Chris Harris joined the 1st and 10 at 10 crew on Orange and Blue 760 today to talk about a variety of topics (it’s really great listen, you should check the whole thing out), but the one that stuck out to me was when he was asked about the defense over the last few weeks.
Here was his answer (starting around the 6:00 mark):
“It’s about execution and right now we are very inconsistent on our execution. We’re still not executing the defense properly. People can go off on Joe Woods or whatever, but we’re not executing right, in crucial moments on things that we practice and you expect to nail, that you gotta nail, in those games. So we have to raise our level of execution up and do our job better.”
Chris Harris today on @OrangeBlue760 : "We're still not executing the defense properly. People can go off on Joe Woods or whatever, but we're not executing right, in crucial moments on things that we practice and you expect to nail, that you gotta nail, in those games."
— Jeffrey Essary (@JeffreyEssary) October 31, 2018
Harris really put the onus and ownership on the players to understand how teams are wanting to attack them. He mentioned watching the Chiefs tape and said they were running the same plays over and over on them, and they have to make teams pay if they do that.
In true leader of the defense fashion, Harris put the heat on himself to play up to his standards every week. “The Broncos, we can’t afford for me to have a day off or come out and not have intensity and not play ball like 25 plays ball. So I’m putting the onus on myself, I have to be consistent all 16 weeks.”
I know a lot of fan ire falls on the coaches, but Harris makes a great point and continues to not point fingers there, but to focus on the players and what they can do better. He said the players need to own fixing their errors from week to week.
“We’re not fixing our issues week to week, as a player, you can’t even put it on the coaches, if I make an error last week, I can’t come into the next game making the same error, I have to be able to fix that and be able to know that this team is going to attack me on this next week and I have to have this error fixed.”
It’s great having a truth teller like Harris in the locker room holding guys accountable. Hopefully this coming week will see them begin to turn the corner on fixing the mental errors that have plagued this team so far this season.