Malik
Harrison.
Malik
Harrison.
Ohio State· 6'3"· 247 lb· 4.66s 40
"A hard-hitting strongside linebacker who broke Ohio State's tackle-for-loss chart as a senior and was drafted knowing coverage would keep him off the field on third down."Pre-draft read
Harrison is a thickly built 6-3, 247-pound strongside linebacker who plays with an edge and treats contact as the point of the job. He is at his best attacking downhill in the alley, setting an edge against tight ends and pulling guards, and finishing runs with pop rather than dragging ball carriers down.
The senior tape added pressure value. Ohio State used him on the line and as a blitzer, and he answered with 17 tackles for loss and 4.5 sacks. He converted from high school quarterback and safety, so the movement is better than the frame suggests. Coverage caps the ceiling: he is stiff in space, labors to open his hips and struggles to carry receivers, so the projection was base-package linebacker and special teams.
A base defense that keeps him on the strong side against tight ends and ties his snaps to run downs, with designed pressure rather than coverage responsibility.
Year 1 core special-teamer and base strongside linebacker, with a ceiling as a long-tenured two-down starter on a run-stopping defense.
A nickel-heavy scheme that asks its linebackers to match backs and tight ends in man coverage on most snaps.
Malik Harrison Highlight Tape // Ohio State LB // 2020 NFL Draft Prospect
Pre-draft reel covering the downhill run fits and the senior-year backfield production.
Hardest Hitting LB in the Big Ten | Ohio State LB Malik Harrison Highlights
Contact-focused cutup that shows the physicality and edge-setting that defined his evaluation.
Malik Harrison vs. Indiana (2019)
Single-game all-snaps from his first-team All-Big Ten senior season.
A Columbus kid out of Walnut Ridge who was a three-year starting quarterback in high school, Harrison arrived at Ohio State as an athlete and grew into a linebacker. He played eleven games as a freshman in 2016 with 13 tackles, then all fourteen as a sophomore with 36, working his way onto the field before ever locking down a job.
The junior year made him a starter for real. He tied for the team lead with 81 tackles, added nine tackles for loss, 2.5 sacks and an interception, and was honorable mention All-Big Ten. The senior season was the leap: 75 tackles and 17 tackles for loss, a total only Andy Katzenmoyer, Ryan Shazier and Matt Wilhelm have exceeded from the linebacker position at Ohio State, plus 4.5 sacks and four pass breakups en route to first-team All-Big Ten. He finished with 205 tackles and 30 tackles for loss across 52 games on three consecutive outright Big Ten championship teams.
The evaluation was clean and narrow. Everyone agreed on the physicality, the edge-setting and the blitz value; everyone also agreed he was stiff in coverage and would come off the field on third down in most defenses. Baltimore, a team that has always valued linebackers who can hit and run down kickoffs, took him at 98 and knew exactly what it was getting.
- 01
Physical at the point
Sets a hard edge against tight ends and pulling guards and finishes with pop instead of dragging runners down.
- 02
Backfield disruption
17 tackles for loss as a senior, a figure only three linebackers in Ohio State history have topped at the position.
- 03
Blitz value
4.5 sacks and 10 for his career from a linebacker spot, with the timing and size to finish once he gets a lane.
- 04
Four-year Big Ten pedigree
Played 52 games on three consecutive outright conference champions and earned first-team All-Big Ten as a senior.
- 05
Special-teams profile
The size, speed and aggression that make an immediate core contributor on kickoff and punt units.
- 01
Stiff in coverage
Labors to open his hips and turn, which shows up any time he has to carry a receiver or tight end vertically.
- 02
Change of direction
Limited short-area quickness means he struggles to redirect against backs and screens in the flat.
- 03
Third-down limitations
Profiles as a base-package linebacker who comes off the field in nickel, capping his snap ceiling.
- 04
Overruns his fits
The downhill aggression that makes him effective also takes him past the ball against cutback runs and misdirection.
Relative Athletic Score (Kent Lee Platte) benchmarks combine/pro-day numbers against every measured prospect at the position since 1987. 10.00 is elite; 5.00 is average.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.66sp50
- Vertical
- 36inp50
- Broad jump
- 122inp50
- Three-cone
- 6.83sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.32sp50
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Ohio State | 11 | 13 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2017 | Ohio State | 14 | 36 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2018 | Ohio State | 13 | 81 | 2.5 | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| 2019 | Ohio State | 14 | 75 | 4.5 | 0 | 4 | 0 |
| Career | — | 52 | 205 | 10 | 1 | 9 | 0 |
Season and career lines from Sports-Reference with bowl games included; the four seasons sum exactly to the 52-game, 205-tackle, 30-tackle-for-loss career total. Ohio State official bio lists 53 games, 16.5 tackles for loss in 2019 and 29.0 for his career, a small discrepancy in how bowl and championship games are counted; the Sports-Reference figures are used throughout for consistency. His 2018 interception came against TCU.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A durable rotational starter who fills a run-down role for years without ever being a three-down player.
The ceiling: an aggressive downhill linebacker whose physicality earns him an every-down job on a good defense.
A linebacker whose coverage limits reduce him to a pure special-teams job that lasts only as long as the roster spot.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Baltimore used him exactly as advertised for five years. Harrison played sixteen games as a rookie in 2020 with 39 tackles, then settled into a rotational and special-teams role: 20 tackles in 2021, 26 across all seventeen games in 2022, 17 with eight starts in 2023. His best season came in 2024, when he played fifteen games with seven starts and set career highs with 50 tackles, two sacks and three tackles for loss for a defense that finished first in the league against the run. Through five Ravens seasons he had 35 starts and 30 special-teams tackles.
Pittsburgh signed him to a two-year deal in March 2025 and he played eleven games with 39 tackles before moving on to the Giants for 2026. The career line sits at 88 games, 193 tackles, two sacks and one pass defensed across seven seasons. In hindsight this is what a third-round linebacker with a hard coverage ceiling is supposed to look like: no Pro Bowls, no signature moment, but a seven-year professional who kept getting signed because he tackles, sets edges and plays special teams without complaint.
Data note: from New England