James Harrison finishes with two sacks in Patriots debut: 'Like starting all over'

FOXBOROUGH — On Friday afternoon, James Harrison clearly was in no mood to talk with the media. On Sunday, the veteran pulled a 180, joking with the reporters who were at his locker after the game and asking one of them to help him with some lotion on his back.

What happened in the 48 hours in between?

Well, two sacks and a roster spot on the top-seeded team in the AFC playoff picture will change a guy’s perspective a bit.


As we noted when the Patriots first landed Harrison, he’s no longer the world-beater he was a decade or so ago. But on Sunday, in sporadic action, the 39-year-old showed he still had a little something left in the tank. Lining up just off the ball on the edge in twenty-plus snaps (he only had 40 on the whole season coming into the game), the veteran was a fairly steady presence throughout the afternoon.

While he was up-and-down throughout the game, he capped his day — and New England’s regular-season — with a pair of sacks on the last two defensive snaps of the year.

The first was a 9-yarder, coming off the edge and bringing Jets quarterback Bryce Petty to the ground. The second was a 1-yard sack where he was able to redirect pressure along the interior.

“I was just rushing outside and they were passing a lot so I had good opportunities to get around the corner,” Harrison explained. “For the (second) one, I was able to cut back underneath the guard, and the quarterback was scrambling. It felt good.”

“The guy has been focused all week, picking everything up (and has a) great work ethic,” defensive back Devin McCourty said of Harrison. “I think younger guys, a lot of younger guys on the team compared to him, can learn from him. I think we all saw that from day one when he came in here bright and early getting whatever he needs done. It was good just to see him out there playing then to end the game the way he did was how we want to end defensively.”

“He worked really hard to get things down and to handle the roles that he was in today,” Bill Belichick said of Harrison. “Very professional. (He) has a lot of experience, but not in this system so he had to do a lot of things to try to acclimate himself to what we do, and terminology, and adjustments and so forth. He really worked hard on that. He got better every day. You could see that through the course of the week.

“Sometimes it piles up and the load just becomes – there’s a diminishing return effect. In his case, I would say that wasn’t the case. Each day that went by, it got better. I thought he made a couple of plays out there today. We'll see how it goes going forward. But yeah, he worked very hard.”

Harrison said he was getting a lot of assistance during the week, as well as during Sunday’s game. (He had a defensive cheat sheet, a laminated play card he kept with him to make sure he wasn’t out of place.)

“I was getting a lot of help,” he confessed. “A lot of help from the guys who were out there, the guys who have been here. They helped get me lined up. If I didn’t know something, they’d help me get lined up.

“(But) it’s like starting all over from scratch,” added Harrison. “It’s like starting your rookie year over. New game plan. You have to pick things up. As a rookie, you get OTAs and minicamp. I got four or five days to prepare.”

Even though he’s been in the league since 2002, he acknowledged he felt like a youngster out there against the Jets. That included where he should stand for the National Anthem.

“I did not know what was going on,” he said with a laugh. “They didn’t tell me about that. That’s where I normally stand. I’ve been standing there for 15, 16 years.”

Then, there were some nerves. But according to Harrison, that’s pretty much par for the course.

“I get nervous before every game,” he said when asked about possible butterflies before a game with his new team. “I’ve been doing it for 16 years. The day I don’t get nervous before a game, I might go ahead and walk away,”

For Harrison, the game was the culmination of a crazy week that started in Pittsburgh with the Steelers and ended in Foxborough with the Patriots. The switch? As far as he was concerned, it’s no big deal.

“It felt good,” he said when asked if it was strange playing for New England. “It’s like any other team. It’s like you going and reporting for a different news channel or different newspaper.

“This is God’s plan and God’s doing,” he added. “I’m just a receiver of what He has planned. I’m 39 years old and I’m still playing, so I’m extremely blessed.”

Harrison, who was used sparingly at the start of the year in Pittsburgh, also sounded a more reflective note when it came to his past with the Steelers than he did in his Instagram message earlier in the week.

“I always wonder why I’m not playing,” he said. “Like they say, it’s never early and it’s never late. It’s just timing. It might not happen when you want it to happen, but it’ll happen when it’s meant to (happen).”

Harrison is now poised to be part of a New England team that will head into the postseason as the No. 1 seed in the AFC. But at this point, he’s taking things day-to-day — literally.

“My focus right now? It’s Sunday, right? Monday, it’s legs,” he said, referencing his workout plan. “I’ll be excited for (playoff football) when it gets here.”