In a variety of different ways, Pittsburgh Steelers RB Jaylen Warren has been receiving a lot more attention lately. That’s hard to avoid when you have over 400 yards from scrimmage in a four-game span as a nominal backup. But he, and his teammates, wouldn’t mind seeing him continue to be overlooked a bit more.
Recently, Warren was asked about if he felt defenses were beginning to specifically game-plan to stop him after averaging about eight touches per game in his first 23 games in Pittsburgh. He said he’d been told that teams had been, and that it’s pretty cool after being doubted all his life, but that he likes to fly under the radar.
“Personally, I hope that they’re not game-planning for him so he can keep ripping off 74-yard runs”, ILB Elandon Roberts told Brooke Pryor of ESPN about Warren. “I’m like, yeah, don’t game plan. Yeah, he’s not that good. Trust me. It was an accident. Keep not doing it. So we can rip another one off’”.
Warren recorded a career-long 74-yard run just two weeks ago against the Cleveland Browns, one of the top defenses in the league. It was the longest run by the Steelers since Le’Veon Bell’s 81-yard run in 2014 and the fifth-longest in the past 20 years.
But he’s done pretty well for himself even outside of that. Over the past four games, he has rushed for 367 yards on just 48 attempts. Take 74 yards out of that and he’s still averaging more than 6.2 yards per carry. He also has 63 receiving yards and two total touchdowns on just 59 touches in that span.
But Sunday’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals was his low point in that run, gaining only 49 yards on the ground on 13 attempts with 13 yards on three receptions. He also lost a key fumble on third down in the red zone. Yet that doesn’t take away everything else he’s done this year, let alone since he arrived in Pittsburgh.
“I don’t know what other teams are thinking, but I will assume, because we’re all pros, that they’re starting to say, ‘OK, let’s make sure we up on him”, Roberts said, reasonably deducing that opposing teams cannot afford to overlook him anymore. “’They got two backs that can go’”.
And in truth, we are seeing that. At this point, pretty much every opponent mentions Warren either by name or reputation when discussing the Steelers. He does have the 27th-most rushing yards this year in a league with 32 teams and is 15th among running backs in run success rate.
