Hardy veteran WR for Ravens

The Baltimore Sun

James Hardy came by his independence early in life. At 12, he says, he moved out of his mother’s house in Fort Wayne, Ind.

“I just wanted to make a better life, and I felt I could do better on my own than I was getting from her,” he explained.

Hardy, 25, turned that hardscrabble start onto a path toward NFL opportunity, first in Buffalo and now Baltimore. He is one of the aspiring new wide receivers the Ravens brought to training camp this summer. Against the backdrop of inexperienced rookies, Hardy stands out because he’s 6 feet, 5 inches with a wing span like a 747 jet, and because he was once a second-round draft pick with the Bills.

He also stands out for this reason: he was once runner-up in Indiana’s Mr. Basketball vote.

Hardy has tracked a lot of mileage since those days, and some of it has been on hard road. His time in Buffalo ended after two years, 10 catches and numerous hours in the training room. He tore knee ligaments late in his 2008 rookie season, missed most of 2009 because of hamstring problems, and finally was cut last September after starting off with a foot injury.

So it raised organizational eyebrows this week when Hardy went out with a hamstring issue. He missed Tuesday’s practice, returned Wednesday on a limited basis, and was held out again Thursday and Friday.

“He is valuable [in] that he is a veteran,” coach John Harbaugh said. “He had been in the league, so he knows. He has been here before, he is not a rookie. But the hamstring doesn’t help. He is going to have to get out there, but we don’t want him [sidelined] for the next three weeks, either, so we really have to balance that out. We have high expectations for him. He is a very talented guy.

“The next two to three weeks are going to be huge for him.”

Hardy called his brief Baltimore experience “the best opportunity I’ve ever had in life, and I just want to take advantage of it.”

For the next month, Hardy needs to show the Ravens that he can make plays down field in an offense that hasn’t been able to go deep very often. He would be a tantalizing target inside the 20, where his size and long arms make him difficult to defend.

“James is a big body and everybody sees that,” Jim Hostler, the wide receivers coach, said. “He has a big radius. He’s a down-the-field guy. He is easy to throw the ball to. He is learning the system. It’s a little different than what he has been used to, so from that standpoint, he is still coming.”