Najee Harris is the latest first-round pick the Pittsburgh Steelers may well jettison this offseason. Since 2013, T.J. Watt is the only first-round pick they have signed to a second multi-year contract. Ryan Shazier would have gotten one if not for his injury, and they traded their 2020 first for Minkah Fitzpatrick. But even those caveats don’t make the Steelers’ recent streak in the first round look much better.
It used to be that the Steelers built their rosters by hitting homeruns in the first round. They have had a considerable number of pop flies or singles and doubles since then, however. Najee Harris is the latest first-round pick to fail to drive a runner home. Even if there is some internal interest, a weak market may price him out of their range.
That’s what Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk thinks, at least. He cited last year’s successful running back market, with a series of players making their former teams look bad. He believes Najee Harris could have that motivation, and says the NFL is a copycat league.
“I could see one of the dysfunctional teams out there that has money to spend, that wants to win a press conference in March because it can’t win games from September to January, overpaying Najee Harris because he’s the closest thing you’re gonna find to Saquon Barkley in 2025”, he said on 93.7 The Fan of the Steelers running back. “And it’s stupid, but teams do it every year. So I could see one of the bad teams out there overspending just to get Harris, to sell tickets, to create hype, sell jerseys, and we’ll worry later about whether or not the production is there”.
He’s not wrong that teams often seem to overpay players relative to their talent, and sometimes due to business matters. The appearance of “doing something” can be a good bandage if a solution appears to be far off. Now, I don’t know how strongly a team would win a press conference by signing Najee Harris—he doesn’t even like talking to the media—but he is a former Pro Bowler with four consecutive 1,000-yard seasons. That looks good in a press release, anyway, as long as you don’t dig deeper.
And then there’s the other key point about Harris’ market. The reality is that there are no Saquon Barkleys this year. There’s Aaron Jones, who’s 31, and Raheem Mostert, now 33. Nick Chubb two years ago would have been in that discussion, but he is not the same player after his injury. J.K Dobbins and Samaje Perine, Javonte Williams and A.J. Dillon? You can easily argue that the Steelers have the top free agent in this market in Najee Harris.
But in a draft class deep in running backs, how many teams would be willing to pay a premium for him? Teams have to spend anyway, so they will occasionally have these splurges. But if there is a team willing to pay Najee Harris $10 million per season, it’s certainly not the Steelers.
