The Denver Broncos secondary is awesome once again

The Denver Broncos’ secondary is awesome again thanks to the return of Chris Harris and the pieces this team has added over the offseason.

Now that Chris Harris Jr. is back, the Denver Broncos’ secondary is awesome again.

Make no mistake, Harris’ presence alone is not what makes the secondary awesome, as we clearly saw last season.

Since the Broncos assembled the best secondary probably in team history from 2014-15 (Harris, Aqib Talib, Bradley Roby, TJ Ward, Darian Stewart) the unit has slowly fallen off the face of the planet, and I mean that will all due respect.

Talib was traded last offseason. Stewart became a shell of his former self and has yet to sign with another NFL team for the 2019 season. Roby regressed more than any Broncos defender last year. Ward has been gone for a while now and is not playing for anyone else.

Harris is the only one of the original No Fly Zone member still holding up his end of the bargain, and there was a point this offseason where his threats of a new contract or else nearly got him traded.

Seriously.

John Elway obviously wasn’t going to stand for a defense that ranked 20th in the league in yards allowed, 14th in the league with 26 touchdowns surrendered through the air, and 23rd in net yards per attempt. Not when he has seen this secondary be one of the most dominant units in the NFL over the past five years, specifically from 2014-16.

In 2016, the Broncos’ secondary allowed just 13 touchdown passes, the lowest number in the NFL. That number leaped up to 29 touchdowns in 2017 and 26 in 2018.

They only gave up 32 combined touchdown passes from 2015-2016.

It was time for the secondary to be revamped, and the loss of Aqib Talib, more than any other individual player, really hurt this Denver team.

The residual effect of Talib being traded led to the Broncos using players like Tramaine Brock and Jamar Taylor in last year’s secondary rotation at cornerback.

I mean, seriously.

Elway set out to make the Broncos’ secondary great again by signing Kareem Jackson to a three-year, $33 million deal, then Bryce Callahan to a three-year, $21 million contract.

In Jackson and Callahan, the Broncos got two of the most physical, scrappy defensive backs on the open market and players who can move around the formation and play man or zone.

The Broncos have Will Parks coming off the best season of his career, and both he and Justin Simmons entering contract years.

Su’a Cravens is returning for another shot at showing the Broncos that he’s the guy they thought they were getting when they traded for him.

Isaac Yiadom is coming back from injury after showing huge strides late in his rookie season.

Jamal Carter is coming back from injury, and the Broncos have a couple of really intriguing players at the back end of the rotation in Dymonte Thomas and De’Vante Bausby, one of the stars of this year’s AAF experiment.

Don’t these guys look good in orange and blue?

This secondary is awesome again. The Broncos have so many good pieces but they look great right now because we can officially talk about them being the sum of many strong individual parts.

Without Harris, the secondary doesn’t look as good. Without Callahan, same story. The list goes on and on.

This unit is better together. It’s not one injury away from disaster or anything, but if this group stays healthy, we might see this team back underneath the 20 touchdowns allowed threshold we haven’t seen since 2016.