Just because the Pittsburgh Steelers have the bye week this week doesn’t mean the discussions about the offense slow down. How to fix the issues that cause stagnation is a hot-button topic and will likely be for the foreseeable future. With the Steelers unlikely to make any changes with offensive coordinator Matt Canada’s job status, people are starting to take a look at what sort of baby steps the team can take to improve.
On Thursday’s episode of Bleav In Steelers, co-hosts Mark Bergin and former Pittsburgh CB Ike Taylor tackled the subject with a look at the team’s running back duo of Najee Harris and Jaylen Warren. Taylor took some time to talk about a former NFL running back that Warren reminds him of.
“Maurice Jones-Drew’s cousin,” Taylor called Warren. “That’s who he reminds me of, MJD, when MJD was playing with the UCLA Bruins and then the Jacksonville Jaguars acquired him. Warren just like him…just a hard-nosed bowling ball who just so happens to be electric when he has the ball in his hands.”
Jones-Drew was a second-round pick of the Jaguars in the 2006 NFL draft who was quite often referred to as a “bowling ball.” He played nine total seasons in the NFL, eight with Jacksonville and one with the then-Oakland Raiders. While his final season in the league may have been a disappointment, Jones-Drew was anything but for most of his career.
As a rookie, Jones-Drew averaged 5.7 yards per carry and scored 13 touchdowns. He had two more double-digit touchdown seasons, including a career-high 15 in 2009, his first Pro Bowl season. Two years later, he led the league in carries with 343, yards with 1606 (and average of 4.7 yards per carry,) and had the most yards per game with 100.4. He received his third Pro Bowl nod along with being named First-Team All-Pro for the first and only time in his career.
When it was all said and done, Jones-Drew scored 68 rushing touchdowns and 11 receiving touchdowns. He averaged 4.4 yards per carry (but only finished under 4 yards a carry twice in his career) and 8.5 yards per reception.
So Warren being compared to Jones-Drew is high praise from Taylor. However, as Taylor pointed out, Jones-Drew was sometimes known as a bowling ball due to the combination of his shorter height and unwillingness to be brought down. Warren has shown the ability to break the big play early in his career, but he’s also proving in his second season to be hard to tackle.
While there’s a long way to go for Warren to reach the heights of Jones-Drew, you can see some similarities. If he goes on to perform even close to the former Jaguar running back, that will be a heck of an accomplishment for the former undrafted free-agent Warren. It should also mean some serious improvements for the Pittsburgh offense.
You can watch the entire conversation between Taylor and Bergin below.
