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Here's the line on the best defender

Van Walker, Special to the News

Published October 9, 2006 at midnight

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The best defensive player in the NFL will not lead the league in sacks or interceptions. He will not lead the lead in tackles for a loss, or tackles of any kind. He will not endorse shoes or soup. The only people wearing his jersey are relatives. Unnoticed by the sunlight-deprived denizens of fantasy football, his team fails without him and succeeds because of him.

The best defensive player in the NFL is not a linebacker, a safety, a corner or a defensive end. He's Tommie Harris, defensive tackle for the Chicago Bears, and it's not even close.

Around 20 years ago, a pig farmer named Buddy Ryan built a championship defense based on a simple fact: If everyone blocks, that still leaves one guy to come free after the quarterback. Therefore, the trick is to force double-teams at the line of scrimmage, leaving that many more guys available to rush the quarterback. He compromised every offense known to man by forcing five guys to block two, resulting in a jailbreak at the snap. Of course, the scheme falls apart if the defensive tackle isn't something on the order of a cat-quick mastodon with sociopathic tendencies.

Tommie Harris is that defensive tackle. More than anyone on the Bears defense, he must be accounted for on every play from scrimmage by at least two men, or he blows the play up by himself. According to Ryan math, if you double-team Harris, you leave two men free to come after the quarterback — men like Brian Urlacher, Adewale Ogunleye, Lance Briggs, et al. At the risk of understatement, that ain't good.

Worse, even double-teamed, Harris is likely to blow the play up anyway, as witnessed by his five sacks. Now you're looking at three guys from among the aforementioned. Now you're looking at utter chaos in the offensive backfield. The three-step drop hasn't been invented that will cure Harris bursting through the offensive line with bad intentions and like-minded comrades.

As far as his run defense, you'd have a better chance of sneaking a bribe past a Chicago alderman than sneaking a running back past Tommie Harris. Great players make great plays, and two weeks ago, in a game the Bears should have lost, with a little more than two minutes remaining, Harris made a play. He shrugged off all opposition and not only stripped the ball carrier, he recovered the fumble, giving the Bears one more shot to win the game, which they did.



For the sake of perspective, Tommie Harris is not so much Warren Sapp as he is Bob Lilly or Randy White, the men responsible for making Tom Landry's Flex Defense (a k a Doomsday) so brutally effective. Not only does he stop the run, but he also creates a pass rush without the blitz, which leaves offenses with no options whatsoever.

Without Harris, the Bears are merely great. With him, they might be super.