Najee Harris accomplished something in Week 8 that no other Pittsburgh Steelers running back has managed since James Conner in 2018. He rushed for over 100 yards in three straight games.
The Steelers very clearly entered the season wanting to have a run-first identity on offense, but it was a slow start to the year. Their team rushing total was buoyed by Justin Fields’ ability to scramble for extra yards on the ground, but the running backs weren’t carrying the load in the way that many hoped.
That is finally starting to change. Now that they have achieved one goal, Dan Moore Jr. says they are now aiming for bigger and better things.
“We gotta keep doing what we’ve been doing and build upon that. The last three weeks, we’ve got Najee a hundred yards rushing, so we just wanna keep that going,” Moore said in an interview with WMBS Radio’s George Von Benko. “We wanna keep striving for new goals and see just how good this group can really be.”
The last few years have all followed a similar script with the Steelers’ offensive line. The first half of the season is rough, and around the midway point of the season they start to get it together and turn into one of the best rushing teams in the league. We will see if that pattern continues this year, but it is off to a good start with the last three weeks.
When Conner rushed for over 100 yards for three weeks in a row in 2018, he managed to extend that streak to four games. Harris has a decent chance of extending his streak to four against the weak Commanders rushing defense. Even Le’Veon Bell had just one instance of 100 or more rushing yards in four straight games back in 2016. It is a rare feat, and Harris could join the pretty exclusive club of Steelers who have done it.
Harris is on pace for the best season of his career with 1,258 rushing yards, and that is using the pace from the first half of the season. If the rushing attack can improve over the second half of the year like they did last year, he could crush his previous high of 1,200 yards.
