James Conner might not have been able to finish the Pittsburgh Steelers’ last game after exiting with a concussion, but he still managed to get into the end zone, which he has been doing more efficiently than anybody else has in team history, with 11 touchdowns in nine games. The team record for touchdowns in a single season is 16, and he is on pace to break that.
The Steelers have won five games in a row, and Conner has scored in each of them, including seven touchdowns on the ground and another through the air for eight total scores. He is just one of 12 players in team history to have ever scores in five consecutive games in the regular season, and is looking to join just seven who have scored in six consecutive games.
One of those seven players is actually his teammate, Antonio Brown, who currently has the third-longest scoring streak in team history. He has caught nine touchdown passes over the course of the past seven games, including at least one in each game. Ahead of him is Tom Tracy with eight, whom he can tie today, and then Buddy Dial, who scored in 11 consecutive games, though only eight in a single season.
Should Conner score again today for the sixth consecutive game, he will tie the longest scoring streak that Hall of Fame running back Franco Harris ever had in his career. In his rookie season of 1972, he accumulated eight rushing touchdowns and a receiving touchdown over a six-game period from the end of October until the early days of December.
Another score today would also separate him from Le’Veon Bell, whose longest scoring streak happens to be five games. During his breakout 2014 season, he also scored eight times in five weeks, with seven scores on the ground and another through the air. That accounted for all but three of the touchdowns that he had that season in his other 11 games played.
On that note, Conner’s next touchdown will also give him a higher single-season scoring total than Bell ever had in his career, as he already has 11 touchdowns. As a matter of fact, since he also has a pair of two-point conversions, he has already scored more than Bell ever has.
He remains on-pace to become the first skill-position player (that is, anybody who is not a kicker, basically) to produce 100 or more points in a single season. Willie Parker is the current record holder in that regard for the team. He scored 96 total points in 2006 with 13 rushing touchdowns and three receiving touchdowns.
