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O’Gara: Harold Perkins is done for the year, but there’s a case for him not to be done at LSU
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There’s a possibility that Harold Perkins’ last play at the college level was his attempt to make a tackle in the open field, which resulted in a season-ending knee injury. If Perkins announces at some point in the next few months that he’s entering the 2025 NFL Draft, nobody will be surprised.
After all, he had 2 seasons’ worth of starts at the SEC level, which led to him showing up in all the way-too-early mock drafts. On top of that, Perkins’ well-documented post-freshman year misusage would suggest that returning to LSU isn’t in the cards. All of that is fair.
But you know what else is fair? If Perkins decides to run it back for another year in Baton Rouge.
There’s a case to be made. It doesn’t mean it’s the best case, but there’s a legitimate argument that Perkins could help himself in the short- and long-term by returning for his senior season.
By the way, it would technically be his redshirt junior season because Perkins only played in 4 games in 2024. He wouldn’t even need a medical redshirt. So if the thought process is “he wouldn’t return because then all of his eggs are in that basket,” remember that he’ll have 2 years of eligibility left.
We could dig into the NIL side of it, too. Perkins would get taken care of. No, he wouldn’t get first-round money, but there’s no doubt he’d be heavily compensated in ways pre-NIL players could only dream of. That mitigates some of that risk.
There’s risk baked in with his current situation. Perkins is out for the year, which means he’s unlikely to be able to train for the NFL Draft fully. For some, that might not be significant. Marvin Harrison Jr. opted out of all the Combine drills because he wanted to focus on football-specific training. Harrison was also viewed as a generational prospect who came off the board as a top-5 pick.
Perkins isn’t in that camp. He’s a player who, at this stage of his college career, is still working to find the right position for his frame and skill set. Those guys aren’t taken as top-10 picks. Or if they are considered to be a bit of a tweener, we’ve at least already seen them play a position at an extremely high level.
Isaiah Simmons is a good example of that. In college, he started his Clemson career as a do-it-all safety. After he shifted to linebacker as a junior, he opted for another year at the position. He won the Butkus Award for the national runner-up and improved his Draft stock to the point where he felt like a lock to be a top-10 pick even as more of a hybrid player. It helped that Simmons started his career at 205 pounds and weighed in at 238 at the NFL Combine. He was 6-4, so he could put on that kind of weight.
Perkins is 6-1, 225 pounds, which would still be among the 10 lightest middle linebackers in the NFL (only 2 qualified edge-rushers are less than 240 pounds). Mind you, that’s after he put on weight for his junior season. In 2023 when he made the switch to inside linebacker, he was around 218 pounds. When I asked Brian Kelly in July what he would’ve done differently with Perkins in 2023, that’s exactly what he pointed to.
“We would have tied him down and made him eat more,” Kelly said at SEC Media Days. “You know, we had an issue relative to his weight gain and we didn’t feel like that it really was his best position to be inside. I just felt like we were still in the developmental process with Harold … you’ll see him today. Over 220 pounds and physically strong enough to handle the rigors of inside and out.
“I just felt like we were needing to put him in the best position possible to succeed to now where he is physically in a position and he’s matured, he now is able to be in more than one position.”
Kelly said they were still in the development process with Perkins at inside linebacker. Even before the injury, Perkins still wasn’t what LSU hoped he could be at inside linebacker which was why he was moved to the more versatile “Star” position in Week 3. That didn’t result in the splash plays that we saw from Perkins as a true freshman in 2022, like when he had his 4-sack game against Arkansas.
Harold Perkins. Again.
ESPN pic.twitter.com/0KZbc9ihfT
— LSU Football (@LSUfootball) November 12, 2022
In 4 games of inside linebacker/Star in 2024, Perkins had 1.5 tackles for loss and 0 sacks. No matter what position he played, Perkins’ best asset is his ability to rush the passer. The frustration with his 2023 usage was that he only did that 21% of his defensive snaps. In Blake Baker’s defense in 2024, Perkins did that even less at 19%. It’s possible that distribution could’ve changed with more snaps at Star. It’s also possible that he would’ve continued to improve in coverage, where he showed signs of promise last year.
For now, though, what do NFL scouts really know about Perkins? That his best plays at LSU happened when he was a true freshman playing in a see-ball, get-ball position that he won’t have the size to play at in the NFL? Instead of working him out at different spots to see his ideal fit during the pre-Draft process, Perkins will be working his way back from the knee injury.
That’s the difference between Perkins and fellow former LSU freshman sensation Derek Stingley, Jr. With the latter, there was never any doubt about whether he’d have the chops to line up on the outside and be a starting NFL corner, even though the latter half of his LSU career was defined by injuries/Bo Pelini.
With Perkins, the future is less clear. In many ways, that makes sense. The guy just turned 20 years old 2 weeks ago, which is another thing to remember with that pending NFL decision. A lot has been thrown on his plate.
Perhaps he can dictate the terms of a potential return to LSU, and not just from an NIL standpoint. He can tell the LSU coaching staff how he’d like to be used and prepare his body for whatever that entails. LSU would welcome that with open arms.
Well, check that. I’m not sure LSU would sign up for Perkins getting his wish of playing tailback — something he expressed actual interest in after getting a bowl-game touchdown run — though given the instability we’ve seen at that position during the Kelly era, that might not be something for the Tigers to scoff at.
What’s clear is that Perkins hasn’t quite reached the massive potential he flashed during his shot-out-of-a-cannon true freshman season. LSU has admittedly come up short in harnessing that All-American potential. If Perkins opts to bet on his talent and bank on an NFL team finding ways to maximize it, anyone could understand that decision.
For now, it remains to be seen what’s next.
“Way too early for any declarations as far as if that was his last game or not (at LSU),”Brian Kelly said about Harold Perkins, who is a junior and could enter the 2025 NFL Draft. “I don’t think any of those decisions are made.” He and his family busy scheduling surgery and rehab.
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) September 23, 2024
If that’s the last we see of Perkins in a college uniform, it’ll be a shame. For those of us who wish to see a complete, well-rounded version of the former 5-star recruit, a return to college would be a dream.
But if that’s not the move that awaits, I suppose there’s another option.
We can always put that Arkansas game on loop.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
