The Pittsburgh Steelers made it clear this offseason that they wanted to run their offense through the ground game. They invested in their offensive line and hired an offensive coordinator known for his great running scheme. Despite all that, they still haven’t had a great complete game running the ball. Week 4 against the Indianapolis Colts was especially bad. Arthur Smith stated that the Colts had a good plan to slow down the Steelers’ rushing attack.
“They brought more pressure than they had,” Smith said Thursday via Ray Fittipaldo of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “We weren’t as clean early in the run game.”
That was very evident. Najee Harris did not have a good day, gaining only 19 yards on 13 carries. His first rush of the game went for negative yards, and things did not get much better from there. That was part of the reason why the Steelers fell behind so early. They wanted to establish the run, but the Colts were expecting that, smothering everything the Steelers tried.
The Steelers did eventually find some success running the ball, but it was with Cordarrelle Patterson, not Harris. As Fittipaldo also reported, Smith stated that was more a byproduct of the Steelers adjusting to what the Colts were doing. Whatever the Steelers did, it produced results with Patterson. Before he suffered an ankle injury, he had 43 yards on only six carries.
It looked like the Steelers found something with Patterson running the ball, but Smith makes it clear that Harris wasn’t the issue. Harris never saw as much success as Patterson, but that also could have been due to the Steelers being down by so much. They were forced to throw the ball more, which left Harris with few opportunities to carry the ball.
The Steelers also lost starting right guard James Daniels during that game, which probably didn’t help their running attack. They already didn’t have starting left guard Isaac Seumalo, so losing Daniels was huge. Coupled with Broderick Jones not having his best day either and the Steelers became set up for failure running the ball.
Justin Fields did what he could to get the Steelers back into that game, but their slow start ultimately proved too much to overcome. This week, Harris should have a good shot at a better game. The Dallas Cowboys already had a poor run defense, and now they’re missing their top two edge rushers. Everything is set up for the Steelers to be better on the ground. We’ll see if that becomes a reality.
