One thing Green Bay Packers fans are known for is that they are capable of immediately embracing a new, unknown player. Sometimes the player doesn’t even have to stick around for long or break records – sometimes it’s about the moment, the situation, the experience.
Former running back DuJuan Harris rushed for only 221 regular season yards in two stints with the Packers, but he remains endeared to fans for plenty of reasons.
For starters, it was October 2012 when the Packers, beset by injuries in the running back stable, signed him to their practice squad. Harris was elevated to the active roster Dec. 1, and on Dec. 9 he jumped into the running back rotation alongside fellow running back Ryan Grant. In a 37-34 loss to the Minnesota Vikings on the road, the 5-foot-8 Harris carried the ball 14 times for 70 yards and squeezed a pair of Aaron Rodgers passes for another 17.
The 203-pound back’s running style could maybe best be described as being part waterbug and part bowling ball – slippery and powerful at the same time.
Coach Mike McCarthy had dubbed Harris as having the “hot hand” in that game and the former Troy University Trojan was no longer an NFL afterthought. The Packers won their last three games to finish 11-5, with Harris contributing 20 more carries for 87 yards heading into a playoff rematch against the Vikings.
It bears noting that those numbers aren’t exactly Hall of Fame credentials. But the scrappy Harris, who had been cut by both the Jacksonville Jaguars and Pittsburgh Steelers, could have conceivably walked away from the game before he ever became a Packer – but he didn’t.
Harris’ fan favorite status was sealed when word came out that in the week before the Packers came calling, he had been working at a Chrysler-Jeep-Dodge dealership in Jacksonville. He told Jason Wilde in a 2012 interview that he had previously applied for a job at a Mercedes-Benz dealership. The problem was, they asked him to cut his flowing dreadlocks for the gig.
“They asked me if I would consider cutting my hair. I was like, ‘No, I know my career in football is not done,’” Harris told Wilde. “If I was at the end of my career and actually needed to work and that was my last resort, then, yeah, I wouldn’t mind cutting my hair. But that wasn’t the case at all. So (I said), ‘No, I’m not going to cut my hair.’”
(Word at the time was that Harris told the Packers he had to give his boss two weeks’ notice before he could report, but his boss excused him.)
For him to suddenly be in an NFL rotation was fairly astounding. And it was perhaps fitting that the Packers found a rematch with the Vikings awaiting them in the Wildcard Round of the playoffs on Jan. 5, 2013. In a 24-10 victory, Harris led the Packers with 100 scrimmage yards and a touchdown.
He would then tally 64 yards and a touchdown the next week in a 45-31 beatdown at the hands of the Colin Kaepernick-led San Francsico 49ers, ending the team’s season but offering hope for Harris’ future.
She was so sweet. I think she knew I was the only one closest to her height lol pic.twitter.com/iALbFsMcuS
— DuJuan Harris (@DuJuan_Harris) July 28, 2024
Unfortunately, Harris suffered a knee injury in training camp and missed the entire 2013 season, but he returned for training camp in 2014. There, he further cemented his place in the hearts of Packers fans when he chose a gold-clad young fan as his training camp bike kid, carrying her tiny pink bike to the practice field while holding her hand.
He served as a backup that season, after which he signed with the Seattle Seahawks when he became an unrestricted free agent, and Green Bay didn’t offer him a qualifying tender. He then spent 2015 and 2016 with the San Francisco 49ers, ultimately finishing his career with 590 rushing yards, 244 receiving yards, 782 kickoff return yards and three total touchdowns.
“I think he’s kind of a Transformer,” is how former Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers described Harris when the latter burst onto the scene in 2012. “There’s more than meets the eye with DuJuan. … He’s a little guy, but he’s tough. Again, another guy we didn’t have here at the beginning of the season -- a guy on the practice squad, played his butt off, got activated. He’s done some nice things for us. You have to give him a lot of credit.”