In the fall, when the winds would howl and whip a rainstorm across Orlando, Fla., the retention pond a couple of houses down from the Harvey family home would overflow with the anger of hurricane season. Grass flooded to mush. Dirt flooded to mud.
In the spring, though, when the water drained, the pond became a bowl roughly 60 yards long and 20 yards wide. They called it “the ditch” in their 49-house subdivision.
And this, for a decade, was RJ Harvey’s ditch.
The ditch birthed dreams. When the boy turned five or six, old enough to replace the tiny football he cradled at night with a real one, Robert Harvey would get off work and walk his son down to throw. The first Saturday morning he registered for flag football, RJ creaked open the door to his parents’ room and woke his dad up much too early, already dressed in his cleats.
Dad, I’m ready!
The ditch killed anger. This was where RJ went to answer the mass of coaches who called him too small to play quarterback. Sled pulls. Ladder drills. Parachute sprints. His mother, Juliet, would venture out in the twilight heat to bring her son water as he chased the last bit of light.
He yearned for a scholarship in high school as a fringe three-star, 5-foot-8 quarterback. He walked on at Central Florida after transferring and switching to running back. As he scrapped for stardom, RJ posted collegiate RB rankings he’d been omitted from on his Instagram story, and then-UCF running backs coach Tim Harris Jr. knew immediately the kid was pissed.
Even after a 1,577-yard, 22-touchdown senior year at UCF, the lack of attention heading into the NFL draft “bothered” RJ, as Harris said. The running-back-needy Broncos were connected to North Carolina’s Omarion Hampton, Ohio State’s TreVeyon Henderson and about 10 other backs in NFL draft projections. Head coach Sean Payton and general manager George Paton passed on all of them to take RJ in the second round last Friday.
“They had more exposure than RJ had throughout the season,” Robert Harvey said of other top RBs in the class. “And that’s why nobody knows who RJ Harvey is. But they’re getting ready to learn.
“He is a monster. He is not a joke.”
In high school, RJ would bring teammate and buddy Christian Leary over to work out. They created football lives for themselves, there in the ditch, talking of the moment they’d get their shot.
However he would make it happen — and it happened rough, and gritty, and tearful — RJ would make it happen, he’d tell Leary.
“That was the best part of seeing him in the draft,” Leary reflected. “We manifested, talked about this, since the ditch.”
•••
One varsity game, as Harvey rounded into a standout QB at Florida’s Edgewater High, a handful of coaches were stunned as a 190-pound, muscled-up man sidled his way into the stands.
“Starstruck” is how head coach Cameron Duke put it.
Roy Jones Jr., one of the greatest pound-for-pound fighters in modern boxing history, had come to watch his cousin play football.
The family legacy twists deep into Florida soil. Jones and Robert Harvey’s mothers are sisters, and the two grew up seeing each other at least once a year in the summers. After never playing a down of high school football, Robert somehow played four years as a cornerback at Bethune-Cookman, earning Jones’ respect in the process.
Jones still has Robert listed in his phone as “Hard Knock.” The nickname is self-explanatory.
A generation later, in the summers, Robert would wrangle his kids up to Jones’ ranch in Pensacola. They would frolic and fish and play basketball. And Jones began to see a glint of himself in RJ, a young boy with a “beautiful smile” but a no-nonsense demeanor, the boxer reflected.
“I loved that more than anything, because that’s how I was,” Jones said.
“He’s gon’ show it more than he’s gon’ say it, sometimes.”
Most times. When wide receiver Leary transferred into Edgewater before his sophomore year, his new teammates gave him the rundown on RJ.
Yeah, bro, he’s strictly football. He doesn’t have an Instagram.
What he did have, however, was natural one-cut burst. And a build like a “brick house,” as former Edgewater track coach Kristopher Oakes put it. And a massive chip glued to his shoulder. He pivoted Edgewater from 0-10 to 9-3 his junior year and had 48 touchdowns as a senior. But along the way, college coaches like Harris — then coaching at Florida International — stopped by to suggest the diminutive Harvey play running back.
“It wasn’t about the speed,” Reed reflected. “It wasn’t about the arm strength. It was about how tall he was.”
Whatever Harvey was, when Jones came down from Pensacola to Edgewater, he realized his cousin was special. The kid didn’t flinch through monsoon or drought. Didn’t flinch at deficits or crowds.
