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 Najee Harris
Stock Value: Up
Reasoning: A rare bright spot on a bad day for the Steelers, RB Najee Harris played his best game of the season, showing a physical running style and a capacity to make plays on his own that were not blocked up for him. He even showed burst through the hole a time or two when there actually was one.
How often has RB Najee Harris been the best player on the field for the Steelers? Probably not too often in his first two-plus seasons—not to say he’s been bad uniformly or even generally by any means. He’s had his big moments.
Sunday’s game marking him as the best, most productive Steeler, however, had as much to do with what everyone else was doing, or not doing, as anything. Still, it was the best that he has looked since last season, and that’s something to be encouraged about as we head deeper into the year.
Let’s face it, this offense works best, by a huge margin, when the Steelers have an effective running game. I’m still not convinced that Jaylen Warren can be a bell-cow runner. He hasn’t been the better runner so far this season. The Steelers need Najee to be Najee.
And they got some of that in the second half of the game against the Houston Texans, during which he got the majority of his yardage. While he didn’t fare poorly in the first half, with 60 percent of his carries being successful, he just didn’t get the volume.
Most of his work came in the second half, and he had two longer runs. One was thanks to a nice hole provided by the offensive line. The other was on him creating his own yardage. And even some of his shortest runs were only gained through his own efforts.
He isn’t going to break many 40-plus yarders. He’s too plodding for that, and frankly, the blocking just isn’t there to free him into the secondary often enough to raise those odds. But at his best, he can be an absolute workhorse and efficient battering ram that will keep drives alive and on schedule.
