Harris Lets His Play do his Talking

[flgreen]

With an Economy of Words, Jets’ Harris Speaks Volumes

By GREG BISHOP

Published: July 31, 2010

CloseLinkedinDiggMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkFLORHAM PARK, N.J. — David Harris plays for the N.F.L’s most quotable coach (Rex Ryan), beside a loquacious linebacker (Bart Scott), on a Jets team so colorful that HBO will film training camp when practices start Monday.

Barton Silverman/The New York Times

David Harris after intercepting a pass against the Titans. Harris was the leading tackler on the league’s No. 1 defense.

In the land of loud, Harris is an anomaly, 245 pounds of quiet, forceful contradiction. He operates without entourage, Twitter account or any apparent interests outside football. When teammates speak now, Harris always holds his peace.

In fact, this strong, silent type even felt the need to clarify.

“Despite what people say, I’m not a mute,” Harris said last week.

Nor is Harris, 26, the calm in the center of the storm. Instead, he is both the calm and the storm, the leading tackler on last season’s top-ranked defense, a reserved linebacker who needs Batman-like captions — Bam! Kapow! Sock! — to accompany his hits.

His position coach, Bob Sutton, presented a series of Harris highlights last week at team headquarters. Using a green laser pointer, Sutton showed 50 plays, from multiple angles, a montage that, like Harris, played in silence and still spoke volumes.

“He’s one of most complete linebackers in our league,” Sutton said. “He’s an elite player who, for whatever reason, a lot of people don’t appreciate.”

Sutton started with technique, the way Harris always arrived at the ball in the same position: shoulders square, knees bent, legs moving but not crossed. Whether Harris approached guards, centers or fullbacks, he engaged from below, with his hands inside their hands, for leverage. He repeatedly knocked back blockers who outweighed him by 70 or 80 pounds.

Harris found holes just after they opened, a combination of vision and instinct and lateral speed. Against New Orleans, he sniffed out a counter run and knocked the fullback into the ball carrier. Against San Diego in the playoffs, he reached the line of scrimmage early, as if blitzing, except that Sutton said that he was not.

At the point of impact, Harris delivered textbook tackles, wrapping with his arms, rolling his hips and pumping his legs to drive opponents backward. Against Houston, he twice laid out receiver Andre Davis, who left the game with a concussion. Against New England, Harris smacked receiver Wes Welker so hard, he lifted Welker off the ground.

Harris amassed 329 tackles in his first three N.F.L. seasons, but Sutton’s tape emphasized a more varied skill set.

It showed Harris blitzing from different angles, leaping over an attempted cut block against Houston, tomahawking with his right arm to force a fumble against Buffalo, defending running backs in man coverage and ably dropping into zones. It showed Harris shedding blockers and occupying them, freeing teammates to make tackles.

Sutton’s favorite play came against New Orleans. With the Saints on their 38-yard line, Harris blitzed. Running back Pierre Thomas caught a screen pass and burst up the left sideline. Despite a 10-yard deficit, Harris tackled Thomas near the end zone. When the Jets completed a goal-line stand, that hustle had saved a touchdown.

“That’s David Harris,” Sutton said. “The guy who does it all.”

Except for self-promotion. In that way, Harris reminds relatives of his maternal grandfather, also David, who died a year before Harris was born.

His grandfather farmed cotton and soybeans in Mississippi, and to his grandson, he passed on his name, facial features and a stoic temperament. He disciplined his children with a stern look instead of words.

Premature by more than six weeks, Harris weighed 6 pounds 13 ounces at birth. Doctors told his parents, Shirley and Tim Sr., that he had only a 25 percent chance of surviving that first night, but he left the hospital after 18 days, almost a month ahead of schedule.

“I always told him he was destined for great things,” Shirley Harris said. “Like he had a guardian angel sitting on his shoulder — his grandfather.”

Harris received detention for talking too much in second grade. That revelation seems unfathomable now, but Harris was a hyperactive child who, he said, once got three “whuppins” for bad behavior on a single trip to visit family in Detroit.

Eventually, Harris channeled that energy. He spent most days outdoors, in competition, often playing football with friends on the grassy median that ran along Union Avenue in his hometown, Grand Rapids, Mich.

He was also influenced by the other men in his family, all quiet, all reserved. His mother and two older sisters struck up conversations with strangers. His father and older brother mostly spoke, like Harris, only in reply.

The youngest child remains the most introverted family member. Harris traced that, in part, to his blue-collar hometown, known as the furniture capital of the nation.

Each day, his parents went to work without complaint, his father to a plant that made parts for General Motors and Ford, his mother to an office at a cleaning products company. Harris took the same approach at Michigan and as an N.F.L. rookie. He slid into the starting lineup after Jonathan Vilma severely injured his knee in Week 7.

