The unlikely rise of Raiders safety Erik Harris

Erik Harris watched as paramedics loaded his then-girlfriend and current wife into the back of an ambulance.

She was a senior in high school and he was a year older, the two in their first year dating a decade ago. The car in which they were passengers had just crashed with an oncoming vehicle on a back road near Uniontown, Penn.

“The driver of our car lost control of the car,” Theresa Harris said. “We were very fortunate that everyone was OK. There were five of us.”

Erik sustained whiplash and didn’t even get checked out. Theresa, lying on the gurney as her new boyfriend watched in fear, suffered brain injuries.

She had received early admission into nursing school, and wanted to work in labor and delivery. Now she couldn’t pursue her desired career, while Erik chased his as a NFL hopeful in his first year at Division II California University of Pennsylvania.

Bouts with football unemployment in 2012, the CFL’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats from 2013-15 and the New Orleans Saints in 2016 dot a road that’s taken him to the brink of a starting spot with the Raiders, a peak that seemed laughable not long ago.

In between his journey has veered from the conventional, from helping his single mother watch four younger brothers to emerging unscathed from the nasty accident to working at a potato chip factory after he went undrafted to now drawing unprompted praise from one of the NFL’s most famous head coaches in Jon Gruden.

But listen to those who’ve been closest to Erik all along, and you’ll learn this is exactly what they expected.

“God does things in mysterious ways and it was supposed to put us on a different path,” Theresa said. “And it sure did.”

***

Harris had more pressing duties to worry about than making the NFL growing up in a single-parent home.

He’s the oldest of five boys with one older sister. When she couldn’t watch the siblings while their mom, Christine Higgins, worked as a packer at a local Utz potato chip factory, Harris played father figure since the family didn’t use daycare services.

When mom wasn’t working, she watched kids at home, sneaking in any chunk of sleep she could while they watched cartoons. Harris saw how his mom labored, at home and in the factory, and vowed to be a father that supported his kids later in life.

Harris even arrived late to high school football practices because he was busy watching his younger brothers until mom returned home. His coach reprimanded him, but Harris never revealed why he was late. “One time … he had no choice but to tell the coach why he was late,” Christine said. “I was the reason why he was late, but he never said nothing for a long while and then the coach kind of looked at him a lot different after that.”

Harris earned more scholarships for track than football. Division I schools initiated contact regarding football, Christine said, but their interest faded because she thinks schools probably found her son’s SAT scores. With options dwindling, and community college an unappealing last resort, Christine gathered her son’s newspaper clippings, sent a letter to California University of Pennsylvania and followed up just to make sure they received the materials.

“It was like the last hope,” she said. “That was it.”

“He comes from a relatively small high school in Pennsylvania, so he wasn’t getting a lot of attention,” said John Luckhardt, Harris’ college head coach. “We’d already spent our scholarship money, so the only thing we could offer Erik initially was a preferred walk-on and he chose to do that … We fell in love with him and basically as soon as we had some scholarship money available, we got it to him.” Get Raiders news in your inbox. Sign up now for the free Raiders HQ newsletter.

Out of curiosity, Harris asked his high school coach why he never advertised him to Cal U. “Honestly Erik, I didn’t think you could play at that level,” he said, as mom recalls. “That was terrible. I was thinking, ‘How could you not see that?’ It was things like that, though, that gave Erik more and more drive to succeed.”

Then came the accident not long after Harris graduated from New Oxford High School, and somehow he escaped unharmed while Theresa’s future went on hold. If he had suffered injuries like his future wife, whose seizure activity went away when she was pregnant with twin boys over five years ago, there’s no telling how long he would’ve missed football or if he ever would’ve even sniffed the level he’s at now.

Luckily healthy, Harris tallied 231 total tackles, 18 tackles for loss, 22 passes deflected and nine interceptions in his college career. He skipped his final semester of college to train for pro day, hoping to hear his name called on draft day.

He waited for his phone to ring for three days during the draft. Nothing.

He waited for his phone to ring to sign as an undrafted free agent. Nothing.

He waited for his phone to ring with an invitation to rookie mini-camp, a courtesy extended every year to a bevy of no-names. Still nothing.

Even so, Harris still believed he could make it to the NFL one day.

***

Harris and his coworkers at an Utz potato chip factory randomly picked their summer tasks in 2012.

Harris drew “corn mixer.”

“I said, ‘God, what’s corn mixer?” the 28-year-old says now, standing on the Raiders’ practice field in Napa. “And everybody just looked at me. I had the worst job in that whole factory. It was miserable.”

Harris worked 11-hour shifts in a 110-degree room for an entire summer in Hanover, Penn. Every 30 minutes, he lifted 50-pound bags of corn flower and emptied them into a mixer, stirred the corn and shoved it into an oven.

After he garnered literally no NFL interest, he returned home to southern Pennsylvania, threw on long pants and a T-shirt for the summer and went to work in grueling indoor heat.

