"High tension": Broncos defense minces no words following another offensive failure

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — “We have to score. We have to score some points.”

“We spotted them seven again.”

“You take away four turnovers, bad field position, it’s a whole different ballgame.”

Sounds like the words of offensive players following a tough performance, right?

Wrong.

Those were the words of cornerback Chris Harris Jr., and linebacker Shane Ray, two defenders, following the team’s third loss in a row. Three losses in which the defense has given up a grand total of four touchdowns.

Since beating the Dallas Cowboys by an eye-popping score of 41-17, the Denver offense is scoring an abysmal 12 points per game. On Sunday, the ‘O’ put up 19 points, their most since that 41-point output. They also turned the ball over four times (five if you include Isaiah McKenzie’s muffed punt), their most of the season. It was enough for Harris to stop mincing words.

“It’s high tension, man,” he said when asked about the tension between the offense and defense. “We’re not winning. We’re not taking care of the football. We’re giving the games away.”

“Frustration is very high,” he added. “[We’re] tired of losing the same way every game, man. We just aren’t giving ourselves a chance to win.”

Throughout the Broncos locker room, fittingly divided with a row of lockers separating offense and defense, claims of not pointing fingers rang quietly as the obvious irritation simultaneously echoed like a bullhorn.

“We have to do a better job of protecting the football,” Ray said. “You can’t win in the National Football League with five turnovers.”

“I mean, you can’t win if you can’t score,” Harris chimed in. “We’ve been fighting uphill for the last three years, man. It’s not a good feeling.”

The defense has had enough. Can you blame them? As Harris pointed out, their uphill climb with 11 full grown men on their back dates all the way back to the Super Bowl run of 2015.

Monday was the straw that broke the very expensive camel’s back.

“I can only do my job, Aqib can only do his job, Von can try to get sacks as much as possible,” Harris explained. “We can try to go a game giving no catches and no touchdowns, that’s all we can do. It’s hard, and after they get up, they just play simple football and run basic plays over and over again.”

“I’ll try to do whatever I can to keep positive,” he concluded. “I don’t know, it’s up to the coaches to figure out what we’re going to do on that side of the ball, but the only thing we [the defense] can do is worry about ourselves.”

Now riding a three-game losing streak, the Broncos head to Philadelphia to face a top 10 defense with frustrations running as high as ever.