It's a new day in South Florida, and that's saying the very least. When Brian Flores took the reins as head coach of the organization in 2019, things didn't exactly get off to a roaring start. The end of the season showed a sparky Dolphins team that could actually make some waves in the AFC East, but they would have to move around some pieces to become actual contenders. Their latest one comes at the expense of Charles Harris, a veteran pass rusher who was the team's first-round pick in 2017 out of Missouri.
Harris has been traded to the Atlanta Falcons, the team announced, ending his time in South Florida and beginning his next chapter in North Georgia, and in exchange for only a seventh-round pick. The Dolphins are trading Harris only one day after they released Taco Charlton, another disappointing first-round pick from the 2017 draft class -- a selection that hangs like an albatross around the neck of the Dallas Cowboys -- as Flores and the Dolphins look to juice up their defensive front.
They signed both Emmanuel Ogbah and Shaq Lawson in free agency and grabbed three defensive linemen in the 2020 NFL Draft, hinting at more changes to come.
The NFL deadline for exercising a former first-round pick's fifth-year option was rapidly approaching, but the Dolphins opted to move on instead. Harris joins a Falcons defense looking to bolster its pass rush, but one that also waved off exercising the fifth-year option on its own former first-round pick in Takkarist McKinley, making it a rough go as of late for pass rushers taken in that round, that year -- although McKinley has had much more success at the NFL level than Charlton and Harris combined.
Harris and McKinley are slated to now be teammates in Atlanta for at least the 2020 season, assuming the Falcons don't eventually ship the latter away down the road via trade. The former is set to earn $1.943 million in base salary this coming season, barring any changes to his roster spot or contract with the Falcons.
