The Dolphins have a glaring need on their roster in the pass rush room. Some of that is by choice: the team didn’t have to let Cameron Wake walk away this off-season. They could’ve opted to pay Andre Branch for another year of unspectacular play. Heck, they may even hang on to Robert Quinn, although they’d prefer not to.
There’s one player in that room who meets all of the criteria these new staff is looking for: he’s young. He’s cheap (well, he’s “cheap”). A former 1st-round pick with something to prove.
2017 1st-round selection Charles Harris (22nd overall) still has a seat at the table, but we’re slowly creeping to the point of now or never. Harris has 3 career sacks in 27 games played and despite some injuries to the Dolphins’ front four last year, Harris managed to play only 36% of the team’s snaps.
Is Brian Flores’ defensive mind and development based mentality the panacea for Harris’ struggles? Flores wouldn’t go that far, but he did say he was looking forward to working with the young pass rusher.
“He (Harris) can do a lot of things. He can rush, he can play in space a little bit, tackles fairly well…I’m excited to work with him.”
There’s some hope to be offered that playing as a stand-up rusher could help provide more advantageous angles for Harris to win, but his development and career advancement is really going to come down to how well he’s able to grow technically. Flores echoed that sentiment himself.
“We’re going to spend a lot of time with him (Harris). We’re going to spend a lot of time with all of our players and try to develop them, work on their fundamentals and techniques and try to help them improve. That’s our goal as a coaching staff.”
There will be plenty of measures of success ahead for this coaching staff, but one early measure would be getting production out of Harris in 2019.
