It’s all fine and dandy for the Miami Dolphins to trade Charles Harris to the Atlanta Falcons for a measly seventh-round pick — considering he did so little in three years and wasn’t even playing by last December.
But the news isn’t something to simply shrug your shoulders over and sweep out of your mind, considering the larger context of how this trade arrived. Sorry. It doesn’t work that way.
You can’t rave about the new wave of young talent coming through the Dolphins door after last week’s draft and ignore how it was just three balloon-popping years ago Harris entered with the same kind of hope.
He was the pass rusher they so needed, the defensive end they so wanted, the young talent spoken of in the same, certain terms all the new draft picks are today.
“He is a player that we had targeted,” Dolphins general manager Chris Grier said that draft night in 2017 after selecting Harris with the No. 22 pick. “We love the pass rush that he can give us. It is a position that you can never have enough guys in the league, the way this game is played. We like the kid’s attitude, his competitiveness.”
Here’s what all that attitude and competitiveness got the Dolphins in the past three seasons: 3 1/2 sacks. It still mattered to Harris, too, to the point he became depressed by his production.
His brief and uneventful fall didn’t end with Friday’s trade as much as when coach Brian Flores made the former first-round pick inactive in a December game against the New York Giants. The coach decided the team with the league’s worst pass rush had seen enough of the 25-year-old pass rusher. And who saw otherwise?
“No, no,” Harris said in declining to talk to reporters after watching in sweat pants and a parka as the Dolphins defense was pushed around for 36 points by the Giants.
How did the Dolphins’ front office misread Harris? Did he not develop? Would a difference scheme have helped?
These are the hard questions that need to be asked inside the team and the cautionary tale that needs to be told here. It’s the other side of all this draft hope on display across South Florida.
Harris symbolizes how this bold rebuilding plan behind Grier’s decisions will fail if these latest draft picks aren’t exponentially better.
Everyone sees the potential in this class. The game of Tua Tagovailoa? The talent of tackle Austin Jackson and cover skills of Noah Igbinoghene? But potential is the most dangerous word in the dictionary. How many of us really reach our potential?
Harris didn’t. Nor did Taco Charlton, another pass rusher picked 26th by the Dallas Cowboys in that same 2017 draft. Charlton, cut early last season by Dallas and picked up by the Dolphins, was released Friday — just hours before Harris’s trade was announced.
Meanwhile, the 30th pick of that draft became the player Miami and Dallas wanted.
Pittsburgh’s T.J. Watt has amassed 34 1/2 sacks in his first three years. He’s a Pro Bowl player. His fifth-year option off his rookie contract already was picked up — evidence of his value and something the Dolphins have done for only one of their previous five eligible first-round picks.
“A short strider who lacks explosion stance and up the field to bend the edge as a pass rusher,” a scouting report read of Watt. “Foot quickness is average … won’t generate enough acceleration to crank up speed-to-power rush with consistency.”
See what nonsense all the draft talk can be?
This has been a big offseason for the Dolphins. Maybe it’s the offseason that turns around this franchise. They spent $145 million in guaranteed free-agent money. They had more high draft picks than anyone.
But all this injected optimism has to be weighed against Harris sliding quietly out the door to Atlanta. The Dolphins signed two pass rushers in free agency and drafted two more in part because drafting Harris failed so badly. He becomes the worst draft bust in Dolphins history after Dion Jordan, the troubled No. 3 pick in 2012.
Everyone wants to move on to a brave future. The Dolphins can move on from this, too. Every team has failed draft picks. The issue, really, is who you hit on. That’s the real problem in drafts over the last decade.
Three short years ago, Harris held up a new Dolphins jersey with a big smile and was described in glowing terms as “passionate,” and a, “gym rat.”
Now he’s a Falcon as the Dolphins bring in their next wave of pass rushers.
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