Dolphins’ 5th-year option call for Charles Harris all but made. But will he make team in ’20?
The Miami Dolphins have until Monday to decide whether to apply or decline a fifth-year option for 2017 first-round pick Charles Harris and the expectation is the team will decline that option. a league source told the Herald on Thursday.
Harris, drafted No. 22 overall in 2017, has so far not lived up to the hopes the team had for him when he was drafted.
He’s managed only 3.5 sacks in 41 career games and last season, despite early optimism he might be more productive working as an edge rushing linebacker at times, Harris delivered only 1/2 a sack and 11 tackles in 14 games, including five starts.
Harris, indeed, was a healthy scratch in two games and his meager sack totals have actually declined every season he’s played from two as a rookie, to one in 2018, to his half-sack last season.
Coach Brian Flores and general manager Chris Grier, who drafted Harris, have always been complimentary about the work ethic and attitude the defensive end/linebacker brings to the team.
But this move is an indication the team is not willing to bet that work will result in more production moving forward. Applying the fifth-year option would cost the Dolphins $10 million on their 2021 salary cap.
When teams exercise the fifth year option, they immediately guarantee an extra year on a player’s contract for injury. So if Harris were to go to training camp this year, and be injured to the extent he cannot play in 2021, the Dolphins would be on the hook for that salary were they to apply the option. Declining the option allows the Dolphins to avoid that scenario.
The option year becomes fully guaranteed on the first day of the league year in the fifth contract year -- which translates to March 2021 for the 2017 draft class.
So what does this mean tangibly for Harris?
He is now scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent at the end of the 2020 season.
And Harris must compete merely for a spot on Miami’s 2020 roster because the Dolphins this offseason added linebacker Kyle Van Noy, and defensive ends Shaq Lawson and Emmanuel Ogbah in free agency. Miami then added defensive end/linebacker Curtis Weaver and defensive end Jason Strowbridge during the NFL draft.
All of those players would be competing against Harris in some way for a 2020 roster spot and a place in the club’s future.
The talent the Dolphins have added and the work Harris has put on tape the past three years suggest he faces an uphill climb to make the team.
This story was originally published May 1, 2020 at 12:00 AM.
