The regular season marks the culmination of an extensive investigation into who your team will be that year. By this point, you’ve gone through free agency, the draft, training camp, and the preseason. You feel good in your decisions insofar as you can create clarity without having played meaningful games. But there are still plenty of uncertainties that remain, whether at the start of the regular season or the end, and new ones continually develop over time.
That is what I will look to address in our Buy or Sell series. In each installment, I will introduce a topic statement and weigh some of the arguments for either buying it (meaning that you agree with it or expect it to be true) or selling it (meaning you disagree with it or expect it to be false).
The range of topics will be intentionally wide, from the general to the specific, from the immediate to that in the far future. And as we all tend to have an opinion on just about everything, I invite you to share your own each morning on the topic statement of the day.
Topic Statement: Running back Najee Harris will get his second 100-yard rushing game in a row against the Seattle Seahawks.
Explanation: After totaling 185 rushing yards on 55 carries in his first four games, Harris broke out a bit this past Sunday, accumulating 122 yards on the ground on 23 rushing attempts, the Steelers’ first 100-yard rushing game by one of their players in a year. The Seahawks have one of the worst defenses, and rushing defenses, in the league so far this year.
Buy:
726. That is how many yards the Seahawks have given up on the ground so far this season, facing 162 attempts, allowing 4.5 yards per carry, with five scores. Only the Los Angeles Chargers have allowed more yards on the ground so far. And for those who are math-averse, that is 145.2 yards per game.
The Denver Broncos had a much better rushing defense and the Steelers were able to make them look pretty pedestrian, at least for the most part, while Harris was running the ball.
The offense is finally starting to find its rhythm, and it showed last week. Another soft defense heading into the bye week will only help them grow further, and they’ll be determined to get out into the break on a positive note. Back-to-back 100-yard games would be a major feather in this offensive line’s cap.
Sell:
The Seahawks have had a tough schedule so far against teams who like to run the ball, especially the Tennessee Titans, whom they played into overtime. They have allowed at least 100 yards on the ground every game so far, but they have only given up two 100-yard rushing games to an individual player, including the Titans’ Derrick Henry.
And this offensive line had a solid game last week, but it still left lots of room for improvement. They’re not ready to start dominating trenches on a weekly basis. And what happens if Harris cramps up again? It’s a night game, at least, but is this going to be a weekly problem?