“That has to come from within,” Jones said. “He was determined. And I recognized that, because I knew how I was.”
•••
Determination landed Harvey a scholarship at Virginia. Determination also nearly drove him out of football.
He was a three-star recruit out of Florida. UCF and other programs wanted him as a running back. Most everyone pushed him to switch positions. But Harvey did not want to be a running back, digging his heels into the dirt.
“I was just so stuck,” he recalled last week to Broncos media, “on thinking that I’m a quarterback.”
A year passed without any snaps at Virginia. He transferred and resigned himself to a position switch. He walked on at UCF, and the heights he and Leary chased in the ditch nearly cratered right there, one foot already out of football.
I think this might be it for me, he told friend Leary. I might start looking for a job.
After a year, he positioned himself for a starting RB role as a sophomore. New UCF head coach Gus Malzahn gushed in meeting rooms over the No. 44 kid he didn’t know the name of yet.
And then Harvey tore his ACL on a non-contact injury, and started fading.
Three years of college football. Three carries, total, to show for it.
“It just seemed like he’s disconnected,” said Harris, then UCF’s running-backs coach. “You start to get a vibe that, okay, you gotta reel him back in.”
Cousin Jones Jr. told Harvey to stay strong, and yet football remained a struggle, even as he earned a role in Harris’ rotation his junior year. Still questioning if he wanted this, as Harris reflected.
But in October 2022, on the final offensive drive of a one-touchdown game against Cincinnati, Harris went against the grain and pulled starting back Isaiah Bowser for RJ. UCF called for an inside-zone run from the 17-yard line, the Knights down three with 54 seconds to play.
Harvey took a handoff and paused, slow. Surveying. One. Two. Blocks opened up, and Harvey accelerated through a hole, a safety the only man left standing.
And the kid Leary called “Mr. Spin Man” in high school whirled past an outstretched tackle, clinching the game-winning score.
“At that point, for our team and for the UCF faithful, RJ Harvey had arrived,” Harris reflected. “And he wasn’t going anywhere.”
•••
Indirectly, that Cincinnati run also catapulted Harvey toward Denver, two 1,400-yard seasons later.
Innate patience has been his calling card since running read-options at Edgewater. Years of playing quarterback, years of standing behind the line of scrimmage, made Harvey the back he was at UCF. He could analyze protection. He could analyze three levels of reads before they developed. Harvey averaged 6.8 yards per carry in 2024, second-best in the FBS among all backs with at least 200 carries.
“We thought maybe he had the best vision in the draft,” Paton said.
He was Denver’s “pet cat,” as Paton put it, as the Broncos traded back twice in the second round to snag Harvey at pick No. 60. Harris texted Denver wide receivers coach Keary Colbert “good pick” after Harvey’s selection, and Colbert responded that everyone in the Broncos’ building was excited to get him. Denver quarterback Bo Nix reached out to Kam Martin, Harvey’s RBs coach at UCF in 2023 and 2024, asking: How’s RJ Harvey?
On paper, Harvey doesn’t seem a hand-in-glove fit with Payton’s preferred versatile, pass-catching type of back, never catching more than 22 passes in any season at UCF. The Broncos, though, “did their homework,” Reed said.
Malzahn’s offenses at UCF have required little of running backs outside of running the ball, and his coaches have pinpointed Harvey as having naturally strong hands. Paton, too, took note of his ability to run a full route tree at UCF’s Pro Day in late March.
“A lot of people don’t really know that he’s actually a great weapon out of the backfield,” Martin said.
He’ll face as much pressure to deliver as any rookie in the Broncos’ incoming class, with the club’s gaping need for production at running back. Denver, too, will see constant reminders of the rookie backs it could’ve had earlier in the draft, set to square off with the Las Vegas Raiders’ Ashton Jeanty and Los Angeles Chargers’ Omarion Hampton twice in AFC West matchups.
But the kid from the ditch has responded best, throughout his career, when he’s felt slighted. Amid a breakout year in 2023, Oklahoma State back Ollie Gordon II came to town, the nation’s leading rusher at the time.
“That whole week, I was like, RJ, man — if you want to wake people up, this is the game right where we can, like, change the game,” Martin said.
He ran for 206 yards, UCF beat Oklahoma State 45-3, and the game was changed.
“They gon’ learn that he’s just like his cousin,” Jones said of Harvey. “He’s Mr. Unstoppable.”
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