Percy Harvin: I’m Looking To Perfect My Routes
August 11, 2009 – 9:45 am by Tas Melas
In my last post earlier today, I ranted a little about my despise for the NFL preseason. Since listening to Percy Harvin, it made me realize what I do enjoy watching for during this month of August. I love seeing the new talent in the league jump in to a preaseason game and threaten to take the veterans’ jobs. Beyond that, just seeing their skill, and in the case of Harvin, his speed, explosiveness, and versatility. No one was really overwhelming in Sunday’s Hall of Fame game, but there will be many young studs that come along over the next few weeks who will impress. Harvin + Adrian Peterson seems like a handful. Will Sage Rosenfels or Tarvaris Jackson get Harvin the ball enough? Will Brad Childress decide to use a lot of trickery in order to mask his deficiencies at the qb position? Can the Vikes’ offense finally catch up to their defense? Harvin joined KFAN in Minneapolis to discuss the differences in the defenses between college and the pros, his new job of returning kicks, why he didn’t have that role at Florida, and why his routes aren’t perfect as of yet.
On getting extra help running his routes:
“I get extra help, but I think my routes have always been decent, I just think a lot of things I did at Florida with the spread offenses, the reverses, and some of the shovel passes, I kinda got away from my routes a little bit. I’ve always been decent at it, but being here, I’ve been looking to perfect it. A lot of guys have been taking me under their wing, just kinda showing me the different things I can to make it better.”
On the biggest differences between college and the pros:
“Just being able to recognize defenses. Like I said, in the SEC you only face so many defenses. Us having Tim Tebow, we played against a couple defenses that tried to do a couple of things, but here, you can still do a good job of running your route, and still being quick, but still being able to see what the coverages doing, what the safety’s back there doing, and also what the corners are doing.”
How’s the kick returning coming?
“It’s real good. I hadn’t did it since I was in high school, so, I was familiar with it but just hadn’t did it in a couple years, so as I kept reppin’ it, and reppin’ it, I started getting back familiar with it.”
Why didn’t you return kicks in college?
“We had, like coach said, we had a dynamic returner – he led the SEC and the nation for the last two, three years… I was always on deck if we ever needed anything, but like I said, he led the nation the last three years. It was something where I had a lot to worry about on offense and different packages we had. I was always on deck but coach let him handle his business as long as he kept it up.”
Listen to Percy Harvin on KFAN in Minneapolis with Paul Allen (starts at 22:50)
Tags: Football, Minnesota Vikings, NFL, Percy Harvin
