'Apart from Rice, there’s no one even close to Marvin'

He hid in plain sight for 13 years, cloaked behind a carefully-constructed firewall of privacy, an enigma to coaches, teammates and the NFL circus around him. Marvin Harrison worked and then he went home. “Never heard him coming, never heard him going,” says former coach Tony Dungy.

He left his gloves on the sideline during practice. Why? Because gloves made catching the football easy. He told coaches he wanted a starting cornerback across from him during training camp. Why? Because he had no use for backups or practice squad players. Marvin Harrison was trying to get better, dammit. Late in his career, when his position coach begged him to trim his snaps on Fridays – common practice for a veteran – Harrison shook his head. No way.

Of course, it didn’t take long for the Indianapolis Colts’ inscrutable wide receiver to develop an almost telepathic rapport with his young quarterback. They forged a language based on glances, nods and gestures. They refined it through years of preparation. In practices they’d blitz though their route tree without ever saying a word. Hours, weeks, even months would pass without the football ever touching the ground.

That was Harrison’s secret all along. Practice. Nothing more. He poured himself into the work, day after day, year after year, and that young quarterback – a player who’d soon become known for his own level of manic preparation – could certainly respect that. Off the field, the star QB and the spotlight-shunning receiver could not be more dissimilar; on it, it was as if they shared a brain. Each matched boundless talent with bottomless work ethic.

In Marvin Harrison, Peyton Manning found his football equal.

“No single guy can freaking cover you!” Manning once barked at Harrison during a game. Harrison, sitting calmly in his usual spot at the end of the bench, nodded in agreement. He knew.

How good was Marvin Harrison?

Good enough to get to 1,000 career receptions quicker than Jerry Rice.

Good enough to catch 143 balls in one season – more than any player, in any season, ever.

Good enough to inspire a young South Florida boy to dial up the Colts – and not his hometown Dolphins – on "Madden NFL" as a kid. Growing up, T.Y. Hilton wanted to be just like No. 88.

Still, he waits. Harrison is third in NFL history in catches, fifth in touchdowns, eighth in yards. Twice he’s been a finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Twice he’s watched a receiver with a thinner résumé get the call he hasn’t. First it was Andre Reed, who in 16 seasons caught 10 or more touchdowns only once. Harrison did so eight times. Last year it was Tim Brown, who had one 100-catch season in 17 years in the league. Harrison did so four times in four fewer years.

Maybe he simply must wait his turn; Reed made it on the seventh try, Brown the fifth. Maybe it’s the dark cloud that lingers of Harrison’s suspected involvement in a 2009 shooting in his native Philadelphia. Maybe, in the minds of the 46 Hall of Fame voters, it’s the notion that Harrison’s gaudy statistics were inflated by the guy throwing him all those passes all those years.

Bill Polian isn’t buying. The longtime Colts president hears this theory. He considers it. Then he starts screaming.

“Who was he supposed to play with?” Polian shouts. “Ryan Leaf?!?”

* * *

Defensive back: Charles Woodson.

Games played: 254.

Career interceptions: 65.

Pro Bowls: 8.

On the toughest receiver he ever faced: “Marvin had everything. He was fast and quick and ran great routes. They were going to line him up on the defense’s left side every time ... I did understand that it was going to be one of those days when I was playing him. Really, he was the only guy I thought of like that.”

* * *

Back to Polian’s point. Marvin Harrison catching passes from Ryan Leaf? No. Wouldn’t have been fair. Not to Harrison, to Indianapolis, to football.

He came out of college in 1996 and dazzled during his pro day at Syracuse. “The best workout I’ve ever seen from a receiver,” recalls Polian, who was with the Carolina Panthers at the time. Problem was: So did plenty of wideouts that year. It was 1996, The Year of the Receiver, and the talent pool was stunningly deep. Keyshawn Johnson. Terry Glenn. Terrell Owens.

On draft day, Harrison wasn’t even among the top three wideouts chosen. He waited. He seethed. He fell to 19th and never forgot it.

“Didn’t expect to be around at 19,” Harrison said then. “When I came (to Indianapolis) for the combine, I never thought I was coming back.”

It would be the only team he would ever play for.

“He’s one of those guys who literally changed the face of a franchise,” Colts owner Jim Irsay said 12 years later, the day the team released Harrison in 2009 after he refused to take a pay cut.

At his early 2000s peak, Harrison’s game was sublime, a seamless marriage of preparation and production. It was quiet brilliance. Harrison did not yap, taunt, dance, complain or celebrate. He worked and he went home. Amidst a sea of look-at-me receivers who wouldn’t shut up, Harrison was the refreshing anomaly. Especially after touchdown catches. Randy Moss once mockingly mooned the fans in Green Bay. Owens pulled a Sharpie out of his sock. Chad Johnson strapped on a Hall of Fame blazer.

Marvin Harrison handed the football to the referee.

“I’m the type of guy who wants to go and play and not talk about it,” he once said. Through the Colts, Harrison declined to be interviewed for this story.

He was too shifty, too fast, too smooth. Those eyes. Those hands. That speed. He mastered his routes, owned the sideline, ran like a gazelle and had the hands of an All-Star shortstop. He made Pro Bowl cornerbacks look like they belonged on the scout team. Harrison didn’t just embarrass defensive backs, he embarrassed the best defensive backs. Colts offensive coordinator Tom Moore lined him up in the same spot – to Manning’s right – every Sunday for a decade. Defenses knew what was coming. Defenses couldn’t stop it.

“I laugh now, because all you hear about these days is how offenses are moving their receivers around to get them away from coverages,” says Dungy, an NFL analyst for NBC. “Marvin caught 143 balls in one season lining up from the same spot on every play.”