“My mom told me she was actually surprised I kept the job,” Harris said. “And I’m like, ‘I just don’t quit.’ … It was humbling.”

Harris still carried his dream of making the NFL, vowing it was too soon after his college career to give up. Christine repeatedly insisted, “There’s no way it can end like this.” She worked at another Utz factory for 15 years, often as a packer on the 10 p.m.-7 a.m. shift. She never quit, even while raising six kids who she couldn’t always be home to care for.

After his summer mixing corn, Harris returned to school to finish those stray credits, sat in the first row of his classes and made Dean’s List for the first time. He got a job loading boxes for UPS, then earned a promotion to part-time supervisor. He worked 9 p.m.-5 a.m., returned home to sleep, woke up for classes, hit the gym and went back to UPS.

While working in Pennsylvania, Harris heard there was a tryout for the CFL’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats. He drove five hours from Pennsylvania to Buffalo and paid $80 for coaches to evaluate him. Three days after his tryout, the Tiger-Cats offered him a three-year contract in early April 2013.

“I didn’t have an agent at the time, so I signed whatever they threw at me because I was expecting twins at the time, too,” Harris said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll take whatever.’”

The Tiger-Cats lumped Harris on the practice roster, but they elevated him to the active roster within a week. He carved out a niche on special teams and also played defense. After three years in Canada, Harris signed with the Saints on a reserve/future deal, and was later promoted to the 53-man roster. But with only four regular season NFL games under his belt, Harris tore his ACL and never played for the Saints again.

Three days after the Saints cut Harris in September 2017, the Raiders swooped in. Last season he again found his calling on special teams, seeing 286 snaps there compared to only three on defense. New Raiders special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia, who coached Dallas special teams in 2017, said the Cowboys devised a plan in Week 15 specifically to counter Harris since he was so effective on Oakland’s special teams.

“Right now he’s our person protector on the punt team and he’s playing on every phase,” Bisaccia said. “I know he’s working his butt off on defense and he’s climbing the charts over there as well, so he’s vital for us. Depending on what his status ends up on defense will be how much we use him and where we use him. He’s really had a great camp.”

Harris is nearing 30, and hopes 2018 is the year he finally sheds the special-teams-only tag.

He’s thrived in that role since beginning his professional career five years ago, but wants to be known for more.

***

Asked about Harris’ fellow safety Obi Melifonwu in June, Gruden changed course in the middle of his answer.

“The guy that’s really been stunning for us is Erik Harris,” the $100 million head coach said. “I’m doing my research on this guy. Who is this cat?”

Then earlier this month, Gruden emphatically stated Harris had a realistic shot to start for the Raiders at safety. For Harris, the guy whose high school coach didn’t think he could play at California University of Pennsylvania, the guy who failed to draw even the slightest NFL interest after the 2012 draft, Gruden’s plaudits are more than just press conference coach-speak.

“I never really thought he’d actually make it to the NFL and it wasn’t because of his abilities,” Harris’ mom said. “It was just because there’s so many athletes out there that want to go to the NFL. You just don’t really envision your child making it to the NFL.”

This season is important for Harris, too, because he’ll welcome a fourth child. His wife is due in late September with a boy, joining their 5-year-old twin boys and 2-year-old girl. Theresa and the kids live in Louisiana from Erik’s days with the Saints, but she’ll have a C-section in Pennsylvania because she has a high-risk pregnancy. The Raiders play in Miami Sept. 23, so she hopes her husband plays in the game, flies to Pennsylvania for his son’s birth the next day, then flies back west to practice for Week 4 against the Cleveland Browns. Doctors laugh at her. A mom of three already, they say, she should know it probably won’t work out perfectly like that.

Theresa fell for Erik in high school when she saw him care for his siblings. “He was after me in high school, and I wasn’t quite sure, and then I saw him with a baby and it was over,” she said. He’s always had that fatherly instinct, so you bet it’s hard for Harris to carry out his dream a whole country away.

Theresa could pursue nursing now, but with three kids and a fourth on the way, there’s no time for that. Caring for them, even if it’s by herself sometimes, is the only future she wants right now.

The family always ponders living together in California, but the pieces haven’t yet aligned. So to be that father who supports his kids, the one he didn’t have growing up, Harris has to be here in California, on the field. That’s why, when he broke a finger earlier in training camp jamming Jordy Nelson in a non-padded session, Harris only missed three days. Now he plays with a small club on his right hand, still barking out calls from the secondary, darting up to the line of scrimmage and zipping back.

Unlike ripping open bags of corn flower, Harris can do this job with a bum hand. Good thing, too, because he has a point to prove.

He wants to show the kid who helped his single mom can provide for his own with a NFL career. The player his high school coach counted out can stick with the big boys. The car crash survivor and corn mixer can beat these odds, too, and become a starter in the league.

If Erik Harris’ past is any indication of what’s to come, he just might be able to.

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