While his showing in the season opener was somewhat shaky, particularly in some of the bigger moments, Pittsburgh Steelers P Pressley Harvin III has been very good over the past two games. There has been a touchback here and there, but several key punts have played a meaningful role in the course of events.
If it is an indication of him finding his rhythm in his third season, then he’s going to have to hope that he can sustain that through an interruption. He is missing today’s game due to injury, old friend of the team Brad Wing filling in for him this week.
“It is [frustrating] but at the same time, that good experience and good performance in that game, I have to try to stack”, Harvin told Brian Batko of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about missing this week after having one of his best performances. “If I’m not able to this week, I have to stack it mentally”.
I’m not quite sure how he intends to manage that mentally, but he’ll have to try, I suppose. He missed the entire week of practice with a right hamstring injury, even though there were no outward indications that he may have aggravated it during last Sunday’s game.
He punted six times against the Las Vegas Raiders for a total of 272 yards with a net punting average of 45.3, really a quite admirable figure. Three of his punts landed inside the 20-yard line, and eight of his 19 punts on the season have overall.
Drafted in the seventh round in 2021, Harvin had a very rocky rookie year, though it was one during which he played with a heavy heart. He lost both his father and his grandmother to long battles with illness late in the season. He even took a brief period of time away from the team after his father passed.
While his second season was an improvement, his performances were still marred by the same inconsistencies that we saw the year before. But he has continued to improve, and his directional kicking has gotten better.
One area that has been interesting to watch is his intermediate punting. He seemed in the past to be afraid to strike too hard and risk a ball bouncing too far back for a touchback. While it has resulted in a couple of touchbacks, he has been more successful landing punts inside the 20 as well. He only had 20 all of last season, just 29 percent of his punts. Currently, he’s putting 42.1 percent of them inside the 20.
Field position has been a key element to the Steelers’ success over the last two weeks, so it will be imperative that Wing is able to sustain that. He recently resurrected his career in the spring leagues earlier this year, having last played in the NFL in 2017, and last with the Steelers in 2014.
