Did the Saints get an ‘absolutely special’ returner in Assumption’s Deonte Harris?

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This only seems crazy to those who think of stature or pedigree as prerequisites to make it in the NFL

Here are not one, but two little guys from the same little school hanging with the big boys in the New Orleans Saints’ locker room. It almost played out just like Deonte Harris and Cole Tracy said it would when they were teammates at Assumption College, a Division II school in Massachusetts with an enrollment of about 2,000.

That was where they embarked on record-breaking college careers, and it was where the 5-foot-6 Harris, a return specialist, and the 5-foot-10 Tracy, a placekicker, spoke of their professional football dreams by saying, “I’ll meet you there.” Fittingly, crazily, they did.

The idea did not entirely work out. Tracy, who was attending Saints rookie minicamp on a tryout basis, did not leave with a contract.

Still, Tracy’s name is well-known around these parts after he nailed some clutch kicks down the road in his lone season as a graduate transfer at LSU. He believes it will only be a matter of time before Harris’ name is known here, too.

“He is absolutely special,” Tracy said.

There is more to know about Harris than his stature and his alma mater. There is also the fear.

Tracy remembers sensing that at Assumption — the futile attempts by opposing teams to try to take that one special thing Harris does out of the game and the fear they felt when the ball found his hands anyway.

Nobody in the history of college football, at any division, returned kicks or punts better than Harris did. His 14 punt and kick return touchdowns at Assumption are an NCAA record.

“He had three in a game,” Tracy said. “They were kicking away from him, they were squibbing, it just didn’t matter.”

Harris did not attend the NFL Combine. Scouts instead watched him run and go through drills at pro day events hosted by Harvard and Holy Cross. But Tracy did get a combine invite, and was sort of an unofficial spokesman for Harris.

The coaches and scouts who spoke to Tracy at the combine wanted to know about Harris, and Tracy kept coming back to one line: He got to see some spectacular things in his one season at LSU, but Harris did some things he did not see anybody else do.

It’s the way he starts and stops, the way he sets up his blocks and reacts in real time. It was one of those things that, once you see it, you realize it is different from the way everyone else does it.

Harris himself is hoping that is enough to allow him to chase his pro dreams here. A few other teams reached out, he ended up choosing New Orleans instead of the Cincinnati Bengals. He realizes his way to the roster is to capitalize on the one thing he does exceedingly well.

“A lot of rookies make their way on special teams,” Harris said. “I’m just trying to get a kick return or punt return spot.”

Harris took care to point out he considered it a blessing just to be there for rookie minicamp. He said he was not always sure the NFL was a realistic goal for a 5-foot-6 return specialist from Assumption.

But at some point while routinely outclassing his peers on the field there, he allowed himself to make that dream feel tangible and attainable.

He met his old teammate there in an NFL locker room, and now comes the next step.