Kevin
Harris.
Kevin
Harris.
South Carolina· 5'10"· 221 lb
Harris is a 5-foot-9 7/8, 221-pound back built like a bowling ball, and he runs like one. He takes a single cut, gets his pads down and finishes forward, which is how he averaged 6.2 yards a carry on 185 attempts in the SEC as a sophomore.
The contact balance is the trait. Arm tackles slide off, and he keeps his feet through the wash at the line of scrimmage without needing a clean hole. He is more athletic than the body type suggests too — a 38 1/2-inch vertical, a 10-foot-6 broad jump and 21 bench reps. What he is not is fast or shifty: a 4.62 forty and a 7.39 three-cone mean he does not pull away from safeties and he is not beating an unblocked defender in space. The 243-yard, five-touchdown game against Ole Miss is the tape.
A gap and duo run game that gives him a single crease downhill, paired with a receiving back who owns the third-down snaps.
Year 1: short-yardage and goal-line specialist behind a starter. Ceiling: early-down thumper in a committee with 150 carries.
A wide-zone offense that asks him to press the edge and win with speed to the perimeter.
Every snap he plays has to come between the tackles.
Kevin Harris 2020 Highlights | South Carolina RB
His first-team All-SEC sophomore season, including the Ole Miss game.
Kevin Harris (South Carolina RB) vs Florida (2020)
Every touch against Florida during the 1,138-yard season.
Kevin Harris South Carolina Highlights - Every Season
Career-long cut-up covering all three years in Columbia.
Harris grew up in Hinesville, Georgia and played at Bradwell Institute, where he ran for 1,680 yards and sixteen touchdowns as a junior and 1,556 yards and 22 touchdowns as a senior, taking Region 2-6A Player of the Year both seasons. The recruitment was not what those numbers suggest — his offers were the service academies, Cornell, Furman, The Citadel, Middle Tennessee State, Tulane and Wofford — and he took South Carolina.
He was efficient in limited work as a true freshman: six games, 21 carries, 179 yards, four touchdowns and three catches. Then the sophomore season arrived. Named the starter a few weeks in, he ran for 1,138 yards and fifteen touchdowns on 185 carries with 21 receptions, including 243 yards and five scores against Ole Miss, the fifth-highest rushing total in school history. First-team All-SEC.
The junior year did not follow. Twelve games, 152 carries, 659 yards and four touchdowns at 4.3 a carry, with the efficiency gone even as the workload stayed. He declared anyway. New England took him 183rd overall as a short-yardage and rotational back.
- 01
Contact balance
runs through arm tackles and keeps his legs churning in the pile, the trait that produced 6.2 yards a carry in the SEC.
- 02
Short-yardage value
23 college rushing touchdowns, including fifteen as a sophomore, with the mass to convert third and one.
- 03
Vision
a genuine one-cut runner who picks a lane and commits, reading the front rather than dancing behind it.
- 04
Lower-body explosion
a 38 1/2-inch vertical, a 10-foot-6 broad jump and 21 bench reps, uncommon pop and strength for a 221-pound back.
- 05
Peak production
1,138 yards and a 243-yard, five-touchdown game against Ole Miss, first-team All-SEC as a sophomore.
- 01
Long speed
a 4.62 forty, which means safeties catch him from behind and the twenty-yard run rarely becomes a sixty-yard run.
- 02
Lateral agility
a 7.39 three-cone is poor for the position and shows up when the first read is covered and he has to improvise.
- 03
Declining efficiency
6.2 yards a carry as a sophomore fell to 4.3 as a junior, the wrong trend in the evaluation season.
- 04
Passing-game role
only 35 career catches and limited pass protection work, so he comes off the field on third down.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- —s
- Vertical
- 38.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 126inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- 21repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Att | Yds | TD | Rec | RecYds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | South Carolina | 6 | 21 | 179 | 4 | 3 | 26 |
| 2020 | South Carolina | 10 | 185 | 1138 | 15 | 21 | 159 |
| 2021 | South Carolina | 12 | 152 | 659 | 4 | 11 | 89 |
| Career | — | 28 | 358 | 1976 | 23 | 35 | 274 |
Lines come from the Sports-Reference rushing and receiving table with the bowl game included in 2021, and they sum exactly to the career row: 358 carries for 1,976 yards and 23 touchdowns plus 35 catches for 274 yards and one score across 28 games. The South Carolina athletics archive independently confirms the identical rushing totals for all three seasons. cfbstats, which excludes the bowl, lists 657 rushing yards and twelve catches for 95 yards in 2021 against Sports-Reference's 659 and eleven for 89. The receiving touchdown zeros in 2019 and 2021 are verified seasons without one, not missing entries.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Physical between-the-tackles runner who holds a rotational job without ever claiming the backfield.
Big back with balance who grows into a lead role by adding receiving value — exactly the player who blocked Harris.
Downhill runner whose lack of passing-game work keeps him on the roster bubble year after year.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Four years, four roster cuts, no career. New England waived him on August 30, 2022, signed him to the practice squad the next day and promoted him to the active roster in October. He got five games as a rookie, eighteen carries for 52 yards, and scored his only NFL touchdown on a fourteen-yard run against Arizona in Week 14.
The pattern repeated exactly. Waived on August 29, 2023 and re-signed to the practice squad, promoted on December 19, and he finished that year with the bulk of his professional production. Waived again on August 27, 2024 and back to the practice squad. Jacksonville signed him on August 19, 2025 and cut him a week later on final roster cuts. The career line reads 117 rushing yards on 3.4 a carry with two touchdowns and three catches for 58 yards. A back with no third-down role and no special teams path has to be a better runner than everyone else on the roster, and he never was.