Harris made 17 tackles in his first game as a starter and recorded 24 more the next week. Injuries — a pulled hamstring in training camp, a sports hernia and later a broken fibula — defined his second season, but even then, Harris missed only five games.

He always had a high tolerance for pain, whether running into the end of a barbell at age 3 (which left a scar on his nose), or flipping over a bicycle and landing on a screw that lodged in his head, or playing five games in high school with a torn meniscus.

Through it all, Harris’s mother saw him angry only once, when he disagreed with the way one sister disciplined her child. Shirley Harris noticed something in her son’s eyes that day that he rarely flashes off the field.

Still, last season, not even a month before Harris twice sacked Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning in the American Football Conference championship game, Cincinnati running back Cedric Benson said he did not know who Harris was. To that end, teammates implore Harris to speak out more.

“He won’t,” Sutton said. “But that’s one of the great parts of Rex’s system. You can be who you are. You play within your personality.”

Harris enters this season in the final year of his rookie contract. He wants an extension, wants to retire a Jet, but he understands he is not alone.

This summer, Harris retreated to the family home and sat on the porch, near the Ford Expedition with 197,000 miles on it, proof of all the games his parents have attended. Harris loves that porch, and when he goes home, relatives often find him there, soaking in the silence.

[ToonTime]

Love this guy, my kind of football player, quiet, smart, technically sound and deadly with the hits.

This is the Jersey I am getting for this years superbowl run..

[Bruce Banner]

David Harris is Ray Lewis without the vocal leadership. So he's a big improvement.

[flgreen]

I just hope the Jets are smart enough to take care of Mangold and Harris, who are due a contract, before they pay the whiner who has three more years left

[THE ILK]

I just hope the Jets are smart enough to take care of Mangold and Harris, who are due a contract, before they pay the whiner who has three more years left

This!

[drago]

This!

I'll never forget that first game he stepped in for Vilma. I thought the stats had been misquoted at the end. The man is amazing, I have no idea how a guy like that falls to the second round.

[Bleedin Green]

David Harris is Ray Lewis without the vocal leadership. So he's a big improvement.

Well without that and ya know... the murder.

[Djrulesall]

I'll never forget that first game he stepped in for Vilma. I thought the stats had been misquoted at the end. The man is amazing, I have no idea how a guy like that falls to the second round.

I shared the very same thought... He was incredibly underrated coming into last season, and still is in my opinion outside of the Jet Nation... He is my new favorite player for being so patient and loyal to the Jets. This guy clearly doesn't want to play anywhere else. Him and Jim Leonhard are the example of what football players should be... Hard working... No egos being fed by media... Just football. And come game time, they deliver, and they do it well. They can come and play for me any day.

[bitonti]

David Harris is an absolute beast and one of the keys to having the league's best D.

Even with JT, Pace and Ellis on the roster, Harris might be the team's best pure pass rusher... The inside blitzes where jenkins can occupy 2 (or more) blockers and sending Harris is unblockable when they do it right.

[sirlancemehlot]

David Harris is an absolute beast and one of the keys to having the league's best D.

Even with JT, Pace and Ellis on the roster, Harris might be the team's best pure pass rusher... The inside blitzes where jenkins can occupy 2 (or more) blockers and sending Harris is unblockable when they do it right.

I'm a huge fan of Harris. He plays mean and he shuns the limelight. I remember an old thread where everyone was comparing him to B. Scott and saying Scott was the better LB. Somebody was quoting some nonsense stat-analysis that said Scott "crashes the first blocker" or something, allowing Harris to shine. Watch the games and you'll see Harris is the most dominant player (revis is the best player, of course, but MLB sees a helluva lot more action) on the defense and his stats show it, his play shows it, and his tenacity shows it. Sacks, tackles, int's, ff, fr...Harris is the real deal. And you wont hear a peep from him. Reminds me of the Ellis/Abraham debate. Hopefully it ends with Harris spending his career here, like Ellis.

[Bruce Banner]

Well without that and ya know... the murder.

You can say that but if I say it the thread gets locked.

[Bruce Banner]

I'm a huge fan of Harris. He plays mean and he shuns the limelight. I remember an old thread where everyone was comparing him to B. Scott and saying Scott was the better LB. Somebody was quoting some nonsense stat-analysis that said Scott "crashes the first blocker" or something, allowing Harris to shine. Watch the games and you'll see Harris is the most dominant player (revis is the best player, of course, but MLB sees a helluva lot more action) on the defense and his stats show it, his play shows it, and his tenacity shows it. Sacks, tackles, int's, ff, fr...Harris is the real deal. And you wont hear a peep from him. Reminds me of the Ellis/Abraham debate. Hopefully it ends with Harris spending his career here, like Ellis.

That was senor gato doing his usual thing of being the devil's advocate.