It was love at first sight ... and second ... and third when Art Perkins saw the University of Hawai'i football team two years ago.

Perkins had been the West Coast scout for the Jacksonville Jaguars for only a few months when he came across Chad Owens as a junior slotback/return specialist for the Warriors in 2003. But with each intriguing glimpse, Perkins said he knew he'd seen someone special.

So much so that he is apparently one of the few people from Jacksonville for whom Owens' emergence with the Jaguars this summer has neither been an eye-opener nor a surprise.

While Jacksonville fans gush about their sixth-round pick being a draft day "steal" and Jaguars teammates marvel about the big-play abilities of the player who has been the talk of their camp so far, Perkins can, with a straight face and in all candor, say:

What surprise?

"He didn't surprise us (on the personnel side) because we thought he was that type of a kid," Perkins said. "There are some players that, as you watch the seniors, jump out at you (as underclassmen). He (Owens) was one of those kids. We don't grade juniors, but I knew we had to keep an eye on him because he's got some special qualities."

Now, slapping a must-draft tag on a 6-foot-4 receiver with 4.2 speed from a marquee school is hardly venturing out on a limb. But a 5-foot-7 slotback timed at 4.6 can test a scout's courage. Not to mention the front office's confidence.

"If I call in and say, 'the kid is 5-foot-7 or 5-8 and 180 pounds,' they are gonna say, 'oh, man, he's a short kid,' " Perkins said. "But if I say I've got a kid who is 5-8 and he's a mighty midget, then Mr. Harris (James Harris, the Jaguars' vice president of player personnel) knows exactly what I'm talking about. It means he's a small guy with what we call exceptionals."

In Owens' case, exceptional quickness, exceptional hands, exceptional attitude.

If there is somebody willing to look past stereotypes, it is Harris, who refused to be shunted off to another position in his playing days and became one of the first African-American starting quarterbacks in the NFL when he played for Buffalo, Los Angeles and San Diego from 1969 to 1981.

And if there is a scout Harris is apparently willing to give some latitude to, it is Perkins, who he has worked with for a decade. "He (Harris) looked at the tapes himself and, then, without telling the other scouts what I had said, had two, three, four (scouts) evaluate him, too," Perkins said. "They all said the same thing: 'He's a very special kid.' "

And, to the front office at least, no surprise.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.