‘Shocked’ by release, Zach Harrison making most of Falcons’ second chance

FLOWERY BRANCH — Fresh off a meeting, Zach Harrison strolled through the Falcons’ locker room and felt his phone buzz. It was his agent. Soon, he’d be headed upstairs for a chat with general manager Ian Cunningham, the type of moment he never sought and never expected.

The Falcons were waiving Harrison, subjecting the 6-foot-5, 270-pound defensive end to claims from the NFL’s other 31 teams. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not to the 5-star recruit, the third-round pick, the 25-year-old fresh off a breakout third season. But it did.

“I was definitely surprised,” Harrison told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday. “Yeah, I was shocked.”

The Falcons didn’t initially plan to waive Harrison, nor did they have much desire to do so. After roster cutdown day Aug. 30, Cunningham submitted three player claims, and with his team holding the 13th spot on the NFL’s waiver order, he didn’t know if he’d get all three.

He did.

“You go through it knowing if you get those three claims, what’s the decision that you’re going to have to make?” Cunningham said. “And once we got that, it’s like, as happy as we were, it was a gut punch too, personally, just because I knew that Zach was most likely going to be the option.”

Harrison said his conversation with Cunningham “wasn’t easy,” and the Falcons’ decision to waive him left him with “a lot of emotions” to process over the next day.

“Kind of go through the whole gambit,” Harrison said. “I was shocked. Try not to get angry, because it’s part of the business — take nothing personal.”

For the first time in as long as he remembers, Harrison had football stripped from him. He spent the next 24 hours waiting to hear if he’d get claimed by another team, if he’d have to pack up his home and leave the city that made his NFL dream come true, if he’d have to learn a brand new system and adapt to an entirely new locker room.

He called his parents. He called his sister. He sat around and watched television — he likes “One Piece” — and waited, waited, waited. “Not really much you can do,” he said. Eventually, time passed. No claims. A free agent.

Multiple teams offered spots on their practice squad. Harrison declined. The Falcons offered a spot on theirs. Harrison accepted.

“I wanted to be here,” he said. “Play with the guys who I got to know for a long period of time and play with the coaches who I got the utmost respect for. So, I wanted to be here. I wanted to be a Falcon. So, that’s why I signed back here, whatever role that was.”

He spent 20 days on the Falcons’ practice squad. He didn’t get the promotion for the team’s Week 1 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers but earned the nod in Week 2, playing 25 defensive snaps and making two tackles in a 34-3 loss to the Carolina Panthers.

His jersey number didn’t change. Neither did the way his teammates treated him. And his mindset certainly didn’t differ, either.

“I just kind of showed up at work, trying to do my job,” Harrison said. “Whatever my job is, I’m just gonna do it. If my job was to go be the scout team right guard, I was going to do the best of my ability to do that. So, my mindset hasn’t changed. Just kind of the role changed a little bit.”

Falcons rookie receiver Zachariah Branch stopped his walk from the practice field to the locker room and listened to each part of Harrison’s answer. He gave a reassuring look, extended his knuckles for a fist bump, and walked away.

Two days after Harrison’s return to the field, the Falcons signed him to their active roster, and he played a key role in Atlanta’s 35-14 win over the Packers on “Thursday Night Football.” He was on the field for 19 snaps on defense and five on special teams, contributing a tackle for loss and a blocked field goal.

When he returned to the sideline from getting one of his 10-inch hands on Packers kicker Trey Smack’s 47-yard try, Harrison sought out Falcons coach Kevin Stefanski, who often challenges him to make plays like those.

Stefanski jokingly said Harrison is 6-foot-10 — which doesn’t feel an inaccurate description for this 5-foot-10 writer — and believes he’ll be an asset for the Falcons’ special teams group this fall.

“When you block kicks,” Stefanski said, “it’s a pretty good correlation to winning.”

And that, ultimately, is what drives Harrison now.

“Just doing my part to help the team win,” he said. “That’s kind of my whole mindset going forward.”

Falcons defensive line coach Nate Ollie calls Harrison the “ambassador of strain,” a key component to the team’s identity. He works hard and does all the right things, Ollie said, but the Falcons need Harrison to stay healthy after a knee injury limited him to seven games last season.