How a 2023 Drop Helped South Carolina’s Nyck Harbor Improve His Vision and Thrive as a WR

Nyck Harbor has always been an easy target for opposing defensive backs. Standing at 6-foot-5, 230 pounds, and widely considered one of the fastest players in college football, it’s no surprise. Harbor even qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials in the 200m, and to top it off, EA Sports gave him the coveted 99 speed rating in their video game.

So naturally, every defensive back assigned to cover him couldn’t help but run their mouths.

“All DBs do is chat,” Harbor said on Wednesday. “They’ll just talk about that I’m just fast in the game. Only good in the game — this, that and the third. … DBs will talk all the time but, at the end of the day, I was catching the ball and they were behind me.”

For a while, the banter was easy. Harbor was a former five-star recruit, racing Olympians in the spring and becoming a video game sensation in the summer. But as everyone knows, that’s not what makes a great football player. After a quiet freshman season, Harbor barely saw the field as a sophomore.

“I had to talk with him,” Harbor’s father, Azuka, said in an interview with The State on Wednesday. “Forget about everything you see. Forget about everything. It’s just a (video) game. If this does not translate to a real game, it doesn’t make any sense.”

As the 2024 season unfolded for South Carolina, Harbor’s progress became undeniable. There was the jaw-dropping touchdown catch in the final seconds against Alabama, which could have been the play of the season if the Gamecocks had come out on top. He posted a career-high 69 yards against Missouri and started making plays behind opposing corners. By season’s end, he had recorded at least 40 receiving yards in each of the final five games, including a stunning toe-tap catch in the Citrus Bowl.

“I don’t doubt his ability to go get the ball,” Azuka said. “If you throw that ball where you want him to go, he’ll go get it.”

Nyck added, “I just started to have more confidence.”

In just one year, the conversation surrounding Harbor shifted. What began as a question of whether he would ever figure things out turned into speculation about whether he could become South Carolina’s best receiver in 2025. This transformation was rooted in something as simple as vision.

It’s reminiscent of a concept from Malcolm Gladwell’s book David vs. Goliath, where Gladwell argues that Goliath’s defeat was partly due to his poor eyesight. Despite being seen as a physical giant, Goliath was undone by something as fundamental as vision, proving that no matter how impressive one’s physique, it’s nothing without the ability to see clearly.

And that’s where Harbor was struggling. While he wasn’t going blind, he admitted, “I couldn’t see the best I could.”

Azuka first noticed something was wrong during the 2023 game against Texas A&M. On the Gamecocks’ first drive, quarterback Spencer Rattler sent a third-down pass to an open Harbor. But Harbor, looking directly at the ball, somehow let it slip right through his hands and bounce off his helmet.

After the game, Azuka called his son.

“Bro, what’s going on?” Azuka asked. “Is everything OK?”

“Dad,” Harbor responded, “I did not see that ball. It just hit me in the face.”

“Well,” Azuka said, “we need to go do something.”

It wasn’t a surprise to Azuka, though—Harbor had been wearing glasses since his signing day ceremony in 2023, though only off the field.

It wasn’t until just before the 2024 season that Harbor acknowledged his eyesight needed fixing. In the opener against Old Dominion, Harbor wore prescription goggles, similar to LaNorris-Sellers’ style, before switching to contacts soon after.

“That was probably the best decision I’ve made,” Harbor said. “It’s like a whole new world.”