This time a year ago, undrafted rookie Jaylen Warren entered camp as a relative unknown. By the time he left camp, every Pittsburgh Steelers fan was talking about the guy. He easily played his way onto the 53-man roster and carried the summer success into the fall, carving out a role as the team’s third-down back and cutting into Najee Harris’ work. As just a second-year player, Warren enters camp as a roster lock who isn’t focused on surviving. Instead, he’s thriving and looking to grow his game.
How can you become the next Warren? There’s three main ways.
1. Be Highly Conditioned And Available
The golden rule. No matter your talent, football IQ, or technique, you won’t capture a roster spot if you pull a hamstring on Day Two. And believe me, those take a lot longer to heal than you think. A soft tissue injury is at least a two-week injury and probably longer. You’ll be tracing the middle fields at St. Vincent College while your teammates are going at it in 11 v 11. And that’s not how you make the team.
But you also have to be highly conditioned. Ready to absorb all the reps available. That’s what Warren did. The lines got real short at running back during camp last year. First, Harris suffered a foot injury on his first carry in pads. Then Benny Snell Jr. missed time with an injury. And for most of camp, Pittsburgh opted against signing more running backs. Some days, they’d have only three of them practicing, far fewer than the five or six normally splitting time.
That just gave Warren more chances to shine. According to our charting last season, Warren easily led the team with 53 carries, far more than fellow rookie Mataeo Durant (35 carries) or Anthony McFarland Jr. (31 carries). Pittsburgh gave Warren the chance to be a camp workhorse back and he responded, giving the coaches extra reps to evaluate and confidence that he could be counted on.
You don’t need to be a skill guy to benefit. An offensive lineman who can get second- and third-team reps when injuries strike will have a big leg up compared to everyone else. Ditto with a defensive back who might be able to run with multiple groups or float between positions (say second-team outside corner and third-team slot corner) so long as he can play at a high level.
They say you can’t make the club from the tub. That’s true. You also won’t make it if you’re throwing up into a bucket on the sideline. It’ll be a scorching and humid first week of camp, and we’re going to find out who prepared this offseason and who hung out on the couch.
2. Be Fearless
“Fearless” is how to best describe Warren’s first training camp. That was evident during his first backs-on-‘backers drill, always occurring on the first day in pads early in camp. Warren wasn’t perfect but he didn’t back down. He anchored, held his ground, and didn’t look scared to take on any linebacker running full speed at him. In team drills, his downhill, bowling bowl energy was infectious, and he embodied what it meant to be a Steelers back.
Those moments with and without the ball certainly caught the Steelers’ attention and laid the groundwork to capturing his roster spot.
3. Correct Your Mistakes
It’s probably forgotten now but Warren had his down moments in camp. Chiefly, there were a couple of fumbles, including in a preseason game, the quickest way for a running back to land in the doghouse. During one portion of camp, he was tasked to hold a football throughout the whole day, even after practice ended. The team claimed it was typical for a rookie but it’s not. The message was clear: ball security is job security.
And Warren cleaned things up. He took care of the ball to close out the preseason, correcting the only blemish on his record. Rookies make mistakes. It’s part of the process. Learn and don’t make them again. Do that and your odds of making the team skyrocket.
