"In my head I kind of separate Pancho and Ezra."
Pancho Billa announced Harrison Phillips as the Bills' third round pick at the 2018 NFL Draft in Dallas. But it's Ezra Castro who Phillips grew close to after that.
"I don't even know if it was a conscious decision by any means," Phillips said. "It wasn't premeditated that I wanted to create an ongoing relationship with it. It could've just been, ‘Hey, I appreciate you calling my name at the draft. That was really cool. Good luck with your treatment.’ But it was just natural."
"I have a lot of friends that are positive, a lot of positive people around me, but he even stands out above that and I think that every person should have a person like that in their life."
Castro's life ended on May 14 at the age of 39. While Harrison knew Ezra's health was getting worse, that didn't prepare him for the news.
"I wasn't," Phillips said. "I guess you could have been. It's expected, but it's not expected when it happens."
Phillips and Castro texted or talked regularly all the way until the end.
"I had called him for about 45 minutes the night before he passed and he couldn't talk. His air was really bad, so Veronica just put the phone on his chest on speaker...I actually let him know how much he meant to me and how I know he's going to be coming to the games this year, but if he didn't come to the games this year that his legacy is going to last forever,” said Phillips.
"There was a little bit of closure in the fact that I had that phone call, but again, you can't expect that to happen."
Harrison made the trip to El Paso for Castro's funeral for one final goodbye.
"The first thing I saw was Gino on his knees holding his Dad's hand in the coffin crying," Phillips remembers. "That just ripped my heart apart. Through the whole visitation and things he just kept going up there and kissing Ezra's head or holding his hands or talking to him and that just pulled on my heart strings. So that was really sad. When I saw Veronica she hugged me and was like, ‘You're Uncle Harry now to these guys.’ So just trying to stay in their lives and communicate with them and let the connection to Buffalo stay strong through my relationship with them as well."
And strong in nearly everything Phillips does.
"The Micah Hyde charity softball game, when I hit the game-winning home run, I was running around the bases yelling 'Pancho Power' and I have my Pancho shirt on," Phillips said. "A lot of Bills fans have sent me a bunch of Pancho Power shirts or custom shirts they made of Pancho. Any player on the team can attest that I wear two of those a week because every seven days I have a Pancho shirt on. So his legacy goes on that way too."