Devin
Harper.
Devin
Harper.
Oklahoma St.
Harper is a 6-foot, 234-pound linebacker who tested like a track athlete: a 4.50 forty, a 4.03 short shuttle, a 6.84 three-cone and a 40.5-inch vertical at his pro day. The agility numbers are the story of his game — he changes direction instantly and closes ground in a blink.
Oklahoma State used that burst as a weapon, spying quarterbacks and sending him on delayed pressures, and he finished his last season with fifteen quarterback hurries. But 31 7/8-inch arms on a six-foot frame is a small tackle radius, and he has no length to disengage once a guard gets hands on him. He also waited four years to become a starter, so the instincts lag behind the athleticism: he is quick to the wrong gap as often as the right one.
A nickel-heavy defense that keeps him clean behind a penetrating front and uses his burst as a blitzer and spy rather than a stack linebacker.
Year 1: core special-teams player with situational pressure snaps. Ceiling: nickel WILL who plays 300 defensive snaps a year.
A base 3-4 that asks him to stack a guard on early downs and hold a gap against a pulling lineman.
He needed a defensive front that promised never to let a lineman touch him.
Devin Harper vs Tulsa — Oklahoma State LB Film Breakdown
All-22 study of his range and blitz timing in his starting season.
Devin Harper 2020 Highlights — Oklahoma State
The rotational year before he became a full-time starter.
Devin Harper post Bedlam — 2021
After the Caleb Williams spy game that defined his college career.
Harper grew up in Austell, Georgia and played at Karns High School in Tennessee, where he was a two-way running back and linebacker. As a senior on a 3-7 team he ran for 1,403 yards and eighteen touchdowns, including a 345-yard game against South-Doyle. His younger brother Thomas plays safety for the Detroit Lions.
At Oklahoma State he redshirted and then spent four seasons as a role player. He made five tackles and blocked a punt in 2017, then played all thirteen games in 2018 with 44 tackles, 2.5 sacks and a 24-yard interception return for a touchdown against South Alabama. He played through pain in 2019, wearing a cast for part of a ten-game season with 34 tackles and three sacks, and added 37 tackles and an interception in eleven games in 2020.
Then, as a sixth-year super senior and team captain, he finally started. He played all fourteen games with thirteen starts and put up 95 tackles, eleven tackles for loss and six sacks, plus those fifteen hurries. The signature performance came in Bedlam: spying Caleb Williams, he had ten tackles and closed the game with a hurry, a five-yard sack and an open-field tackle short of the marker on three straight plays. One elite year, elite testing, and a body too small to project as a three-down starter is a sixth-round profile.
- 01
Change of direction
a 4.03 short shuttle and 6.84 three-cone are outstanding marks that translate directly to his open-field range.
- 02
Explosiveness
a 40.5-inch vertical and a 4.50 forty at 234 pounds gave him a rare burst for an off-ball linebacker.
- 03
Quarterback spy work
he shut down Caleb Williams in the 2021 Bedlam game, limiting him to under two yards a carry.
- 04
Blitz timing
six sacks and fifteen quarterback hurries as a senior, the second-highest single-season hurry total in school history.
- 05
Special teams value
he blocked a punt as a redshirt freshman and ranked third on the team in kickoff coverage tackles in 2019.
- 01
Size and length
six feet tall with 31 7/8-inch arms, so blockers cover him up and his tackle radius is short in traffic.
- 02
Block deconstruction
he has to run around contact rather than through it, and guards climbing to him erase him from the play.
- 03
One year of starting
four seasons as a reserve before a single full year, leaving real questions about his diagnosis under pressure.
- 04
Age
he turned 24 during his rookie season after six years in college, leaving almost no developmental runway for a project.
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Oklahoma St. | — | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | Oklahoma St. | 13 | 44 | 2.5 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 2019 | Oklahoma St. | 10 | 34 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | Oklahoma St. | 11 | 37 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2021 | Oklahoma St. | 14 | 95 | 6 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| Career | — | 48 | 215 | 13.5 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
The 2020 and 2021 lines come from his cfbstats player page at Oklahoma State; note that cfbstats credits him with 95 tackles and eleven tackles for loss in 2021 where some secondary sources round to 96 and ten, and the cfbstats figures are used here. cfbstats has no page for him in 2017, 2018 or 2019, so those three seasons come from the itemized official Oklahoma State biography. The five seasons sum exactly to the career line of 215 tackles, 13.5 sacks and two interceptions. Games played in 2017 are not published anywhere official, so that cell and the career games total are left empty rather than estimated, and tackles for loss, passes defended and forced fumbles are left empty for the seasons where the official bio does not itemize them.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Depth linebacker who hangs on rosters and practice squads without earning defensive work.
Late-round linebacker who turns special-teams excellence into a long professional career and some defensive snaps.
Athletic sixth-round linebacker who washes out after three years of inactive game days.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Dallas took him at 193 and never found room. He was inactive four times as a rookie and appeared in the first three games on special teams without recording a statistic before Achilles tendinitis put him on injured reserve on October 29, 2022. In 2023, when DeMarvion Overshown was lost for the season, Markquese Bell rather than Harper was moved into the strongside linebacker job, and the Cowboys waived him on September 28 to make roster room for an offensive lineman.
Cincinnati claimed him the next day. He was inactive for eight games, played six on special teams and made two coverage tackles, and the Bengals waived him on August 27, 2024. He spent that season on the Pittsburgh practice squad, signed a reserve/future deal in January 2025, and was waived with an injury designation on August 18 before being released two days later. Three seasons, five career tackles, no defensive role anywhere. The testing numbers were real; the football player who could survive an NFL guard climbing to the second level never showed up.