Being the big kid wasn't always a pleasant experience for Tommie Harris, who remembers wearing a trash bag as a fourth-grader and running to sweat off five pounds and get under the 150-pound weight limit for his youth football league.
"It didn't work,'' Harris said at the late-February NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis. "Nah, it didn't work at all. My mom never knew I was doing it until she caught me and thought I was crazy. I'm only in the fourth grade, jogging around with a bag. I only did that for about a week, somewhere around there. But it didn't work. I still ate what I ate. I didn't know any better.''
Harris's heft should provide a far more rewarding experience for him Saturday, when the University of Oklahoma defensive tackle likely will be selected in the upper half of the first round of the NFL draft. Harris and the University of Miami's Vince Wilfork head what the league's talent evaluators call a solid class of defensive tackles.
"There's good depth in the defensive line, especially at tackle,'' Houston Texans General Manager Charley Casserly said late last week. "There are good players in every round. Last year, there were maybe more first-rounders, but this year there are more good players that you can get in the second and third rounds.''
Harris has two cousins in the NFL — Detroit Lions offensive tackle Stockar McDougle and Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Jerome McDougle — and says both are like brothers. They were first-round draft picks, with Stockar going on the 20th overall selection in 2000 and Jerome on the 15th choice last year. Harris could do even better than that.
The Washington Redskins, who have the fifth overall selection Saturday, could use a defensive tackle but also have other, perhaps more pressing needs. The Atlanta Falcons, who have the eighth pick, are said by executives from other clubs to be leaning toward taking Harris or Wilfork. The Chicago Bears, who have the 14th choice, could select the one who remains available.
Harris decided to leave Oklahoma after a junior season in which he won the Lombardi Award as the nation's top lineman. He averaged only about 30 to 35 snaps per game playing on a Sooners defense that rotated players in and out of the lineup and turned many lopsided victories over to backups after halftime. He is not overly impressed by his play during a 2003 season in which he was credited with 37 tackles — 10 for losses — and five sacks.
"I don't believe I'm that good,'' Harris said. "But I give effort every down.''
Scouts believe that Harris is quite good, calling him a quick, agile player who disrupts an offense with his ability to penetrate into the backfield. The league has reached the point in its move toward ever-bulkier linemen that there are some concerns that Harris might not be quite large enough, at around 290 pounds, to withstand double-team blocking by NFL offensive linemen, and there have been reports that a few clubs are wary about a shoulder injury and might rank Wilfork ahead of him.
But an executive from one team with a top-10 pick said in recent days that he had studied Harris's medical records and had no major concerns, and he thinks that Harris is plenty big enough and will be the first defensive tackle off the board Saturday. Not bad for the self-described former "real fat'' kid who weighed more than 300 pounds as a high school freshman before resolving to get in better shape.
Wilfork's weight-loss push came more recently, as he lost 22 pounds just before the combine to get down to 323. He, too, is leaving school after his junior season and hopes to be the league's next great defensive tackle from Miami following Jerome Brown, Cortez Kennedy, Russell Maryland and Warren Sapp. He is nicknamed "Baby Sapp'' and said he talked to Kennedy regularly last season.
"We have a tradition of defensive tackles,'' Wilfork said at the combine. "Hopefully I'm the next guy on the list.''
His Hurricanes career was a mixture of on-the-field accomplishments and off-the-field tragedies. His parents died about six months apart in 2002. His father, David, died that June at age 48 of kidney failure related to diabetes. His mother died at 46 that December, five weeks after suffering a stroke. He has tattoos on his right arm saying, "Rest In Peace, Dad'' and "Rest in Peace, Mom,'' and he wears a gold medallion that contains his parents' prom photo.
"Everywhere I go, I have this,'' Wilfork said. "Everywhere I'm at, I take it with me. If you don't see it around my neck, I guarantee it's in my pocket. . . . Luckily, my teammates and coaching staff pulled through with me and helped me get to where I'm at right now. . . . I'm still not over it. But certain things happen for a reason. I really believe that.''
Whichever club takes Wilfork will be getting a hefty, run-stopping tackle to anchor its defensive line. What it won't be getting, said Wilfork, is a Sapp-style self-promoter.
"I'm a little bigger than Warren,'' Wilfork said. "I think we look alike. [But] I'm not a big talker. I don't run my mouth on the field. I don't do that because I believe that when you make a tackle, you're supposed to do that. There's nothing else to say. That's what you get paid to do.''