Now that the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2023 season is getting underway after the team finished above .500 but failing to make the postseason last year, we turn our attention to the next chapter of Steelers football and everything that entails. One thing that it means is that some stock evaluations are going to start taking on more specific contexts as we get into the season, reflecting more immediate plusses and minus rather than trends over long periods. The nature of the evaluation, whether short-term or long-term, will be noted in the reasoning section below.
Player: RB Jaylen Warren
Stock Value: Down
Reasoning: The second-year running back had a difficult game this past week against the Houston Texans. The bulk of his production came at the end of the game in garbage time, and before that, he put the ball on the ground—twice, though only one counted as a fumble.
Jaylen Warren is a fan favorite, so I’m not sure exactly how this one is going to be received, but I don’t think anybody could reasonably say that he is coming off one of his better games. The only area in which he was a positive performer against the Houston Texans was in pass protection, which by no means is insignificant, but that only accounted for a fraction of his playing time.
We should get the big one out in the open first. He fumbled. That was a problem during his rookie training camp, to the point that he had to walk around the Saint Vincent campus carrying a football. He only fumbled once during the regular season as a rookie, but that was also on only 105 touches.
Now he has one in 43 touches, and nearly had a second. He did put the ball on the ground again late in the game, but it was (appropriately) ruled that he was down as a runner before it came loose. His reaction certainly made it seem, however, that he wasn’t entirely confident that was the case.
In all, Warren rushed for 29 yards on eight carries, which still isn’t very good, but we’ve certainly seen worse. All but three of his carries came in the final few minutes of the game, however, when the Steelers were just trying to get back onto their plane that wouldn’t fly.
Warren isn’t exactly taking the league by storm this year. In fact, all the pundits who were clamoring for him to be the Steelers’ starting running back have quieted down substantially on that particular subject. Because that’s what the numbers dictate.
So far, he has 84 rushing yards on 25 attempts. He’s averaging 3.4 yards per carry with a 44 percent run success rate. He has largely been effective as a receiving option, catching 18 passes for 127 yards, but three of his five longest receptions have come on third and 10 or worse. And he only picked up the first down on one of the three. He had two receptions against the Texans on third and long and did not convert on either one.
