Oft injured wide receiver Percy Harvin could be finished with football, but he doesn’t want to be.
Buffalo Bills general manager Doug Whaley said, via Mike Rodak of ESPN, that “Harvin not playing anymore [is] still an option.”
That said, Whaley does think Harvin would like to return for another season if his health holds up.
“From what I’m hearing, he’s leaning towards playing,” Whaley said, per Matthew Fairburn of Syracuse.com. “The thing about the health was, when you’re playing at a certain level and you know your body — and these guys are highly-trained athletes— for him, he had to work so hard every week to get to that level, and he wasn’t getting to that level, so it was frustrating for him. He was contemplating, ‘Can I play this sport anymore to the level that I’m used to and put the product out there that I want to be proud of?’ Since putting him on IR and going through all of this stuff, I think he’s gotten to the point now where he feels he might want to come back and play.”
Once considered a budding NFL superstar, Harvin’s disruptive locker-room temperament and his consistent presence on the trainer’s table derailed his career.
During his first three years with the Minnesota Vikings, Harvin racked up 5,821 all-purpose yards catching, running and returning kicks for a total of 24 touchdowns. He was an electric playmaker who threatened to score every time he touched the ball.
Unfortunately, his injury problems started to emerge in his fourth season when he missed seven games. During that period of time, his locker room issues started to emerge as well, and he was traded to the Seattle Seahawks for the 2013 season.
A hip injury kept him from participating much at all in Seattle’s Super Bowl-winning season, but Harvin did manage to make an impact in the big game itself. The next year, as the Seahawks realized he just wasn’t a good fit and that his personality issues were too much to handle, he was traded again, mid-season, to the New York Jets.
Harvin did enough with the Jets to earn a one-year deal worth $6 million, but he once again failed to live up to expectations and missed most of the 2015 season with the same hip injury that cost him most of the 2013 season with the Seahawks.
Since his first three seasons, Harvin hasn’t been able to stay healthy for an entire season. When healthy, he still has the burst to make a difference. But at this point it might behoove the Bills (or any other team, for that matter) to invest in young talent, rather than bringing back a player who simply cannot stay on the field.