One of the very few bright spots in Sunday’s 30-6 loss by the Pittsburgh Steelers was one of the players who has been under the most scrutiny. Third-year RB Najee Harris had his best game of the season, and really the first game in which the Steelers’ run game approached something resembling competence.
It caught the eye of former Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger, who singled out his former teammate during the latest episode of his Footbahlin podcast. Straining to find a positive for the game, he focused on Harris’ efforts—though with a caveat.
“You saw glimpses of Naj. He had a couple big runs. Now some of it’s the second half because no one did anything in the first half”, he said. “He had a couple of I would say losses where they were gonna lose four, five yards in the backfield and he ends up getting 20”.
On the whole, Harris rushed for 71 yards on just 14 attempts, averaging over five yards per carry. He did have a 32-yard reception as well, which was rather impressive and is easier to see for yourself to understand exactly why.
But there is that second-half caveat, and Roethlisberger elaborated on it a bit later on. At that point, the Steelers were already trailing 16-0, so the Houston Texans were playing more to defend the pass rather than the run.
“I think he ran hard. I thought he turned some negative plays into positive plays. He had a great catch”, the future Hall of Famer said. “I also put a little asterisk by it, because, you know, it was the second half. They’re not giving up big plays, they’re gonna be smart. But is it something he can build on? Yeah! I think so, and I’d like to see him build on it”.
There will be no asterisk, of course, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth contextualizing his work. In the first half, for example, Harris only rushed for 16 yards on five attempts. His longest run was eight yards, though he did have a 60-percent run success rate.
The remainder of his 55 yards all came on the nine carries that he got in the second half, specifically in the third quarter, since he did not record a rushing attempt in the fourth. He had five of nine successful runs including longs of 15 and 23, in both instances demonstrating extra effort.
According to Pro Football Focus, he forced five missed tackles during the game and recorded 55 yards after contact, averaging almost four yards after contact per rushing attempt. And you already saw what he did with his one reception.
It marked Harris’ first game of the season with 100-plus yards from scrimmage, his first since the penultimate game of the 2022 season. He only had two games with 100-plus yards from scrimmage all of last season, however, after recording nine as a rookie.
