RENTON — The Seattle Seahawks don’t know whether Percy Harvin will be on the field when they host the Buffalo Bills on Monday night. But they do know one thing about their controversial former teammate.
If Harvin does play, he’s someone the Seahawks will have to account for.
Harvin came out of retirement this week, re-signing with the Bills on Tuesday, and it seems fitting that his first game back could be against his former team.
“He’s coming off the couch, I don’t know how much Percy has been working,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said Thursday at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center. “But he’s a great football player and he’s a great athlete. If there’s anybody who can come out and do something special, he’s capable of coming right from not playing to playing. Remember, he’s extraordinarily fast, he’s really tough and a great competitor. We always saw that in him. If anyone can come out of nowhere and make some plays, he can do it.”
Harvin, who’s coming back after retiring in April, had a brief and tumultuous Seahawks career that was punctuated by flash points.
Harvin arrived to much fanfare in March of 2013, when the Seahawks traded first- and seventh-round draft picks to the Minnesota Vikings to acquire who they thought was going to be the game-breaking receiver the offense was lacking. But Harvin appeared in only one game and caught only one pass during the regular season because of a torn labrum in his hip. He returned for the Super Bowl and had one of the plays of the game, returning the second-half kickoff 87 yards for a touchdown as Seattle romped past the Denver Broncos 43-8 to claim the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
But things turned sour the following season amid reports of Harvin getting into altercations with teammates in the locker room. After just five games, in which he caught 22 passes for 133 yards, the Seahawks dumped Harvin, trading him to the New York Jets for what ended up being a sixth-round draft pick.
Not that anyone with the Seahawks felt like discussing Harvin’s reported lockerroom issues Thursday.
“Great,” was how Carroll described Harvin’s time with Seattle. “He had a great Super Bowl, a phenomenal effect he had on us then. Then we just had to make an adjustment on our roster and we did it. It was something we needed to do football-wise.”
Said defensive end Cliff Avril: “I have nothing but hats off to Percy. He was a heck of a ball player. I think injuries kind of slowed him down a bit while he was here. But he was a great teammate, I never had any issues with him.”
After being cut by the Jets following the 2014 season, Harvin signed with the Bills. But he appeared in just five games, catching 19 passes for 218 yards and one touchdown before being placed on injured reserve with hip and knee injuries. The repeated injuries prompted Harvin to announce his retirement at the age of 27.
“It’s one of those things where he was really frustrated last year,” said Buffalo coach Rex Ryan, who had nothing but praise for Harvin’s behavior during his time playing for Ryan with both the Jets and the Bills. “He’s had a history of some things, some nagging type injuries, and I think he was just tired. He knows he’s a great player and it really frustrated him when he wasn’t healthy and able to contribute. So I think that played into it. Now he’s back, he’s been away from the game, and he’s gotten healthy. He’s excited to be here and we’re definitely excited to have him.”
But will Harvin be on the field Monday?
“We’ll see,” Ryan said. “He did very little (Thursday in practice), but hopefully as the week goes on maybe we’ll practice him a little bit more and see how he is. Obviously it’s not like he’s going to jump in there and go 40-50 plays or something like that for us. But there is a possibility he will play, though.
“He looks like he’s in great shape,” Ryan added. “But there’s a big difference between thinking you’re in shape and being in football shape. We have to be careful, we don’t want to have any pulls or anything like that, so we’re going to take it slow with him.”
The Bills may need Harvin to play as Buffalo has had all kinds of injury issues at receiver. Sammy Watkins, last season’s leading receiver and the team’s primary deep threat, is on injured reserve because of a foot injury. Robert Woods, the team’s No. 2 receiver, has been hampered in recent weeks by a foot injury of his own. Marquise Goodwin and Brandon Tate are still recovering from concussions. Harvin may be forced into the lineup just because of the need for a body.
And if Harvin does play, the Seahawks are well aware of what they face.
For more on the Seattle sports scene, check out Nick Patterson’s Seattle Sidelines blog at www.heraldnet.com/tag/seattle-sidelines, or follow him on Twitter at @NickHPatterson.
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