Harrison Hand and the hardship waiver
Vikings' cornerback is only a rookie but he's been through so much to be here
Harrison Hand got into his car and checked his phone before driving home. He saw one message that he knew he had to open immediately. The text had a video of Pops attached. Pops was standing next to the TV pointing at Harrison playing defense, breaking down to his family what happened on a particular play against the Green Bay Packers. Tears came into Harrison’s eyes.
“It was a crazy moment,” Hand said. “I got teared up because of how crazy it was. Life is crazy.”
The Minnesota Vikings’ rookie defensive back turned 22 years old in November. He’s been through more painful moments in those 22 years than most will in a lifetime. Most of the time, he tries to live in the moment. He focuses on training and studying and when he’s taking a break from football he’s trying to learn about screen writing and acting. But in a quiet moment by himself in the car watching his best friend’s father coaching in front of the TV like Pops had done when Harrison was a kid, it all came flooding in.
Hand was drafted in the fifth round of the 2020 draft by the Vikings. In the press release announcing the pick, it notes that he spent the first two years of his college career at Baylor and then transferred to Temple for his junior year. What happened in between, however, was waves of tough times and tragedy crashing upon him.
In the span of a few months, Hand’s parents divorced, several close family members passed away and his closest friend was murdered. And still, the process to convince the NCAA to grant him a hardship waiver was a hardship in itself.
The waiver
When Harrison Hand was growing up, his mom Denise Peterson couldn’t keep him still. She knew from the time he was three or four that there was something different about him. He was faster than the older kids and always needed to be playing something. She tried putting him in baseball but it was too boring in the outfield. He didn’t like standing out there picking grass. He played more high-movement sports like soccer and lacrosse but there was something about football that drew him in.
Denise remembers going on vacation in Virginia Beach and announcing to the family that everyone would be taking a break to relax. That decree, of course, was pointed at Harrison, who never stopped practicing football. At one point Harrison told everyone he was going to the ice machine but after he was gone for a long time, Denise went looking and found him working out in the hallway with a speed ladder.
“He was the type of kid that would sleep with a football,” Denise said over the phone. “You laugh but I'm serious. He would sleep with a football… I can't take that away from him. What's in you is in you, no matter where you are.”
In Pop Warner football, Hand was instantly one of the best players. An opposing team’s coach who Hand calls “Pops,” Taryn Presley Sr., recalls Denise running up and down the sidelines cheering her boy as other onlookers commented that he might go somewhere someday if he kept working at it.
“That’s really what sparked it up to this day,” Hand said.
He kept working at it. Coming from New Jersey, high school football wasn’t quite at the top of mind for everyone like it would be in Texas and Florida so he needed to go where he could be seen. Harrison changed schools from Cherry Hill East to Cherry Hill West because the football program gave him a better chance to shine.
“They probably still hate me at East,” Hand joked.
Per 24/7 Sports, he was a three-star recruit and the 51st ranked cornerback recruit in the country by his senior year. He built a relationship with Temple’s coaching staff, especially DBs coach and Camden, New Jersey native Fran Brown and current Panthers coach Matt Rhule. When Rhule got hired at Baylor, Brown followed, and Hand did, too.
“Before he left to go to Baylor…he stopped [everything] for three months straight,” Denise said. “He would do nothing but go to church, go to Adrenaline, which is the trainer that trained him, and be at home. He did that for three months straight. He was just so dedicated.”
Harrison always had the NFL in mind. In high school he would make goal posters every year and in the middle would be something NFL related. Baylor is a darn good place to play if that’s your goal. In his first two seasons, he played in 19 games, had 11 pass breakup and 55 tackles.
But following his sophomore year, Harrison needed to come home. He needed to transfer to Temple to be close to his family.
Of the numerous reasons to come back, at the top of the list was the fact that he had been urging his mother to get a divorce and it was finally happening.
“It probably should have been finalized when I was born,” Harrison said. “That goes a little deep.”
“He wanted something to be done,” Denise said.
Part of the trouble growing up was financial. Denise said that Harrison always did a good job of keeping the world from knowing what he was dealing with at home and that he always believed some day he would have the things that he didn’t have as a kid and his mother would have too. But financial troubles bring tension and tension brings an unhealthy environment.
“I had to step in many times as a young kid,” Harrison said.
“Harrison saw things, I won't go into detail, but he decided to take his adversity make it winnable for him,” Denise said.
