Chris Harris on being left one-on-one with Antonio Brown:
“I mean [Defensive Coordinator] Coach Wade [Phillips] trusts us. He trusts me to go out there and play man-to-man the whole game. That’s what I’ve got to do. Whatever it is, that’s what we’ve been doing the whole season. We can’t just change—what week is it? We can’t just change at the end. It happens. When you play straight man-to-man like that against a top receiver in the league, he won the day.”
Here’s what I respect about Chris Harris: While he, and the rest of the Broncos secondary, may talk a little too much, he’s more than willing to take the blame when he struggles. Whereas many of the league’s elite corners would remain silent or find an excuse, Harris simply stood up and said, “This one is on me.”
That said, I do question Wade Phillips’ decision to leave Harris on an island with Brown all day. I understand that the defense “can’t just change at the end,” but it was pretty apparent that whatever they were doing was not working. Now, the fact that their safeties were either missing entirely or playing with a broken leg didn’t help, but a little creativity could have gone a long way.
Either way, Harris simply got beat. And that’s going to happen when you play a guy like Antonio Brown, someone Kubiak called the NFL’s MVP.
