When the Dallas Cowboys quietly elevated Al Harris from respected position coach to a multi-year, high-visibility figure in their defensive staff, it felt like the sensible pairing of elite talent and elite teacher.
Harris, a physical, veteran corner who translated his playing career into a coaching approach that prized technique, anticipation, and an aggressive mindset, had overseen the dramatic ascents of Trevon Diggs and DaRon Bland. Both players exploded into league-leading play under his tutelage, and their success was as much a product of Harris’s pedagogy as it was natural ability.
When Harris accepted a role on the Chicago Bears’ staff in January of this year, the Cowboys lost more than a coach. They lost a system architect for their secondary, and the gap has shown in how Dallas defends the pass at all levels.
Technique and detail: fundamentals turned into weapons
Harris’ background as a press-man specialist and tenured NFL corner gave him a unique ability to teach the micro-skills that separate opportunistic corners from inconsistent ones -- hand placement at the snap, hip-sink and mirroring through route stems, re-route technique in short areas, and the eyes-first ball recognition to attack on turnover opportunities.
Those sound like small things, but the NFL margin is razor-thin: Trevon Diggs’s 11-interception season (2021) and DaRon Bland’s historic 5 pick-sixes season (2023) are anchored in the practice habits and rep-focused instruction Harris pushed.
When a coach can fix a player’s trail-footwork or get him to understand leverage on third-and-short, you don’t just reduce completions -- you create turnover opportunities. Removing that day-to-day corrective lens visibly reduces polish.
Scheme-feel and communication
Coaching a secondary in the NFL is as much about building a shared language as it is about calling coverages.
Harris’s groups developed pre-snap cues that allowed two elite press corners to operate in sync, staggered blitz recognition, post-snap switch rules against bunch formations, and a mutual trust to carry man coverage responsibilities without needing index-finger instructions every play.
That level of trust is what allows corners to play looser, funnel receivers into robbing zones, or cheat to the ball without collapsing the scheme. Take away the teacher who taught the language and the unit tends to talk past each other: coverage windows open, alignment errors compound, and the opposite QB-receiver combos exploit timing rather than pure skill mismatches.
Man coverage - why the Cowboys’ once-elite press looks sloppy
Man coverage success isn’t an abstract stat; it’s execution of cadence discipline, physical press technique, and a correct read-reaction sequence. Under Harris, Diggs and Bland used press to flip risk into reward: tighter jams to disrupt releases, faster recovery steps to undercut comebacks, and layered eyes to find the ball in flight.
Since Harris has left, opponents have increasingly picked apart early release technique; subtle gains off the line have forced corners to play reactive instead of anticipatory. That change has two effects: quarterbacks have more time to work through progressions, and route combinations that previously resulted in tipped balls now produce clean catches and YAC.
When man coverage converts from proactive to reactive, the whole defense is forced into conservative shell support - fewer gambles, fewer turnovers, and fewer momentum swings.
Zone coverage - communication failures magnified
Zone defense depends on crisp handoffs and confidence that your teammate will carry his responsibility. Harris’s groups were drilled on carrying voids and rotating to the ball without duplication. That goes back to even the Dan Quinn days.
When those handoffs become messy, zones have holes, coverage mirrors break down and quarterbacks find soft spots between levels. Dallas’s tape this fall has consistently shown misaligned drops and delayed rotations - late reaction to flow or running-back check releases that leave seam windows open.
That’s not purely schematic failure; it’s the residue of losing a teacher who baked in the right reads until they were reflexive. The result: quarterbacks attack seams and tight-window throws that previously would have been turned into punts or turnovers.
Beyond drills and callouts, Harris created an identity and players bought into it. Diggs and Bland played like athletes who knew taking a risk was supported structurally: if you overran a route but were aggressive to the ball, the defense had a contingency.
Removing Harris didn’t just subtract technique, it removed a cultural safety net for aggressive play. The byproduct is a unit that is more tentative and less likely to manufacture game-changing plays. In the NFL, where momentum and field-position swings matter, that psychological shift is a strategic resource that the Cowboys have missed.
What the Cowboys could do (and what the Bears have gained)
From Dallas’s perspective the remedy is obvious but difficult: replicate Harris’s drill-work, reestablish language, and let players re-learn the specific press and zone habits that produced turnovers. That requires time and continuity, yes, but two things rarely abundant in the NFL calendar. For Chicago, Harris’s arrival is a two-way win: he brings a proven methodology to teach young corners how to be playmakers and gives Ben Johnson a defensive voice that can help align coverage-game plans to the pass rush.
For Dallas, the sooner they replace the missing pedagogy - not just the job title - the sooner the secondary can stop appearing more vulnerable than its talent should allow. And when looking at the money involved... eyebrows begin to raise further.
Losing Harris wasn’t merely losing a coach on a roster sheet; it was losing the gearbox that turned raw corner talent into a synchronized, turnover-first secondary. Until Dallas restores that coaching rhythm, the tape will keep showing the same symptom.