Earlier this week, Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin said that the team’s offense needs to get their mojo back. While he later said he didn’t really mean much by the comment, Steelers running back Najee Harris said after the team’s Week Three win he thought Tomlin was challenging the offensive players.
“Mike T just be talking shit,” Harris joked, before talking about feeling challenged, per Mike Prisuta of WDVE on Twitter. “You’re gonna have some games where stuff doesn’t go your way. All that matters is what you do the next play, the next game. I think that’s more of a challenge he gave us.”
The offense needed to be called out and challenged after scoring just two offensive touchdowns in their first two games. They matched that output tonight, also adding three field goals en route to a 23-18 victory. Harris had a decent day on the ground after a slow start, with 65 yards on 19 carries, including a 17-yard run that helped set up a touchdown pass to TE Pat Freiermuth in the third quarter.
The offense looked pretty solid tonight, and while the ground game wasn’t super impressive, they were able to at least put the Steelers in a good position with some solid first-down runs that helped set the tone and avoided putting them in second-and-long situations.
But there were too many unsuccessful runs, and the ground game does need to be better. But overall, it wasn’t a bad showing, and it was Harris’ best-rushing output of the season. There’s a lot to build on and improve, but if Tomlin was trying to call out the offense, it worked since it was undoubtedly a better performance than what we’ve seen over the first two weeks.
Harris also ran with power, and while he wasn’t always able to break off a big run, he ran angry and hard. That’s something he was better at tonight, and something he needs to continue to do.
Harris has a lot of power, and being able to routinely break through tackles and hit the second level is going to make this Steelers rushing attack much more potent than it has been.
It wasn’t as if the offense was elite last night, but it was significantly better than anything we’ve seen out of them all season. Tomlin’s call-out was hopefully a wake up call to the whole unit and offensive coordinator Matt Canada that things need to get better, and we’ll see if they can continue to do so going forward.
