Chris Harris Jr.: Dez Bryant is one of best scorers in NFL

Chris Harris Jr. already has a date circled on his calendar — Sept. 17. That’s when the Dallas Cowboys visit the Denver Broncos at Mile High.

It doesn’t matter that the game is 12 weeks away. Harris is looking forward to it, particularly going against the Cowboys receiving corps led by Dez Bryant and Terrance Williams.

Harris, who played his college ball at Kansas, has plenty of history with Bryant (Oklahoma State) and Williams (Baylor) dating to his college days.

“Dez is just great at high-pointing the ball,” said Harris, who spoke before Dirk Nowitzki’s celebrity baseball game this past weekend at Dr Pepper Ballpark.

“He’s probably one of the best touchdown scorers in our league. Just try to keep him away from the end zone. Man, you know what he loves to do, you know he loves the jump ball, so try to get to his hands first.

“T-Will, same thing. They’re very familiar with me and I’m familiar with them. It’s just different when you’ve got to come to the Mile High.”

The only time these guys have faced each other in the pros happened in 2013 when the Broncos won 51-48 over the Cowboys at AT&T Stadium. Bryant and Williams had impressive games despite the loss.

Bryant finished with six catches for 141 yards and two touchdowns, and Williams had four catches for 151 yards and a touchdown. It was Williams’ first career touchdown.

But Harris, who has been a Pro Bowl corner the past three seasons and garnered first-team All-Pro honors this past season, doesn’t expect them to duplicate that success. He pointed to the game being at Mile High multiple times.

“The altitude, man,” Harris said. “When you haven’t conditioned in that, you haven’t ran in that, it’s a totally different atmosphere. It’s something we train in all day. We train out there and always finish strong because we know teams can’t run with us down there. It’s definitely an advantage.”

Harris weighed in on a few other topics:

On watching Dak Prescott from afar: “He was cool, calm and collected last year. That’s what you need from a rookie quarterback. He didn’t take too many chances, but I’m pretty sure this year he will. They’ll try to lean on him to win more games instead of Zeke [Elliott]. But from what they asked him to do last year, he played A-plus.”

On his alma mater, KU, getting back on track with former DFW high school coach David Beaty: “Oh, man I love Beaty. I think everyone loves him up there. He was receivers coach when I was there and he would get us ready for practice. … I just loved his energy.

“He had to redo [Kansas’] program. He came in with 16 scholarships and now we still don’t have the full scholarships. Just now getting about 20 scholarships (a year). From what he had to do building it from scratch, man, we pretty much had the death penalty, and what he’s doing in the recruiting process, I’m excited for KU.”

On KU beating Texas last season: “That was huge. We could’ve beat TCU, too. We had a lot of games to win, and coach Beaty has us on the right track. If we get us a nice young quarterback, that’s pretty much all we need.”

This story was originally published June 26, 2017 at 6:09 PM with the headline "Chris Harris Jr.: Dez Bryant is one of best scorers in NFL."