The Pittsburgh Steelers have a Najee Harris problem
By Nick Farabaugh |
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INDIANAPOLIS -- The Pittsburgh Steelers have a Najee Harris problem. It is not exclusively about Harris, but after a performance in which Harris posted 19 yards on just 13 carries, something has to give, right?
Well, there are underlying concerns for Harris in this offense. A year after his efficiency soared in the post-Matt Canada firing offense, Harris is less efficient than ever with Arthur Smith calling plays.
He is averaging just 3.4 yards per carry over the first four games of the season. Harris has received most of the first-down carries for the Steelers this year, and no team averages less yards per carry on first down than the Steelers. The Steelera are last in success rate on those runs, too.
Some of that would lead people to believe that Harris is missing open holes, but that is not what is happening. Of the 13 carries, Harris ran nine zone runs. Four were gap runs when Cordarrelle Patterson was in the game for his six carries. Does it seem backward in usage?
The 6-foot-2, 240-pound running back should follow pullers and get downhill. Yet Smith has waned away from that with Harris, an odd usage decision. In the context of becoming a mid- and wide-zone runner, Harris just does not have the burst downhill nor the lateral quickness to maximize cutback lanes.
The idea of the stretch play, dating back to Mike Shanahan’s days with Terrell Davis, was to stress a defense horizontally or force them to overpursue and cut it back. Harris lacks the burst to hit holes and correctly hit the set points’ timing in this scheme. It does not fit him as a runner. Meanwhile, Patterson and Jaylen Warren hit the hole with explosiveness and get going instantly. They are runners that can maximize themselves in this scheme.
Then comes the point where the Steelers block gap runs horribly. Throughout the season’s first four weeks, gap runs have obvious free runners coming to hit Harris immediately, either due to poor blocks or missed assignments.
Smith has become predictable in some of his play calls and personnel usage. So, teams are dropping guys down into the box and blitzing a safety, forcing the Steelers to lose the numbers game. Meanwhile, Smith continues to ask wide receivers that are subpar blockers to dig out key defenders as the insert block, and those defenders continue to stifle Harris near the line of scrimmage.
Due to his athletic limitations, Harris will always be a limited player in scope, but he is a durable, hard runner who can be efficient. He was last season, so it is already known that Harris can be a problem in the right spot.
Yet, through a poor scheme and some odd personnel decisions that cater to Harris’ weaknesses, the start of the season has been disappointing for Harris. He can do some things to try and fix it, but this will mostly be about Smith tweaking usage and the other personnel executing at a higher level.
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