Beef! We’ve beef in the world of football, pals, between a receiver and a cornerback who share a division, which is really the only way NFL beefs can dry-age their way to maximum succulence, outside of the aging racks of intense playoff action. I’m pretty well done with that beef metaphor now.
Cornerback Chris Harris Jr. had a hand in bottling up Philip Rivers and the Chargers Sunday afternoon, with his Broncos limiting the home team to just 246 total yards of offense and 13 points en route to Denver’s first win of the season. Harris’s job was to chase around Keenan Allen, Rivers’s top receiving target through the first quarter of the season, and Harris excelled in the role. Allen was targeted just six times, caught just four balls, and finished with just 18 miserable yards to show for it. Afterward, Harris was proud of himself and the job he’d done:
There exists on Instagram a Chris Harris Jr. “fanpage,” @25goat, and whoever runs it posted a quick, choppy meme video from Allen’s own Twitter page, summing up his frustration during Sunday’s loss. The Instagram post captioned the video with “Somebody’s mad” and tagged Harris; Allen, who I’m just going to come right out and say ought to have better things to do with his time, became aware of the post, and was compelled to comment:
The situation had now escalated to include a pretty rude public diss of one player by another player. Allen, the disser, was asked about it during press availability Thursday, and stuck by his assessment, telling reporters that his superiority in the matchup is “not a secret” and advising those who doubt him to “watch the tape.” Tape which, unless it has been replaced by some other tape, will show Allen catching four balls for 18 yards in a really bad home loss.
Hidden in this shot at Harris is an implied dig at Philip Rivers and Chargers offensive coordinator Ken Wisenhunt, which is part of what makes it so delicious. If tape of Allen’s worst statistical performance of the season shows him in fact dominating his personal matchup, then the fault for Allen not having a vastly better statistical performance lies elsewhere. In fact, I’m not convinced Harris isn’t being used in order for Allen to not-all-that-slyly direct shade at the architects of his own team’s offense.
At any rate, Allen backed down somewhat in a tweet posted Thursday night, giving the Broncos defense credit for “a hell of a game,” while reiterating that it is “blasphemy” to suggest that his limited production was the result of Harris or anyone else having locked him up. Harris, for his part, appears to be cry-laughing from pure amusement:
The Chargers and Broncos will meet again on December 1, and then by God we will settle once and for all the matter of who can hold whose jockstrap.
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