Daniel Jeremiah addresses the likelihood of Marvin Harrison Jr. not being the first WR taken in NFL Draft

NFL Draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah recently put out a social media post where he wrote that he “wouldn’t be shocked” if Malik Nabers was the first wide receiver off the board in the 2024 NFL Draft, ahead of Marvin Harrison Jr.

Jeremiah spoke about that during an appearance on The Joel Klatt Show, where he addressed the likelihood that Nabers could go ahead of Harrison, explaining that he shared that post based on conversations he’s had with NFL front office personnel.

“So, here’s the thing, when you talk to teams and I’ve been fortunate enough to be around this league for over 20 years,” Daniel Jeremiah said. “A lot of the guys that I came up with on the scouting side are running teams now. It just so happens…So, I was having a conversation with one general manager who picks in the 20s, and he was like, and he’s not gonna lie to me. He’s not in a position to get any of these three guys. So, he’s like, ‘We have Nabers as the top wideout in our room, right now as we’re going through it.'”

For a long time, Harrison has been the presumed first wide receiver drafted in the 2024 NFL Draft. However, the explosiveness that Nabers offers is going to draw some teams to him ahead of Harrison.

“And he said, ‘Look, we love Marvin and we love [Rome] Odunze, but Nabers has a club in his bag that they don’t have. Just in terms of the juice, the speed, tackle breaking, make you miss, all that stuff. Majority after the catch.’ And we haven’t seen him run yet and I guess we aren’t gonna see him run. I don’t think we’re gonna get a time on him. He’s ridiculously fast. All the GPS stuff is really good there too. Marvin’s is actually good too.”

Daniel Jeremiah explained his process of reviewing players and how when he went back to look at the wide receivers again, he can understand why some people may prefer Nabers over Harrison.

“But, when I hear that and I go through the majority of the tape of the year that I jam through. Now, keep in mind, I’ve got to get everybody done before the Combine. So, that’s 330 guys I’ve got to get done. So, I can’t wait for all of my tape to get in to get started, so when I did the wideouts, I didn’t have the last two or three games, including the bowl game. I’d done everything up until that,” Jeremiah said.

“So, then finally, we get through the Combine, I get back home. I now, through NFL Films, get the rest of my video. So, I have the whole catalog for the whole year. I can go, ‘I want to spin through these wideouts one more time.’ So, I see the whole year and I’m like watching, ‘Okay, if I was divorced from any previous opinion. If I was divorced from knowing who these guys were, schools, helmets, everything, and you just watched their targets and you watch all the explosive plays this year that Nabers piled up, I could see a team talking themselves into that.'”

Despite all of that, when Daniel Jeremiah went back and looked at all of the film, the wide receiver he’d take first is the one he’s loved since the start. That’s Marvin Harrison Jr, and that’s how he’s going to be judged as an analyst.

“Now, what I ended up doing is as a responsible adult…that’s why I put out the tweet. There’s some teams that are going to have it that way. That’s not just gonna be that one team. There’s going to be other teams as well. So, that’s why I say, ‘Don’t be shocked that there’s an opinion out there that exists.’ Now, for my own opinion, which that’s all I can be held responsible for is how I rank them and how I stack them, not what I’m hearing or what I put in a mock draft. So, I’m like, you know what, they always say to go back to where you first fell in love,” Jeremiah said.

“So, I went back with Caleb Williams and I went back with Harrison Jr, with MHJ, and said, ‘These guys have been my number one and number two players for the whole process. I’m gonna go back to watch all their ’22 stuff of when I really, really fell in love with these guys and I came out of there emboldened to say I strongly believe Caleb is the best quarterback in this class and I strongly believe Marvin Harrison Jr. would be my number one receiver.”