Inside The Huskies

Harris Back From Injury, Could Have Trouble Making Browns Roster

A year ago, the former Husky center was the Cleveland starter.
Dan Raley|
Harris Back From Injury, Could Have Trouble Making Browns Roster
Harris Back From Injury, Could Have Trouble Making Browns Roster

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Washington Huskies

A year ago, the Cleveland Browns came out and designated Nick Harris as their starting center.

They cut veteran JC Tretter and his expensive contract to make this happen for the former University of Washington standout.

The Browns had the three-year veteran on the field and over the ball for the first preseason game.

However, this story did not have happy ending at all: Harris lasted two plays and suffered a season-ending knee injury, a torn ACL.

Today, the two-time, first-team All-Pac-12 center from Inglewood, California, is healthy again and was in attendance this week when the Browns opened training camp.

Yet the NFL, as Harris painfully has learned, waits for no one. A starter 12 months ago, he might have great difficulty simply earning a roster spot this time around, team analysts suggest.

In his absence, he watched Ethan Pocic — who played in Seattle for the Seahawks while Harris was cross town having success at the UW — take over as the Browns center and play so well he had the third-highest grade of any NFL center as graded by Pro Football Focus and received a three-year contract extension.

Not only that, the Browns drafted Ohio State center Luke Wypler, a sixth-round pick who is talented enough while bringing that local Ohio appeal.

All of a sudden, Harris is a healthy yet vulnerable roster candidate as he enters his final contract year of his rookie deal.

In his favor, Harris played well in 2021 when he spelled the long since departed Tretter, which was reason enough to make him a starting candidate in the first place. 

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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