Will Harris played a season-low one snap at safety. This is quite the fall to the bottom of the rotation for someone taking a decent chunk from Tracy Walker’s work to open the year. Detroit’s defense mixed things up more than it had to this point. The Lions played the least amount of man coverage they had all season (39.1%). They also appeared to blitz more, turning in quite the impressive performance off the bye while mixing in so many different looks. The coaching staff has continued to say there is a role for Harris, Walker and Duron Harmon on this defense, but the rotation remains something to track after a drastic drop.
Will Harris does not look like a contributor on defense to me. He does not provide solid depth at the Safety position and his role should be that of a special teams player. He’s cuttable in my eyes. I’d love to know what MP saw in training camp or whatever to have this guy eating into Walkers snaps.
He was a 5-6th rounder we took in the 3rd. And everyone knew it at the time. Except Bob Quinn of course
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You want to know the main reason why the Lions can’t gain any traction?
2017-2019 drafts… Davis, Tabor, Reeves Maybin and Roberts in the first 4 rounds then KJ, Walker (who is struggling big time now) and Hand in Rounds 2-4 then Tavai, Harris and Bryant in Rounds 2-4.
You simply can’t have that many misses with high to mid round draft picks and expect to compete at a high level. Some of those guys still have time to show something but when you only get two above average starters (Golladay and Ragnow) in 4 drafts, that’s a problem.
I really liked the 2020 draft so we’ll see where it goes but with this coaching staff, I’m not confident.
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Agreed completely. And to make matters worse, these reaches are almost all for players at low-value positions (LB, RB, Safety). So even if we do hit, it has very little impact to winning.
We spend two high second round picks on running backs in the last three years, and then sign a 35 year old off the scrap heap who gets most of our touches. PFF has us graded as the best run-blocking team in the league with the worst yard-after-contact of any running back group. We could be getting the exact same production from undrafted free agents and could have taken second-round swings on receivers, corners, pass rushers, etc.
DRIVES ME CRAZY
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You only make threads on the crappy players? Lol
Just another reach by BQ.
A mediocre football player with a good 40 time is still a mediocre football player. Just another reach by Quinn.
About time they got his ass off the feild. Another great Quinn draft pick.
I sometimes wonder if the Lions draft a lot of guys who appear to be very versatile at a lot of things but not really very good at anything. And so you end up with a team that isn’t really good at anything, but by golly we’re versatile. I think you need some versatile guys but you also need guys that a really good at only 1 or 2 things. Maybe the Lions don’t have enough of those guys. Could be wrong of course, got nothing to back that up with.
Other thing is, and this is another shot in the dark but I wonder if they tried to get Harris to look good enough so they could squeeze out Walker. Was he (Walker) not toeing the party line enough for Patricia in some way? I can’t find any other reason why they wouldn’t use Walker more often before the bye unless he was hurtin’ and we weren’t told about it. There have been instances where we eventually find out somebody was injured but maybe not seriously enough to go on the IR. I don’t know if other teams do the same thing, but the mushroom treatment kinda sucks. It’s one thing when you’ve got several championship banners and a future HOF HC, but it’s another then you’re the Lions and you got nothin’.
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But but but…MULTIPLE
i’m not disappointed to see harris on the sidelines. he was terrible. we’re much better with walker, harmon and kearse.
last year walker played the single high safety role that harmon took over this year. harris is supposed to be better around the los. i wonder if some of it was walker adjusting to a new role. or possibly harris being a practice all american. all i know is come gameday harris was awful and needed to be on the sidelines.
I LOVED the safety Jayron Kearse signing at the time as I felt like he was going to beat out Will Harris…and it looks like he has beat him out. Jayron played 59% of the defensive snaps and I expect Kearse to play more than Harris going forward. And I am cool with that.
Kearse came here to take this starting job and it looks like he is doing that. I like the idea of Kearse (who is BIG), Walker and Harmon as our three safety monster.
Harris can continue to learn and play a depth role. Maybe the game slows down for him and he stops pressing with a little time to reflect on his role and the defense overall?
Hopefully we’ve moved on from the Will Harris experiment. Kearse plays the Harris role better than Harris.