ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Vic Fangio stepped to the podium next to the Broncos’ practice fields, breathed in the crisp air and announced a lineup change to the public Friday.
It wasn’t the one Broncos Country was waiting to hear.
While a decision on quarterback Drew Lock will wait, as Fangio declined to name a starter at the position, no such uncertainty exists at the No. 2 cornerback spot, where Isaac Yiadom will return to the starting lineup while Davontae Harris will see a reduced role.
“He had a good week of practice and we thought he was ready to go, so he’ll be in there,” defensive coordinator Ed Donatell said.
Yiadom filled in for Harris for eight snaps late in the Broncos’ loss at Minnesota on Nov. 17. The Vikings began their comeback that day by targeting Harris three times on their first touchdown drive, including twice in a three-play span for 54 yards — 44 yards on a pass to Stefon Diggs and 10 more via a touchdown toss to Irv Smith Jr.
“It’s been a little shaky, that position,” Fangio said. “On Wednesday, [CB] Davontae [Harris] didn’t have a good practice and Ike did and has been practicing good. I just felt like Ike deserved to play.”
Recent weeks have been rough for Harris. He has has allowed a touchdown in each of the last three games. In the last four games, opposing quarterbacks have posted a 130.1 rating when targeting him, according to the numbers compiled by Pro Football Focus. In Weeks 5-7, the rating when targeting Harris was 79.2.
Now, Harris must display the same kind of mental resilience that allowed him to quickly bounce back when he joined the Broncos after being waived by the Cincinnati Bengals at the cut to 53 players.
“That’s really important,” Donatell said. “Any time there’s a lineup change, it’s more important to reach those people and talk with them. Again, he practiced really hard this week and he’ll play in the game, so he has to be ready.”
Meanwhile, Yiadom must show more than he did early in the season, when the Raiders picked on him in Week 1. Struggles in the two games that followed led Fangio to pull him from the lineup in Week 3 in favor of DeVante Bausby, whose neck injury in Week 5 briefly forced Yiadom back into the lineup before he was relegated to mostly special teams for the following six games.
DID THE LIONS AND FALCONS PICK THE LOCK ONSIDE KICKOFFS?
Number of successful onside kickoffs in three games Thursday: 3
Number of successful onside kickoffs in 176 games played from Weeks 1-12: 2
Number of successful onside kickoffs in 256 games played last season: 3
Was Thursday’s work the exception that proves the rule?
Until Detroit’s Matt Prater, Atlanta’s Younghoe Koo and their respective kickoff-coverage teams recovered three onside kickoffs Thursday, just 7.2 percent of all onside attempts since the start of the 2018 season had been successfully fielded by the kickoff team.
That is 9.5 percentage points below the 16.7-percent success rate for the 10 seasons from 2008-17 — and 15.9 percentage points below the 23.7-percent success rate of 2017 alone, the last year before the rules changes that increased the difficulty of recovering on-side kickoffs.
Thursday’s three recoveries sent the two-year percentage skyrocketing to 11.1 percent — still well below the pre-2018 rate.
So what could other special-teams units take from it?
“I think you can learn from both sides,” special-teams coordinator Tom McMahon said Friday. “You’ve got to go get the ball, you’ve got to block, so on and so forth.
“But the spacing is what you saw.”
Atlanta, in particular, was able to create extra space as it aligned its five players to each side of Koo. New Orleans spaced its recovery team in response to the Falcons’ spacing, leading to open lanes that allowed Koo’s kickoffs to take extra bounces, creating chaos that gives the kicking team a chance.
“They’ve got them spaced out, so it made it an issue, and when you create space, naturally, you’ve got guys that are going to get a chance to get to the ball,” McMahon said. “Both sides, we’ve got to take away the spacing with knowing who we’re supposed to go block. From an onside standpoint, 3-for-3 [on Thursday], the spacing really helps.”
