RB Jaylen Warren became one of the most popular members of the Pittsburgh Steelers on the day they put the pads on for the first time in training camp in 2022. The 5-foot-8 underdog showed his grit, and he hasn’t stopped plugging away since then. Slowly but surely, he’s begun to carve out a larger role, but even his teammates remain hungry for him.
“Consistently, 30 shows up making plays”, QB Kenny Pickett said of Warren, referring to him by his jersey number, via the team’s website. “He’s a guy that needs to get the football. Run, pass, whatever it may be, he continually pops and makes those explosive plays for us, so we’ve got to continue to focus on getting him the football”.
The Steelers have struggled to get the run game going, executing only 18 designed runs, 16 by the running backs, of which six have come from Warren. He has picked up 20 yards for his efforts there, with a long of eight, but it is in the passing game that he had made a bigger impact.
In fact, he was second on the team in just about every category with four receptions on six targets for 66 yards in the Steelers’ 26-22 win over the Cleveland Brown. That was highlighted by two plays in particular, including a well-designed screen that went for 30. More impressive individually was his 11-yard catch-and-run on a third and 10, this one successfully converting.
Getting Warren in space on a screen has been the Steelers’ go-to move on long-distance possession downs for the better part of the past year. They still have a low hit rate—he converted once on three third-and-long receptions against the Browns—but the fact that he converts more than on rare occasions is in itself impressive.
Still, it’s something to consider contextually when looking at volume production. Outside of the 30-yarder that was a product of a very good play design (shocking, I know), the rest of his 36 receiving yards came on three receptions, each on third-and-10 or greater. Defenses are going to let you get most of that if they think it makes it easier to bring you down behind the chains and force you to punt. Ten yards on third and 18 outside of field goal range? Sure, no problem.
Through two games, Warren only has nine rushing attempts. He’s picked up 26 yards, with just a 33.3-percent success rate. He was at 50 percent in the Browns game with three successful runs on six attempts after going 0-for-3 against the San Francisco 49ers, so that’s a trend in the right direction.
But really, this is just an offense that needs to get off the mat, or perhaps just get out of bed, because they haven’t even looked like they’ve been awake half the time. Warren is a part of that, of course, but he’s not going to be some magic elixir that fixes what ails them. And the first thing they need to do to help everybody out is to get that run game going.
