MATTHEWS, N.C. — The state of North Carolina is loaded with talent in the 2026 recruiting class and our Southern Swing tour has made multiple stops to check in on that talent. This past week it was a stop at Weddington High School just south of Charlotte, where the Buckeyes have offered several prospects in the 2026 class, including linebacker/edge prospect Andrew Harris.
Harris and a couple of his teammates visited Ohio State this spring and the Buckeyes made a good first impression.
“It was so nice,” Harris recalled. “The school itself is big, but it was quiet there (around the facility). Visiting with all of the coaches, sitting down talking to them, they talk to you like grown men. They don’t try to sweeten you just to get you to come to their school. They’ll talk to you like you’re a grown man.”
Harris appreciated the straight talk from the coaching staff.
“You need that as a coach,” he explained. “You can’t just sit around and think everything is going to be handed to you. It was just a good thing for me, my brother (Aiden Harris), and my cousin (Thomas Davis Jr.).”
Harris is one of the more versatile defensive prospects in the 2026 recruiting class with the ability to play all over a defensive front seven. Ohio State explained to him where they see him right now and where his body could take him down the road.
“They said I would be playing the JACK position,” he explained. “It’s their outside linebacker/defensive end position. So I could drop back in coverage or sometimes rush the edge. They told me if I get a little bigger that I could stay strictly at D-end but if I stay the same height that I am now, I’d be at the JACK.”
The fit at the JACK position would be a natural one for Harris who says he cross-trains between defensive line and linebacker already.
“It’s nothing different, for real,” he said. “I do 7-on-7. My uncle Thomas Davis will take me out on the field to do linebacker stuff, so it’s nothing new to me. I would still be doing the same stuff that I do at home.”
Hear more from the talented defender in our one-on-one interview from Southern Swing, including which current Ohio State Buckeye Harris found out he was related to.
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