Bengals Have Some Packers Flavor for Super Bowl
GREEN BAY, Wis. – In 2007, the Green Bay Packers used a seventh-round draft pick on Clark Harris.
On Sunday, he’ll be playing in his first Super Bowl.
Harris was drafted as a tight end. And he was a good one, too. While playing in a run-first offense at Rutgers, Harris caught 143 passes for 2,015 yards and 11 touchdowns during a career in which he was a three-time all-Big East first-team selection. He also was the long snapper.
“It was fourth down, I just got done with a 10-play drive, I was exhausted, I want to go sit on the bench like all the other guys,” Harris recently told NJ Advance Media. “And I’ve got to go snap a field goal or snap a punt. I hated it.”
Turns out, it’s a skill that’s kept him in the NFL. He’s played 205 regular-season games, including every game for 11 consecutive seasons.
It’s been a long journey – pardon the pun.
Harris, the 243rd of 255 selections in 2007, was cut by the Packers at the end of his rookie training camp and lasted less than two weeks on the practice squad. In 2008, he failed to make the Lions’ roster and landed on Houston’s practice squad.
With his career at tight end going nowhere fast, he started snapping again. Late in the season, the Texans’ long snapper was suspended for failing a drug test, so Harris played in four games. In 2009, he was released by the Texans at the end of training camp. Early in the season, he signed with Cincinnati and has become a fixture in the lineup ever since.
Harris and Packers kicker Mason Crosby are two of the four members of the 2007 draft still playing.
“I wouldn’t have minded playing tight end. They make a lot more money than we do,” Harris, who's on a $1.2 million deal, told the Asbury Park Press. “But the first couple of years in the league were hard. To get cut that many times. It gets you thinking like, ‘Damn, is this going to happen?’ Then you catch a lucky break and get to snap some balls for the Houston Texans, and here I am.”
The Bengals are here in part because of Harris. He’s been on the starting end of rookie Evan McPherson’s run of clutch kicks, which included game-winners in the divisional round against Tennessee and the championship game against Kansas City.
“You couldn’t write a better script if you tried for a long-snapper,” Harris said. “Just to be able to make the playoffs in the NFL is so hard to do, so that was awesome. But to be able to get some playoff wins for the first time in my career has been awesome, as well.”
Also in the Super Bowl for Cincinnati is defensive tackle Mike Daniels. A fourth-round pick by the Packers in 2012, he spent his first seven seasons in Green Bay. In 2017, he earned Pro Bowl honors with five sacks. From 2013 through 2017, Daniels was one of the game’s top interior rushers with 25 sacks.
Getting to the Super Bowl has been a great reward for the 32-year-old, who was released at the end of training camp this summer and spent most of the season on the practice squad. He’s been promoted to the 53-man roster for the game after missing the last two games with a groin injury.
The Bengals are coached by Zac Taylor, the son-in-law of former Packers coach Mike Sherman.
“Obviously, he has done a great job with the Bengals,” Sherman told Texas Monthly. “He has put together a great staff, and those guys play with such purpose and composure. It’s not easy to do what they’ve done as quickly as they’ve done it.”
Two-fifths of the Rams’ starting offensive line played at Wisconsin with right tackle Rob Havenstein and left guard David Edwards. Havenstein, a second-round pick in 2015, and Edwards, a fifth-round pick in 2019, carpool together to the team hotel the day before games.
“I don’t tell him all the time,” Edwards told The Wisconsin State Journal, “but (our drives are) one of my favorite times of the week. We’ll tell stories about when he was at Wisconsin, when I was at Wisconsin, the big games that we played in and the people we’ve met. Stuff like that is what I’ll remember forever, the relationships you make with your teammates. Rob and I have a great relationship and coming from the same place is obviously awesome.”
