For the third-straight season to begin his NFL career, Pittsburgh Steelers RB Najee Harris has rushed for 1,000 yards. Harris entered Saturday’s finale against the Baltimore Ravens needing 77 yards to reach four-digits. With the rain pouring down and influencing the ground game even more, the Steelers fed Harris the ball early and often.
Just shy of 50 yards at the half, he used a 15-yard run on the Steelers’ first third-quarter possession to get close to the mark. He finally surpassed it on a 2nd-and-5 run late in the third quarter, gaining four yards and putting him at 1,003 on the year.
With that, Harris becomes the first player in Steelers history to rush for 1,000-plus yards in each of his first three NFL seasons. He broke a tie with Rashard Mendenhall, Willie Parker, and Franco Harris, all of whom did so twice. Harris becomes the first NFL player to achieve such a feat since Washington’s Alfred Morris did so from 2012-14. He’s only the 18th player in league history to rush for 1,000 yards in his first three years.
A sluggish start to the year jeopardized that streak. Though his first seven games, Harris had just 313 yards, an average of less than 45 per game. But Pittsburgh’s run game found life in a Week Nine win over the Tennessee Titans, the first game Broderick Jones started at right tackle, as the Steelers ran for 166 yards.
From Week Nine to entering today’s game, Harris is averaging 4.2 yards per carry with six rushing scores. His best performance came in Week 17 as the Steelers racked up 202 yards on the ground against the Seattle Seahawks. Harris notched his first 100-yard rushing performance of the season, a 122-yard, two-touchdown outing that included some of the most powerful and determined runs of the season. That gave him 923 entering today’s matchup against the Ravens.
A first-round pick in 2021, Harris rushed for 1,200 yards as a rookie, serving as the Steelers’ bell cow. He followed that up with 1,034 yards as a sophomore, also going over the 1,000-yard mark in the team’s regular-season finale.
