For a struggling Pittsburgh Steelers run game, the news early Sunday morning that Jaylen Warren would be inactive was unwelcome. But in his place, Kenneth Gainwell stepped up in a big way, running 19 times for 99 yards and two scores, leading to the best run performance the Steelers have had all season in their 24-21 win over the Minnesota Vikings in Dublin. Gainwell’s performance makes Rich Eisen wonder if he’ll earn another start, even after Warren gets healthy.
“You gotta wonder if they’re just basically gonna tell Jaylen, ‘You don’t normally lose your job due to injury here and we’ll try to split the reps in a certain way,’ but you gotta wonder if Kenneth Gainwell is gonna get another start,” Eisen said on his show Monday.
Warren should return after the bye, and it’s highly unlikely he’ll lose his starting job. Gainwell was good on Sunday. He was patient, he found the open hole, he broke tackles and he was shifty in the open field. However, a lot of Pittsburgh’s run game success was due to a shift in their offense. TE Darnell Washington played 48 snaps, and the Steelers used a jumbo package with Spencer Anderson as an extra tight end on 19 snaps.
They committed to winning on the ground, and if the Steelers keep that mindset and their offensive line blocks the way they did against the run on Sunday, it’s not hard to see Warren finding similar success on the ground. In Weeks 2 and 3, Warren was the most significant driver of offensive success for the Steelers. His opening drive in Week 3 where he ran for 33 yards was the first consistent ground game success the Steelers had this season, and while it didn’t continue, the blocking was more to blame than Warren.
As Eisen said, the Steelers typically don’t take away jobs due to injury. If Warren comes back, starts and the run game struggles, then the team could look to give Gainwell a bigger role. It’s not as if Gainwell won’t play, but he’ll likely see a snap count that more closely reflects his workload prior to Warren’s injury rather than being the lead back in Week 6 and beyond.
It’ll be interesting to see just how much the Steelers commit to keeping Washington on the field as much as they did and running their jumbo packages, but it might behoove the team to continue trying to be a run-first team. Sunday was their best all-around performance of the year, especially on offense, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see a similar game plan come Week 6.
