Garrett Wilson raves over Marvin Harrison Jr.'s NFL potential

Garrett Wilson saw it with his own two eyes: the tantalizing talent of Marvin Harrison Jr. The former Ohio State wide receivers will be pros together this season.

Wilson, who’s gone for over 1,000 yards in each of first two seasons with the New York Jets, can;t wait to see his former teammate thrive. Harrison Jr. is ranked as the No. 1 wide receiver prospect in this year’s draft class.

In fact, he could be the next great generational pass catcher. That’s what Wilson sees.

“The best way I can describe Marvin is he’s a grinder,” Wilson said to the New York Post. “He’s always going to be the best player on the field, but in a rare case that he wasn’t, he would be grinding the whole day after to make sure that was never the case again. That’s my favorite thing about him.” 

Heck, if you go back to when Harrison Jr. first arrived in Columbus, he was already a freak of nature.

“He did 18 reps at 225 [pounds] on like his second day of being in the facility,” Wilson said. “I had done my test two years earlier, and they actually had to change the bar to 185 for me. It was a big discrepancy, like, ‘Oh wow, this dude is not joking around.’ It tells you a lot about his work ethic. That’s not something you just have. You build that.” 

In a room with guys like Wilson, Chris Olave and others, the top guys never wanted to keep the son of a Hall of Famer down. Instead, they embraced him and tried to make him better each day.

“There was never any competition,” Wilson said. “We were just trying to drop all the knowledge possible on Marvin. Knowing I was going to be declaring when I was a junior, Chris was a senior and [Harrison] was a freshman, it was, ‘How can we make sure that when it’s his time to play, he’s going to be ready?’

In three years, Harrison Jr, had 155 catches, 2,613 yards, 31 touchdowns and 16.9 yards per catch. He eclipsed 1,200 yards in each of his last two seasons after playing sparingly as a freshman.

As a member of the Class of 2021, Harrison Jr. was a four-star recruit out of Philadelphia (Pa.) St. Joseph’s Prep, according to the On3 Industry Ranking, a weighted average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies. He was the No. 4 overall prospect in the state, the No. 11 wide receiver in the class and the No. 73 overall prospect in the class.