right ways or at as high a level as it should be.
Other rookie wide receivers who were selected after him in the draft — Malik Nabers, Brian Thomas Jr., Ladd McConkey — were more productive and more consistent. In what was considered one of the premier wide receiver draft classes in recent memory, Harrison appeared to fall at least slightly behind some of his peers.
“I’m not going to lie and say I don’t pay attention to it,” Harrison said, via the team’s official website. “You’ve got to run your own race, though. Everyone is in different situations. Everyone has different journeys. You have to focus on yourself.”
Heading into Year 2, Harrison is looking to take things to a new level. “I feel a little more faster, powerful, stronger, so I’m ready to showcase it,” Harrison said, via ProFootballTalk.
Listed at 209 pounds last season, Harrison said he’s now up to 220 — and he clearly looks bigger and more well-built than he did a year ago. Adding that bulk to his frame should help him improve in certain areas of his game, but there are also opportunities for the Cardinals themselves to help him out with the way they decide to use him.
Where Harrison can improve
According to NFL Pro, Harrison created an average of only 2.0 yards of separation on his targets. Among the 84 wideouts that qualified for the target leaderboard (i.e. those with 44-plus targets on the season), that average separation mark ranked … 84th. Dead last. That’s concerning in and of itself. Perhaps more concerning was what happened on the plays where he did earn a target.
Harrison was targeted 116 total times last season, and amazingly, 40 of those targets came with less than a yard of separation. Those 40 tight-window targets were the most in the NFL, and Harrison did not do well with them. He caught just 12 passes for 170 yards on those plays, posting a negative catch rate over expectation, per NFL Pro.
He had multiple issues in these situations. First, he wasn’t nearly physical enough. He let defensive backs play the ball over and around him rather than making them come through his body and shielding them away, which too-often resulted in incomplete passes rather than catches or pass interference penalties.
At 6-foot-4 and now the aforementioned 220 pounds, Harrison should be able to do a better job in these types of situations in 2025. Another area where that added weight and strength should help him is in contesting the ball at the actual point of the catch. The Cardinals threw him a ton of isolated fade routes in 2024, and they were extraordinarily unsuccessful on those plays. Far too many of them looked something like this.
There were also occasional issues tracking the ball in the air, staying on the same page as Murray on whether the ball would be thrown to the inside or outside shoulder or whether it would be a jump ball or back-shoulder throw, and maintaining proper control of his body so he could come down inbounds in these contested-catch situations.
Given his size and skill set, Harrison is going to be used quite often in a traditional “X” receiver role. To fulfill the promise he has, he’s got to get better at executing the types of things he’ll be asked to do at that position.
How the Cardinals can use Harrison better
One of the reasons Harrison did not create much separation and had to win in so many contested-catch situations is because the Cardinals did not scheme him into easy opportunities. There is a ton of low-hanging fruit available for Arizona to pick here if it wants to.
First of all, the Cardinals can and should move Harrison around the formation more often. He doesn’t always have to line up as the “X” receiver, and he especially doesn’t always have to line up to the wide side of the field as often as he did a year ago.
He can line up on or off the line of scrimmage, and to the short or wide side of the field. He can move into the slot more often. Harrison caught 19 of his 28 slot targets last season, via Tru Media, but only 43 of 88 targets when aligned outside. And in college, he actually averaged more yards per route run in the slot than he did outside — albeit in a much smaller sample of routes. Making his alignment more unpredictable will generate some easier looks for him in the passing game.
The Cards can also use him on different kinds of routes. They almost never got him the type of layup targets that generate a baseline of easy production for most No. 1 wide receivers. Last season, he had the 12th-highest average route break distance among the 280 players who ran 100 routes or more, per Tru Media. Nearly half his routes were go routes, posts, corners or crossers.
Using him more often on wide receiver screens, slants and hitches as opposed to always asking him to run deep patterns should get him more involved in the offense and help to move the chains more frequently, making both Harrison himself and the offense more efficient.
He didn’t run very many screens in college but did get way more hitches and slants than he did during his first season in the pros. Those types of routes still would allow him to use his size and strength while operating as an “X,” but they’re a lot easier to execute and a lot more likely to result in completions and positive yards than repeatedly throwing him jump balls and back-shoulder fades.
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