WR N’Keal Harry keeps ASU’s Pac-12 South hopes alive

TEMPE, Ariz. — If this is N’Keal Harry’s final season at Arizona State, he’s going out with a bang.

One week after triggering a Sun Devil victory in USC by taking a punt back 92 yards in highlight reel fashion, then hauling in a reception that will likely be college football’s catch of the year, Harry was at it again on Saturday.

He torched a strong Utah defense to the tune of 161 yards and three touchdowns on nine receptions, fueling a pivotal 38-20 win for ASU over the 16th-ranked Utes in the process.

The win puts Herm Edwards’ group right back in the thick of the Pac-12 South race. Utah could have pulled away, but now the Devils control their own destiny with three games to go.

Meanwhile, that individual performance gives Harry 55 catches for 828 yards and nine scores through the air this season. He now has 22 career receiving touchdowns, good for 8th in school history, and 195 receptions, good for third.

In short, he looks like an NFL receiver playing college football right now.

It’s not so much the numbers he’s putting up either – it’s the way he’s doing it. His first quarter score was fairly routine, but it put ASU up 14-0 early.

His second quarter TD – a 23-yard strike in the waning moments of the half – is the sort of leaning, over-the-shoulder grab that established pros make. Not necessarily a play that college athletes routinely pull off. And it gave the Sun Devils a 21-17 lead going into the break after Utah had come roaring back with 17 unanswered.

He wasn’t done though.

After appearing to injure his right arm on that second touchdown, Harry went to the locker room early. But he was back in the second half, ready to do more damage.

“I just had to kind of check myself mentally,” the Chandler product explained. “You know, make sure I was in it. I was going through a little bit of pain, but I knew in the second half I had to be tough.”

Turns out, he still had some impact plays to make. With ASU up 28-20 early in the fourth, he took a screen pass from Manny Wilkins on the left side of the field, reversed course, and rumbled 35 yards down the right sidelines. It’s not a normal play to make, yet we’ve already seen him do it this season.

“Here he goes again,” Edwards said, when asked what he thinks when he sees his receiver turn a play around like that. “But that’s what he does. He does it with punts, he does it with those bubble screens and he has a knack of doing it.

“When he caught it, you don’t get a lot out of me watching a football game. If you’re watching me on the sideline, I’m flatlining everything. So when he does that, I go ‘there he goes.’ Just say ‘okay, just keep running.'”

Eno Benjamin echoed the idea that his teammates are impressed, but not exactly shocked when they see Harry make plays like that anymore.

“No surprise at all, really,” Benjamin pointed out. “That’s N’Keal. That’s what he does.”

For his part, Harry noted that those aren’t preconceived plays. He simply sees an opportunity and seizes it.

“It is really just in the moment a lot of the times,” he noted. “Usually when I make one guy miss, the defense usually over-pursues so I just try to get as many yards as I can.”

That play looked more like something you try to pull off in Madden, not something you do with 11 real-life Pac-12 defenders chasing you down.

But he made it work.

It got the Sun Devils to the Utes’ eight yard line, and set up a field goal to give ASU a 31-20 lead.

Oh yeah, that all came just moments after he took a pass from Wilkins over the middle and sprinted up the field for a 61-yard touchdown on the opening play of the final quarter.

No big deal.

To be fair, Harry isn’t the only reason the Sun Devils picked up their second win over a ranked opponent this season. Wilkins completed 19 of his 24 passes for 285 yards and three scores, with just one interception, and Benjamin got into the end zone twice, on top of 175 rushing yards.

So it was a collective effort across the board. Most big wins typically are. But Harry is the one they’re going to be talking about nationally. And he’ll probably be playing on Sundays next year.

Sure, he can return to Tempe for his senior season if he wants, but many mock drafts already have him as a top-15 selection. Some even have him among the top five or 10 players off the board. That’s tough to turn down.

There just aren’t a lot of receivers like him in college football. In fact, there might not be any others like him this season. Which means the Sun Devils need to make the most of him while they have him. And over the last two weeks they certainly have.

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