I thought we had some really good discussion points in
/r/denverbroncos on this so I wanna repost them:
Whoever wrote this is trying really hard to downplay Harris, I don't watch All 22 so I can't say whether or not I agree that we play a zone heavy defense or not, but it's not like the Broncos only play with that one scheme, meaning Harris is going to have different responsibilities depending on what the playcall is, not to mention he's played the slot in several games and did work there as well. Knowing how to use your safety help is a sign of a good cornerback, I don't know where he's going with that point, in fact that kind of pisses me off cause he's implying that Revis and Sherman don't play with much better free safeties than we have. And if Del Rio has our players all collectively playing roles that are easy but effective then that's just called good coaching. I'll call Chris Harris a top 5 corner in the NFL easy still.
-me
Lol this article is garbage. We almost never play zone defense, yet Chris Harris is a zone corner? Calling his reputation bloated this year is absurd. I opened this article expecting to see actual analysis, not absolute trash like this. Re-watching the San Diego game I can count on two hand how many times we were in Zone Coverage, the other 50 some odd plays being in man. He claims that Harris always has help over the top from a safety, which is just not true. We almost always have our two corners (Talib and Harris) by themselves. They have no help over the top. But, according to the author of this article Chris Harris benefits greatly from being a zone corner, unlike Richard Sherman who plays Man defense. I don't know if he realizes, but 95% of the Seahawks defensive plays are Cover 3. That means that they have a single high safety responsible for the middle 1/3rd of the field. The two outside corners are responsible for the other 2/3rds. That means that on 95% of plays, Richard Sherman plays zone coverage. That is why people don't think he is the best corner, because he almost never guards the number one receiver (because he doesn't have to, but that is another story.) One of the plays he "analyses" is man coverage where Chris watches the qb (Kaepernick) and then breaks on the ball right as he throws it. The author of this article claims it is a zone defense. I'm pretty sure he used every zone play he could find and attempted to make people think Chris Harris was a zone corner. Anyone who actually would go over the tape would realize that Chris excels in man coverage (with no help over the top to boot) and that he sticks to every receiver he goes up against like glue. He also claims that Harris is the 5th or 6th most important player on the defense. The only one I would put ahead of Chris is Von. Chris allows Talib to attempt to bait the QB because Chris plays coverage like Champ did, which means he will take away the guy every single play, and because of that the QB almost always panics and throws it into tight coverage away from Harris.