Ask Shane Beamer about the freakiest thing he’s seen wide receiver Nyck Harbor do and he will smile.

It’s a long list to pick from. Harbor was a prized recruit in South Carolina history, and not just because he’s the son of a former United States men’s national soccer team member. He’s so freaky that he earned the No. 1 spot on Bruce Feldman’s annual “Freaks List” before he ever played a game in college (that was the first time a freshman ever earned that honor) with then-South Carolina assistant Jody Wright saying “a taller Julio with a Derrick Henry-type build is a great comparison” (via The Athletic).

More recently, Harbor set a personal best on the South Carolina track team with a 10.12-second 100-meter dash at the USC Open, which is an absurd feat for anybody, much less a 6-5, 242-pound college freshman juggling track and football duties.

“Everything he does to me is freaky,” Beamer told SDS in a recent interview on The Saturday Down South Podcast. “I went and watched him at a track meet in person in February. He was doing well and his track coach came over to me and he’s like, ‘He’s very rusty and raw.’ I’m like, rusty and raw? I’d hate to see what not rusty and raw is compared to how good he looked right there running it … that was an eye-opener to me.”

And perhaps it was eye-opening that for as decorated as Harbor was — he was the No. 19 overall recruit in the 247sports composite —  he enters Year 2 still trying to become a fixture of the offense. He had 2 multi-catch games in a true freshman season that ended with 12 catches for 195 yards with the score coming against FCS Furman.

Expectations are raised for The Freak after a relatively quiet introduction to the SEC. He’s the only returning South Carolina receiver who played at least 200 snaps at the position in 2023. The good news was that Harbor averaged 45.7 snaps in the Gamecocks’ final 7 games, which was when all but 1 of his catches came (video via @gamecocks3345).

(That A&M catch on 3rd-and-13 came after a bad drop earlier. They said on the broadcast that Spencer Rattler marched right over to Harbor and told him he was coming back to the true freshman. Harbor then finished with a career-high 6 catches for 59 yards.)

Five-star recruit or not, there was always going to be a learning curve for a 2-sport athlete who focused on track in the spring. His work with the football team was limited this spring, but that didn’t prevent him from wanting to try and pull a Harbor doubleheader.

“He called me the night before the spring game and was adamant that he wanted to play in the spring game,” Beamer said. “This was gonna be 3 hours after a race in which he set a personal record. … He wanted to run in the race and then come over and play in the spring game that night. I wouldn’t let him just because I didn’t think that was the best thing for him personally, and I wasn’t about to get him hurt and cost our track team something.

“But the thing with him is he easily could have. Because of his speed, we could’ve put him out there, thrown a couple deep balls and he would’ve wowed people, as rusty as he might’ve been from a football standpoint if we had let him play.”

Some might wonder why Harbor’s skill set hasn’t been used like that consistently in the South Carolina offense yet. If you watch Harbor’s catches from his true freshman season, you’ll see more comeback routes and drag routes than go-balls with single coverage on the outside.

There were games like the UNC opener when there was a clear effort to get Harbor looks downfield, but even with an NFL-ready quarterback in Rattler who wasn’t lacking arm strength, it’s telling that only 2 of Harbor’s 375 offensive snaps resulted in catches that traveled at least 25 air yards. Some of that might’ve been because Harbor was still learning the ropes, and it didn’t help that the Gamecocks lost 6 offensive linemen to season-ending injuries, which meant Rattler didn’t often step up into clean pockets to attack downfield.

Scheming up looks for someone with world-class speed is easier than the alternative, but it’s by no means an automatic, especially against competition that’s already well-versed in Harbor’s strengths and weaknesses at this stage of his career.

In other words, “go long” isn’t a cheat code just yet.

“It’s not that simple,” Beamer said. “Teams are aware of his speed so now, do they play 2-deep to that side and put a safety over the top where he’s not gonna be able to get past that safety. He’s a bigger body, so teams now try to get up in his face at the line of scrimmage and press him, jam him so he can’t get off the line. When you’re a bigger body, that’s a challenge. I can’t imagine when he was playing high school ball up in DC that there were many DBs that got up in his face and wanted to press him, as well.

“Those are things he needs to continue to work on — becoming a better route-runner, working on his releases off the line of scrimmage, catching the ball, getting in and out of breaks, running after the catch. There’s a lot to it. Perimeter blocking. He’s a tough young man, for sure. Those are all things he’ll tell you he needs to continue to improve on.”

Harbor’s improvement is vital for a new-look South Carolina. LaNorris Sellers has the upper hand on QB1 duties coming out of spring camp. It would be unfair to expect Sellers to be an upgrade after Rattler became the first South Carolina QB drafted in the 7-round era (since 1994), but Sellers having a go-to target/matchup nightmare like Harbor will play a massive role in whether 2024 is a bounce-back season in Columbia.

One would think he’ll be asked to do more within the route tree. Perhaps someone who lined up out wide almost exclusively (88%) will get moved around the formation a bit more as his understanding of the offense grows.

What seems inevitable is that Year 2 will produce more reminders that Harbor is a football unicorn. Guys his size are edge-rushers or tight ends, not wide receivers. Much like when he steps onto the track and he towers over a lineup of sprinters, the sight of Harbor lined up against a 5-11 corner will continue to amaze, though it’ll only be noteworthy if he dominates those matchups on a weekly basis.

If he can do that, the freak will put a whole lot of smiles on South Carolina faces in 2024.