As N’Keal Harry started to flame out in New England, Patriots fans probably thought the franchise was incapable of bringing on a worse draft bust.
Well, Harry is starting to field competition for that undesired label.
Ja’Lynn Polk has provided the Patriots with virtually nothing in his rookie campaign in Foxboro, Mass. The 37th overall pick in this year’s draft, Polk has 12 catches for 87 yards with two touchdowns on his season stat line with three games left. To put that into perspective, Davante Adams had nine catches for 198 yards with a pair of scores in a single game for the New York Jets last Sunday.
With Polk’s miserable season nearing its end, Zolak couldn’t help but make the comparison to Harry.
“I’m to the point right now, and I can’t believe I’m going to say this — it feels to me that N’Keal Harry had a bigger impact here than what Ja’Lynn Polk’s gonna have,” Zolak said Monday on 98.5 The Sports Hub, as transcribed by NBC Sports Boston.
“N’Keal Harry in his early days has done more than Ja’Lynn Polk, and that shocks the hell out of me because I was a huge Polk guy coming out of Washington. Massive production. Great route runner. We’re down here doing our show every summer, you see him make plays in practice. I came away from camp thinking, ‘This guy’s gonna be your No. 1,’ because he would catch everything. He wasn’t blowing by anybody, but you can at least see he belonged.”
In Polk’s defense, it’s been a brutal campaign for almost every New England wide receiver. Two of them didn’t even make it through a full season with the Patriots, who released both Tyquan Thornton and K.J. Osborn.
So, it feels fair to say the jury still is out on whether Polk actually is a capable NFL receiver. But it’s certainly not looking promising for the 22-year-old.
