VonDoom
08-27-2015, 03:14 PM
Nice piece on our boy Harris at SI:
In 2014, Harris was limited for exactly one game—he played just 39 defensive snaps in the team’s season opener—and by Week 2, he was at full strength. Harris finished the season as Pro Football Focus’s highest-rated corner, with 49 tackles, one sack, five quarterback hurries, three interceptions and 10 passes defensed. In December, he signed a five-year, $42.5 million extension with the Broncos, making him the highest paid undrafted corner in NFL history, and later that month, he received the team’s Ed Block Courage Award. In conjunction with the honor, coaches played a tribute video, which is when it struck many of Harris’s teammates: Their Pro Bowl cornerback had just finished the best season of his career, and he’d barely participated in the preseason while finishing his rehab.
“(The video showed) what he had to go through, what he had to come back from, the way he went after it, the tenacity that he approached it with, and the performance he’s had,” Del Rio said last winter. “It’s been a special year for him in a lot of different ways.”
Even so, Harris’s Pro Bowl berth was by virtue of player and coach nominations after he was snubbed in the fan vote. When 2014’s All-Pro teams was revealed, he was again disappointed; though he made second team, he trailed Darrelle Revis and Richard Sherman by 33 and 32 votes, respectively, marking one of the biggest gaps from first to second team at any position. And last summer, when the NFL Network revealed its Top 100 Players list, Harris wasn’t included. “That’s just the story of my life,” he said with a smile. It’s also the source of his motivation.
Interesting opening to the article, where they talk about Harris not being matched up with TY Hilton in that playoff game:
It was supposed to be the game of Chris Harris’s career. Almost a year removed from ACL surgery, the Broncos cornerback was healthy, ready for the postseason and perfectly suited to defend his likely assignment against the Colts. “I’m made to cover a guy like T.Y. Hilton,” Harris said before Denver’s Jan. 11, 2015 divisional round game—and he wasn’t exaggerating. Hilton is small, quick, shifty, tenacious, the perfect complement to the Broncos’ speedy, relentless corner.
But even as the words came out of Harris’s mouth, he knew Hilton wouldn’t be his man. The Broncos had installed their game plan, and then-defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio had assigned Aqib Talib to the Colts’ no. 1 receiver. There was nothing to do or say. Talib is one of the better cornerbacks in the game, so Harris couldn’t question Del Rio, and he certainly wasn’t going to leak his team’s game plan, however harebrained it seemed.
The rest: http://www.si.com/nfl/2015/08/27/chris-harris-denver-broncos-2015-nfl-season
In 2014, Harris was limited for exactly one game—he played just 39 defensive snaps in the team’s season opener—and by Week 2, he was at full strength. Harris finished the season as Pro Football Focus’s highest-rated corner, with 49 tackles, one sack, five quarterback hurries, three interceptions and 10 passes defensed. In December, he signed a five-year, $42.5 million extension with the Broncos, making him the highest paid undrafted corner in NFL history, and later that month, he received the team’s Ed Block Courage Award. In conjunction with the honor, coaches played a tribute video, which is when it struck many of Harris’s teammates: Their Pro Bowl cornerback had just finished the best season of his career, and he’d barely participated in the preseason while finishing his rehab.
“(The video showed) what he had to go through, what he had to come back from, the way he went after it, the tenacity that he approached it with, and the performance he’s had,” Del Rio said last winter. “It’s been a special year for him in a lot of different ways.”
Even so, Harris’s Pro Bowl berth was by virtue of player and coach nominations after he was snubbed in the fan vote. When 2014’s All-Pro teams was revealed, he was again disappointed; though he made second team, he trailed Darrelle Revis and Richard Sherman by 33 and 32 votes, respectively, marking one of the biggest gaps from first to second team at any position. And last summer, when the NFL Network revealed its Top 100 Players list, Harris wasn’t included. “That’s just the story of my life,” he said with a smile. It’s also the source of his motivation.
Interesting opening to the article, where they talk about Harris not being matched up with TY Hilton in that playoff game:
It was supposed to be the game of Chris Harris’s career. Almost a year removed from ACL surgery, the Broncos cornerback was healthy, ready for the postseason and perfectly suited to defend his likely assignment against the Colts. “I’m made to cover a guy like T.Y. Hilton,” Harris said before Denver’s Jan. 11, 2015 divisional round game—and he wasn’t exaggerating. Hilton is small, quick, shifty, tenacious, the perfect complement to the Broncos’ speedy, relentless corner.
But even as the words came out of Harris’s mouth, he knew Hilton wouldn’t be his man. The Broncos had installed their game plan, and then-defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio had assigned Aqib Talib to the Colts’ no. 1 receiver. There was nothing to do or say. Talib is one of the better cornerbacks in the game, so Harris couldn’t question Del Rio, and he certainly wasn’t going to leak his team’s game plan, however harebrained it seemed.
The rest: http://www.si.com/nfl/2015/08/27/chris-harris-denver-broncos-2015-nfl-season