At the same time of the divorce, several people close to Harrison passed away within a span of just a couple weeks. One man was a member of his church that he considered an uncle. Denise’s aunt and her cousins also both passed away. Keep in mind, these are not distant relatives. Harrison’s family is close. These were holes punched in a tight-knit group.
And during the long process of trying to get the hardship waiver from the NCAA, his best friend was shot and killed.
Everyone wrote letters to the NCAA. Harrison sent obituaries. He saw a therapist. Harrison had to live through these tragedies over and over as the NCAA demanded more information and gave him more paperwork. He admits that some players do try to lie their way out of whatever program to get the hardship waiver but shakes his head at the process. Maybe there’s a discussion to be had about player rights in college football.
We’ll save that for another day because the NCAA granted the hardship waiver, allowing Hand to return home to live with his mother, sisters and grandmother.
“We had to really make it known to the NCAA that if my son does not play football then I don't know what's going to happen to him,” Denise said. “Football was his outlet. If he had to sit out for a year, oh my gosh, oh no, that was not happening…We were able to get it across and we're so thankful to God that it happened.”
“It was a great feeling because at first I was staying at home because I was literally 15 minutes away from the facility and I would stay at home with my mom, my sisters, my grandma,” Hand said. “Wake up early, go over to practice and get my lifts out of the way and come back home. I got to bond with them.”
Along with being there for his family, Hand also put himself in a situation to reach the goal that he put in the middle of his posters growing up. At Temple, where he re-joined coach Fran Brown, he set a career high with 59 tackles, picked off three passes and broke up five more. He left after his junior year to enter the draft, where he was projected anywhere from Day 2 to Day 3 of the draft.
The three amigos
Harrison, Taryn and Terrell did everything together growing up.
“They were three little amigos, they stuck together,” Taryn’s dad Taryn Sr. A.K.A. “Pops” said.
At first they played on opposing Pop Warner teams but two years after they all started, they ended up on the same team and “it was over from there.”
“They would go from house to house to house to house all day,” as Taryn’s mother, Tara Presley, describes it.
They called each other’s moms “mom.” They went to church together. They played in the Presleys’ basement and did things when Pops wasn’t home that he only found out about years later like jumping off the roof or sliding down the stairs. They worked out, doing upside down pushups against the wall and when somebody fell asleep, they tickled the poor person’s nose until the sleeping victim smacked himself in the face.
The Three Amigos made all their plans in the Presleys’ basement too. They knew what they’d do when Harrison made the NFL. The other two Amigos believed Harrison would make it like you and I believe the sky is blue.
As they grew older, nothing changed, even when the Presleys moved to North Carolina. Taryn was still on the phone with Harrison all the time, talking to him about what it was going to be like to play in the NFL. Taryn just wanted to see him succeed — and maybe some tickets to see it in person.
“When I tell you that there was no relationship that was closer than brothers, that's a serious comment, they were brothers,” Pops said.
On the day Taryn was killed, his mom remembers seeing the picture of the Amigos in his car.
“He carried that picture in his car everywhere with him,” she said. “And my son that night ended up getting shot in that car. That stuck out to me. Looking at that picture, they might have been 11 or 12 years old. I just knew that the love they had for each other.”
Taryn was shot to death on a Friday night in a place called Harrisburg Park. He was 20 years old.
The first person Pops called was Harrison.
“He needed to know,” Pops said.
Harrison was already in the middle of the transfer process when he lost his amigo.
“That one really hit me,” he said.
It made it harder that Taryn had been planning to start his own business around the time he was killed. They were always planning.
Pops needed Harrison to speak at Taryn’s homegoing.
If you’re not familiar with the term, a homegoing is similar to a funeral but it’s more of a rejoicing of a person going to a better place. For Harrison, it was hard to rejoice. It was a day spent with a knot in his throat.
“I'm sure he had a whole lot of stories and things to say but he couldn't say too much because he couldn't bring it out,” Pops said.
Three people were charged in Taryn’s death, two with murder and all of them with conspiracy to commit a felony.
Draft day
Leading up to the draft, Harrison and his family and the Presleys were pretty sure that he would be selected on the third day of the draft but you never really know. NFL.com projected him in the fifth or sixth round. The first two days were pretty calm but Day 3 was nerve-racking.
Remember, Harrison doesn’t like to sit still. So he started playing video games.
“We’re watching it, watching it, watching it and I’m not even going to lie — and I don’t know how this is going to sound to other people — but I actually stopped watching it,” he said. “I’m going to wait for the call and it’s in God’s hands.”
