Pittsburgh Steelers RB Najee Harris has rushed for 100-plus yards in three consecutive games for the first time in his career. He hit the trifecta last night in a 26-18 win over the New York Giants, rushing for 114 on 19 attempts. Over the past three weeks, he has 320 yards and two touchdowns, averaging 5.9 yards on 54 attempts.
And all he has done during that stretch is talk about how good his blockers are, especially the ones in the trenches. “That’s just a testament to how hard the o-line works”, Harris told ESPN Deportes after the Steelers improved to 6-2. “Them playing the game that way, being physical, and allowing us to have holes back there, it’s just showing you how much talent we have in that room and how hard they’re working”.
The Steelers have invested heavily in their offensive line, even if some of those investments aren’t currently on the field. They have two starters on the Reserve/Injured List in rookie Troy Fautanu and veteran James Daniels while another starter, Zach Frazier, has missed the last two games due to an ankle injury. For most of the past three games, Najee Harris has run behind Ryan McCollum and Mason McCormick.
Through eight games, Harris has 592 rushing yards on 136 attempts. He is having the most efficient season of his career, now up to 4.35 yards per rush. While he would surely like to find the end zone more, he is a catalyst for this offense.
Harris entered the 2024 season with six career 100-yard rushing games, including three as a rookie. He only eclipsed the triple-digit mark once in 2022 but ended the 2023 season with a pair of them. That is the only other time he reached that plateau before in consecutive games, and now he has done it three times in a row.
The last Steelers player to rush for 100 yards in three consecutive weeks was James Conner, who did it four games in a row in 2018. Le’Veon Bell also extended a 100-yard rushing streak to four games during the 2016 season. Harris is just the eighth player to record such a streak for the Steelers since 1970. Jerome Bettis did it most often, on seven separate occasions. Hall of Famer Franco Harris owns the franchise’s longest streak at six games, which came during his rookie season in 1972.
Interestingly, Najee Harris was coming off his two worst games of the season before this recent stretch. In a loss to the Colts, he rushed for just 19 yards on 13 attempts. The following week, in a loss to the Cowboys at home, he rushed 14 times for only 42 yards. He has at least 69 rushing yards in every other game this year, however.
With his 592 rushing yards, Harris is now second in the AFC and sixth in the NFL in rushing yards. He is one yard behind Chuba Hubbard and one yard ahead of Jahmyr Gibbs, though far behind Derrick Henry, who is on pace to rush for over 2,000 yards.
Harris is clearly on pace to extend his NFL-best active streak of 1,000-yard seasons to four. In fact, it would be very surprising if he doesn’t. Needing just 408 more yards, Harris only has to average 46 yards over the Steelers’ final nine games.
Najee Harris is currently running for 74 yards per game on the nose. That puts him on pace for a career-high 1,258 rushing yards over a 17-game season. As a rookie, he hit exactly 1,2000 yards and has topped 1,000 each of the past two as well.
The only thing Harris’ game is still lacking this season is more scoring, but that can certainly still come. He scored 28 touchdowns through his first three seasons, over nine per year. He has nine games to add to the two he already has, and I’m certain he will approach his career average. In fact, if he continues his recent pace, he should easily set career numbers in every category except for attempts.
