No one loves “angry runs” more than Good Morning Football’s Kyle Brandt. And he took a double shot of espresso to get up for this week’s edition, dedicating the entire segment of the league’s most powerful runs and moments to two men. Najee Harris and Jaylen Warren.
After their bruising and powerhouse performance against the Seattle Seahawks, combining for nearly 200 yards and taking the soul of that defense, Brandt broke it down. And nearly lost his mind.
He focused on Warren’s stiff-arm early in the game, powering ahead along the sideline followed by his best and longest run of the day, a 23-yarder where he broke four tackles, including another stiff-arm that sent S Quandre Diggs into the Earth.
“I love Jaylen Warren,” Brandt said. “He’s probably my favorite player in the league this year. I’m going to rename my son Jaylen Brandt.”
Harris’ two runs centered on his first touchdown, an incredible individual effort to fight and claw his way for the 9-yard score, Brandt comparing it to Tough Mudder events crawling under barbed wire. But nothing got him as hyped as Harris’ stiff-arm of CB Tariq Woolen, dribbling him off the ground just as he did to Atlanta Falcons S Richie Grant last season. As we shared yesterday, Harris’ stiff-arms are as violent as anyone in football.
“That is not a stiff-arm,” Brandt said. “That is a throw. He is bouncing him like a basketball.”
On the season, Harris is second in the NFL with 24 broken tackles, only trailing Jacksonville’s Travis Etienne and his 26. Warren ranks fourth in the league with 20 of them. But on a relative basis, Warren is breaking a tackle once every seven rushes, by far the best mark in football. Harris is doing so every 9.5 attempts, fourth in football and ahead of Etienne’s 9.7 mark.
While Harris and Warren were the two worthiest candidates you’ll see, in the end, there could be only one winner (a dual scepter would’ve been a cool idea, though). It went to Harris for his stiff-arm that sent Woolen into the shadow realm, a clean sweep of the voting from the GMFB panel. It marks the fifth time Harris has been awarded the scepter, now in sole possession of second place all-time only behind Derrick Henry.
Harris and Warren took their games to new heights in a must-win game for Pittsburgh, running hard even for their lofty expectations, already known as bruising power backs who run through and not around. Just ask Seattle’s defensive players. They have the bruises to prove it.
