There is an inherent interdependency in any type of unit, professional team sports being no exception. For an offense, a quarterback can’t throw the ball to pass catchers who can’t get open or can’t catch. Wide receivers can get open all they want but are dependent upon a quarterback who can get them the ball. The offensive line is the most dependent of all. Their blocking is entirely useless if the players holding the ball don’t do anything with it—including running backs who don’t hit the holes that were designed into the play.
Trai Essex knows a little something about this as a former NFL offensive lineman, spending seven years with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Though he never played with Le’Veon Bell, he understands how it can be frustrating trying to block for running backs who don’t always go where they’re expected to.
Asked who would be easier to block for between Najee Harris and Jaylen Warren, Essex’s answer was clear—it was Warren. At least up to this point in their careers. He explained why Harris can be a difficult assignment to set up blocks for.
“Najee oftentimes—he improved upon it, especially the last year—he’d try to take too much upon himself. He would predetermine where he was doing with the ball, and it made the offensive line look worse than what they were doing last year”, he told Andrew Fillipponi and Chris Mueller on 93.7 The Fan, noting a tendency to take plays outside of their framework.
“That’s frustrating as an offensive lineman”, he said, but noted that Harris improved in that aspect in the second half of last season. “As he got healthier and as the o-line would start to build that chemistry and he started to trust the o-linemen to open up the holes the way the play was supposed, to go, he started following his blockers”.
Essex added that “Warren never had an issue doing that”, staying withing the structure of the play. “As an offensive lineman, you like that better, but if Najee continues to do what he did at the end of last year and he trusts his line, I think it’s gonna be fun to block for either one of those guys”.
Harris spent most of the 2022 season nursing a Lisfranc foot sprain that he suffered early in training camp. He wore a cleat with a metal plate in it for much of the first half of the season. He did not look like himself until after the bye week.
Still, it would be hard to attribute all of his issues just to that. There were still holes that he wasn’t hitting, showing hesitation where he shouldn’t. Was that tied to discomfort with his foot, or perhaps a reflection of the lack of reps that he got because of it?
It’s hard to say. All we can go on is what he does this year. One certainly hopes that he looks more like his second-half self from a year ago—and perhaps a bit more like Warren, as well. If only for the sake of the offensive linemen.