Denise couldn’t take the tension either so she stopped watching for a few minutes too. She walked upstairs, went to her room and prayed.
“I said, 'Lord, I need to hear my son's name,”' she said. “And not less than two minutes later, I went downstairs and I said something and everyone was like, 'shhhh shhh shhhh' and I'm like, ‘What? What's going on?’ And he was on the phone with the Vikings.”
Harrison’s sister first noticed the phone was ringing while he was playing video games. He took a deep breath, tried to play it cool like answering the door on a first date. And then picked up the phone to learn he would become a Viking.
“My phone call is buzzing and my heart and my whole body goes into shock,” Harrison said. “I could see my sister is looking at the phone and back at me. I answered all calm and they are talking about how I’m feeling and they’re going to pick me. It was a great experience. My family were all going crazy.”
At that moment, Pops was trying to call too. He realizes now that Harrison was probably on the phone with the Vikings at the time but he was also in shock.
“It might sound selfish in a way but I feel like my son made it too,” Pops said. “Harrison made it but I feel like my son made it. And now my son is gone but I still see one of my sons on TV. I still see one of my sons playing in the highest esteem of football that there is. I saw him from 8 years old to 22 and everything that he's put into it come forward. The day that he was drafted, you should have seen me.”
“He's the highlight of Cherry Hill and our family,” Pops added. “Looking at him is looking at our son.”
When they spoke, Harrison told Pops that he wished Taryn was here to see it. He said that every time he touched an NFL field, he would have Taryn on his mind. He would remember those times in the basement. He would remember their plans. He would feel Taryn’s presence.
“What flashed back in my mind was that 8-year-old boy running around the field with the big shoulder pads and his mother yelling ‘Harrison!’” Taryn’s mom said. “His growth, seeing him playing on TV from college until now in the NFL, I had happiness and joy. Everything he put into it, he made it. My son had a beautiful smile and I could see him smiling down at Harrison like, 'You did it. I told you. I told you you were going to make it.’”
Mom-ager
Denise got champagne all over her walls and she cried uncontrollably on draft day but it wasn’t long after that she went into organizer mode. She spent more than a decade working with an organization to benefit at-risk youth raising funds and gathering donations, especially around the holidays, so she knew how to bring people together for a cause. And trust me, she had the energy for it.
She got worked to bring together an adviser, a financial planner, Harrison’s agent and a lawyer in one meeting to ensure that his career was in good hands.
“As his mom-ager, everything comes through me. I work closely with his agent, I work closely with his financial planner, every month I'm speaking with them and reiterate to Harrison what's going on,” Denise said. “It's his first year and I want his mind to be on football.”
Harrison said that while nothing can bring them closer, it’s been a bonding experience.
“It’s definitely a crazy shift because she’s taking care of a lot of important stuff but it goes from like ‘You’re my mom, you’re taking care of me and certain stuff’ to ‘You’re my mom and then you’re my manager’ and we still are learning how to maneuver,” he said.
The family has been hit with waves of tragedy but they couldn’t be closer. Denise’s brother, who used to take Harrison to camps as a kid and has played a significant role in his life, travels sometimes with Denise to Minnesota.
“I can’t get him to talk football when I’m around but when my brother is there, boy, that’s how I find out what is happening,” she said laughing.
He’s very close to his two sisters, Benaiah and Brianna, and views himself as their bigger brother, even if he’s the middle child.
On the field, Harrison has played mostly special teams, where Day 3 picks earn their shot at more. Special teams coordinator Marwan Maalouf said he just needs more opportunities to show what he can do. His mom is very happy he landed with Mike Zimmer, a renown cornerbacks coach.
And Harrison knows he'll always have Pops standing in front of the TV coaching him up too.
“I'm still a coach. I watch him and I'm saying, 'Don't play too tight,’ ‘Watch this,’ ‘He did it he did,’” Pops said. “I love football and when I watch football I watch the whole team but when Harrison is on the field, all I do is watch him. I'll rewind and I'll pause and I'll play.”
Nothing can give the Presleys complete solace after the loss of their son but watching Harrison on the field with the Vikings gives them peace.
“There are other highlights of your life but this is the only highlight of my life that brings balance and brings joy that's related to my son,” Pops said.
Check out our sponsor SotaStick and their Minnesota-inspired gear by clicking the logo. Use the code PurpleInsider for free shipping
Awesome! Rooting for him now even more! Thanks , Matthew
What a lovely article. Thank you for doing this research and reporting this story.