Too Deep 96 #61-#64: Round Up the Rebels

Draft profiles on Ole Miss stars Trey Amos, Pooh Paul, Princely Umanmeilen and Tre Harris, with music by Tori Amos and Citizen Cope.

Walter Nolen and J.J. Pegues, the two stud Ole Miss defensive tackles, are long off the board. Now it’s time to examine some of the Rebels’ second-tier prospects. Just as in last week’s Ohio State segment of the Too Deep 96, I fudged a bit to get all of the teammates into one feature. I apologize to anyone who thinks there’s a real difference between ranking a prospect 54th or 64th, or honestly believes that NFL teams make such distinctions when assembling their draft boards (which are tier-based and highly scheme-dependent).

#61 Trey Amos, Cornerback, Ole Miss

Amos tied TCU’s Lamareon James for the power-conference lead among cornerbacks with 15 passes defensed in 2024.

Amos came to Ole Miss via the University of Louisiana, with a 2023 pitstop at Alabama. He’s 6-foot-1 and wears 197 pounds like a tuxedo. He uses his long arms like flyswatters.

Amos’ specialty is off coverage: he slaps a lot of passes away on plays in front of him, and throwing over him on deep routes is like trying to clear a line of trees on a tee shot. Amos recognizes patterns in front of him well and can peel off his receiver to make a play on the ball in the air. He’s no thumping run defender, but he reacts so quickly to wide receiver screens that he often arrives just after the ball to make a tackle.

Amos would rank higher if he didn’t allow so many catches in front of him: he’s a little too reliant on his extend-o-arms on shorter routes. Pure speedsters also slip past him now and then. And he played on the back end of a defense that generated gobs of pressure, which made life a little easier on him. But Amos is a future NFL starter who, yes, may have ranked a few spots higher if I were not lumping Ole Miss prospects into one feature.

Oh, and because it has been going through your head since the moment you read the name “Trey Amos:”

#62 Pooh Paul, Linebacker, Ole Miss

Paul’s first name is “Chris.” But good luck searching the web for Chris Paul information. Apparently, there’s a basketball player by that name. Pooh Paul is not related to the basketball star, nor to RuPaul, nor to Tori Amos.

Paul rushed the quarterback just 69 times but recorded 22 pressures. That’s a remarkable pressure rate, and Paul indeed explodes into the backfield, whether he’s blitzing through the A-gap or off the edge. He’s also alert and active in underneath pass coverage: one interception, two dropped INTs, a tip to a teammate for a pick against LSU and seven receptions for 38 yards allowed.

Paul, who spent three years at Arkansas before portalling to Ole Miss in 2024, weighs just 222 pounds. Blockers can knock him around. Fortunately for Paul, blockers were busy elsewhere when facing the Ole Miss defensive line. But for every undersized middle linebacker who becomes Zach Thomas, a dozen others prove too scrawny for run defense and get stuck on the dime package/kickoff coverage units.

Paul’s twitchy acceleration, aggressive style and coverage skills should make him a useful NFL starter. He could thrive in a system with three gap-plugging linemen who eat up blockers so he can flow to the football.

#63 Princely Umanmeilen, Edge Rusher, Ole Miss

To recount a tale from the Combine floor: Umanmeilen has brothers named Prince, Princewill and Princeton; his father wished to commemorate the family’s royal Nigerian lineage. I asked the most insightful question about the Umanmeilen family I could think of:

ME: Didn’t your parents ever get confused when trying to call for one of you?

UMANMEILEN: Yeah. They would go through the whole list of names before they got to who they actually wanted to call. Like, say they were trying to call me, they would go “Prince, Princewill, Prince .. I mean, Princely.” So it got to a point where they started cutting off the names. My mom started calling me “Lee,” started calling Princewill “Will,” and Prince “Prince.”

So, that makes Umanmeilen a brother named Lee …

Like Trey Amos and Pooh Paul, Umanmeilen transferred to the Rebels in 2024; he spent the bulk of his collegiate career at Florida. He looks like an action figure and has some impressive stats, including a run of two-sack games against Oklahoma, Arkansas and Georgia.

I wish his tape were tastier. Umanmeilen is a straight-line stand-up edge rusher who either wins with initial quickness or gets blocked. He feasted on quarterbacks who had nowhere else to go once Walter Nolen and others obliterated the pocket. Umanmeilen’s Combine results were good but not spectacular; he did not stand out from what was admittedly a very good crowd.

Umanmeilen is a Day Two pick based on tools and major-program success. He certainly has upside. But he also has the overall profile of a college star who ends up as just one of the guys in a rotation in the NFL.

#64 Tre Harris, WR, Ole Miss

Ole Miss is facing some opponent that’s not in their weight class. Furman, perhaps. Or Middle Tennessee State. Or Georgia Southern. The poor small-program cornerback standing across from Harris is aware that he is facing an NFL prospect. Naturally, that cornerback gives Harris a cushion wide enough to park a school bus.

Harris runs a little curl. Jaxson Dart flicks him the ball. Harris catches it and perhaps turns up field for a few more yards. It happens over and over again.

The Rebels finally embark upon their conference schedule. Harris goes 11-176-1 against Kentucky, then 3-81-0 with a deep catch against busted coverage (with a would-be catch poked from his hands) against South Carolina. Harris goes 7-102-1, though with a dropped potential touchdown, against LSU, but he suffers a groin injury. He misses a few weeks, catches one teardrop bomb against Florida, then re-injures his groin and is lost for the season.

All told, Harris went 60-1,030-7 on the season but 28-534-4 against non-power conference competition. He also went 10-94-0 against Wake Forest, who finished 15th in the ACC (I hate modern college football’s megaconferences), but let’s not split hairs too finely. A huge percentage of his production came against glorified sparring partners.

Harris also caught 24 “curls” according to Sports Info Solution, many of them the little tosses against plz don’t set me on fire coverage described in the first paragraph. That’s 40% of his total production.

So how on earth are we supposed to evaluate him?

Harris ran a 4.54-second forty at the Combine, which is a yellow flag for a big-not-huge 6-foot-2 receiver. He got open deep often enough against LSU/Kentucky-level opponents to suggest that his field speed is greater than his stopwatch speed. But Harris’ film is also full of drops, bobbles, peanut punches and one fumble after he failed to secure a catch. He made some contested catches, but he let Dart down a few times as well. And his route tree is a fireplace poker: a straight arrow with a short hook on the side.

Ole Miss liked to collect big, toolsy receivers long before Lane Kiffin arrived. Sometimes, those receivers became A.J. Brown or DK Metcalf. Other times, they became Jonathan Mingo or (going way back to trigger some Vikings fan nightmares) Laquan Treadwell.

Harris probably ranks somewhere in the middle of the group, but leaning toward the Mingo side. He has NFL talent, but there are so many yellow flags that a prudent team should wait until the third round and bargain-hunt for him.

Pooh Paul, looking very angry about the possibility that I use the Tori Amos video as the promo slide for this feature instead of this photo.