That came in 2002, Harrison’s masterpiece: an NFL-record 143 catches for 1,722 yards and 11 touchdowns. Even as offenses have become abundantly reliant on the passing game in recent seasons, and quarterbacks have toppled the 50-touchdown and 5,000-yard barriers, no receiver – not Calvin Johnson, not Antonio Brown, not even Moss or Owens – has touched Harrison’s mark of 143.

Want Hall of Fame credentials? Weigh this utterly insane four-year stretch. From 1999-02, Harrison averaged 117 catches, 1,580 yards and 14 touchdowns. He’s the only NFL receiver to compile eight straight 1,000-yard, 10-touchdown seasons. Not even Jerry Rice can say he did that.

“Apart from Rice, there’s no one even close to Marvin,” says former Colts assistant Clyde Christensen.

Dungy sums it up with a story. The Colts had just pummeled Jacksonville – again. Harrison had torched their secondary – again. Jags executive James Harris found Dungy on the field after the game.

“I don’t get it,” he told him. “We know the ball is going to Marvin Harrison. We know he’s the one guy we have to stop. And not only does he get open, he gets wide open.”

Dungy laughed.

“It was so true,” he says today. “With Marvin, it was never flashy. It was never anything but pure, artistic brilliance.”

But was it brilliant enough? Harrison, Dungy and Edgerrin James are among 15 modern-day finalists for the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2016. Save for Brett Favre, Harrison’s credentials are as impressive as any. As many as five will make it. After a two-year wait, it feels like it’s time. It feels like it’s Harrison’s year.

“If Marvin doesn’t go in this year,” Dungy says, “then there’s something wrong with the Hall of Fame.”

* * *

Defensive back: Charles Tillman.

Games played: 168.

Career interceptions: 38.

On the toughest receiver he ever faced: “I could never touch him, couldn’t jam him. He was so quick, like a little rabbit. I missed every time. Hardest I ever had to cover. Marvin was unstoppable. The best I ever played against. He made me look terrible.”

* * *

So many catches. So many highlights. What was his finest?

Ask his former teammates and coaches to name a favorite, and two stand out: There was the tip-it-to-himself-and-keep-the-toes-in against New England in 2006, a six-second clinic in sideline wizardry, and the legendary, one-handed leaping grab in Tennessee in 2003, a breathtaking moment in pass-catching brilliance.

“The signature catch of his career,” Polian calls that one.

“One of my favorite moments as a Colt,” former center Jeff Saturday said.

Dungy remembers. It was a third down, and so convinced that Manning overthrew Harrison – he probably did – the coach turned to his punt team while the ball was in the air and instructed them to head out on the field.

“No coach, Marvin caught it,” a player told him.

“What?”

Dungy looked up. Harrison was waving his teammates downfield.

Four years later, the Colts coach found himself entrenched in a sideline debate with referee Tony Corrente in the third quarter of Super Bowl XLI. Corrente’s crew had ruled Harrison out of bounds after he’d made a catch along the sideline. Without getting a second look, Dungy challenged.

“He didn’t get both feet in,” Corrente told him. “Incomplete.”

“Trust me, I’ve seen this a million times in practice,” Dungy said. “I don’t even have to see the replay. He got both feet in.”

So Corrente took a closer look. A few moments later, he reversed the call.

* * *

Defensive back: Champ Bailey.

Games played: 215.

Career interceptions: 52.

Pro Bowls: 12.

On the toughest receiver he ever faced: “The guy that gave me the most problems was Marvin Harrison. The guy was danger, and the guy throwing him the ball was dangerous ... He was quick, fast and could do it all.”

* * *

Clyde Christensen first arrived in Indianapolis in 2002, the new wide receivers’ coach tasked with further developing one of the game’s blossoming stars. It took him all of one workout to sense what was special about Marvin Harrison.

“I’d never seen a superstar work that hard,” Christensen remembers.

Harrison spent the final seven seasons of his career under Christensen’s tutelage. His drive never waned. Every route was full speed. Every catch was capped by a sprint to the end zone – no exceptions. Harrison kept track of how many completions would go by without a drop. His tally regularly reached triple digits. Together, he and Manning pursued perfection. Demanded it. Eventually, embodied it.

“So many receivers, after they make it big, they sort of fall out of love with the work,” says Christensen, who recently left the Colts after 14 years to become offensive coordinator in Miami. “They’ll say, ‘I don’t need this stuff. I don’t need extra reps in practice. I don’t need one-on-ones.’ Marvin loved one-on-ones. He never forgot how important all that stuff was. He treated every practice like he was an undrafted rookie trying to make the team.”

It rubbed off. Reggie Wayne saw it. Dallas Clark saw it. Brandon Stokely saw it.

On Sundays, Manning and Harrison would jog on the field three hours before kickoff and run through their route tree. Outs. Ins. Slants. Curls. Short. Intermediate. Deep. Before long they were the most prolific pass-catching tandem in NFL history. So impressed was another young pair – then-Bengals QB Carson Palmer and receiver Chad Johnson – that in 2005 they bought tickets, drove two hours and sat in the stands at the RCA Dome for a Colts game. They were there to watch Manning and Harrison.

He rarely spoke to the media, kept his locker impossibly tidy and had a sweet tooth that belied his not-an-ounce-of-fat-on-it 175-pound frame. Sometimes, three or four practices would go by without Christensen hearing as much as a peep from his star pupil. He’d wondered if something was wrong. Then he’d return to his office, only to find a gift card to an upscale restaurant sitting on his desk.

Enjoy, coach. Thanks for helping me get better. Marvin.

To this day Christensen keeps a DVD handy, scratchy film of old workouts from his time with the Colts. He’ll pull it out every once in a while and show it to a young receiver.

Want to see what greatness looks like, kid? Watch Marvin Harrison practice.

Call IndyStar reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134. Follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.