2017 NFL Draft: Charles Harris can be Missouri's next first-round defensive lineman|Mizzou Hot Topics|Team BattleGround|College BattleGround

The 2016 NFL Draft is over, which means it’s time to start wildly speculating about next year’s draft. Last year I wrote a there were six players who could end up being drafted into the NFL: Evan Boehm, Connor McGovern, Kentrell Brothers, Russell Hansbrough, Kenya Dennis and Harold Brantley. Three of them were drafted this weekend, and two of them signed free agent contracts. Harold Brantley continues to recover from a serious car accident that could hold him out for a second year. Additionally, kicker Andrew Baggett will try out with the Cleveland Browns. Good luck to all of them.

Missouri has 11 seniors and 47 players who are redshirt sophomores or older. Realistically, only a few of them have NFL potential based on what we’ve seen so far in their careers. I took the liberty to pare down the list for this series to include only the most notable upperclassmen and sophomores (the key here is that the athletes have to be three years removed from high school).

Here’s the list of players I think have NFL Draft potential:

The list of Mizzou Tigers prospects lists begins with:

Charles Harris, DE, (6-3, 255, Jr.)

Ace defensive line coach Craig Kuligowski is gone to Miami, but newcomer Jackie Shipp has at least a somewhat comparable pedigree of putting lineman into the NFL. He has a great chance to add to his resume with redshirt junior Charles Harris. Barry Odom’s staff will continue to modify the defense to incorporate more 3-4 techniques, but I believe this will accentuate Harris’ strengths.

If you’ll indulge me a bit, I’m going to reference Justis Mosqueda’s “Force Player” metric, which aims to be a predictive model for 4-3 defensive ends and 3-4 outside linebackers. In this article he references the similarity between Ezekiel Ansah, the fifth overall pick in 2013, and Shaq Lawson, the 19th overall pick in the 2015 NFL Draft.

Another player who seems to fall victim to ball reads is Shaq Lawson. Earlier this month, I noted that the only first-round edge defenders selected over the last decade who are clearly better athletes than Lawson are Von Miller, Melvin Ingram and Bruce Irvin. Despite that, some, like ESPN’s Todd McShay, have said Lawson is limited athletically.

On paper, based on the numbers off of the NFL’s combine “master recording sheet,” which is sent to every franchise, Lawson is Ezekiel Ansah.

pic.twitter.com/SNcEOc8or5

— Justis Mosqueda (@JuMosq) April 9, 2016

Ansah, on a per year basis, is one of the top 10 edge defenders drafted in the last decade. Interestingly enough, Ansah was viewed as “just an athlete” coming out of BYU. Lawson is being discussed as solely a technical edge-setter, when his upside says he has 10-sack potential. If you happen to rewatch Lawson between now and the draft,  with the different types of get-off reads in mind, you might have a moment of clarity, avoiding a potential misevaluation.

What stood out to me was the similarities between Harris and Lawson. If Harris maintains his tackles for loss and sacks pace, he would be on track to a Lawson-type year as a redshirt junior, which should vault him into first-round discussions.

Harris was slightly behind Lawson in his freshman year but actually significantly outdid him as a sophomore. What remains to be seen is if he can improve further on those numbers in his junior year.

But, production isn’t everything, especially not to the NFL, which covets athletes on the defensive line.

Looking at this past draft, here are the defensive ends with similar profiles to Charles Harris, their combine scores and where they were selected. Harris is listed at 6’3, 255 pounds, and since we don’t expect him to grow significantly, we can start comparing him to where other edge rushers have gone based on their measurables. The important numbers to pay attention to are the shuttle and 3-cone drills, which measure an athlete’s lateral quickness and agility, something very important to edge rushers and especially so in the force player metric mentioned above.

For an idea of what the 3 cone drill looks like, here’s Terry Beckner running one as a freshman.

A low 4.3 shuttle score and a low 7.2 3-cone drill score at 270 pounds are indicative of the kind of athlete Shaq Lawson is. We can see that it compares to players who are the same height but weight 20 pounds less. This is important because defensive ends are rarely running straight lines, instead trying to bend around the edge of offensive lines.

Harris is a fierce leader and dogged in his pursuit of the quarterback. He’s stout against the run and I believe has the jump off the line to be an NFL-caliber pass rusher. He has a variety of pass rush moves and has shown he can set up guys and then counter. Where he’s struggled in the past has been with agility. When Harris first took the field in relief of Markus Golden against Indiana, we saw he struggled with chasing down pitch plays outside. The same thing happened when he came in for the ejected Shane Ray in the SECCG against Alabama. It’s my opinion that he showed improvement in his agility in the 2015 season, but we’ll have to see how his measurables rate to truly be sure.

Charles Harris is athletic. The question is, can he add 15-20 pounds and still test well? Is he Yannick Ngakoue or Noach Spence, or is he a first-round prospect like Lawson and Ogbah (since the Patriots lost their pick, Ogbah’s selection was basically like that of a first rounder).

There’s also an exterior force that could play a role in how high Harris is drafted: the competition. This year’s draft was light on pass rushers but the 2017 Draft could see several big names declare early as Dan Kadar notes in here, including Bama’s Tim Williams and Johnathan Allen, Texas A&M’s Myles Garrett, and Tennessee’s Derek Barnett.

In summary, Charles Harris needs to have a Shane Ray-like year production wise (20+ TFLs, 14+ sacks) while testing better than Ray did at the combine to basically guarantee himself a first day selection. I believe he’s currently a late-second or third round pick with a huge amount of potential upside.