Two weeks into the 2021 NFL season, no running back has played a higher percentage of his team's offensive snaps than Steelers rookie Najee Harris.
The team's first-round draft pick has played all but three of the team's offensive snaps thus far this season. His 111 total snaps are tied with the Panthers' Christian McCaffrey for the second-most of any NFL running back. Only the Cowboys' Ezekiel Elliott, with 114 snaps played, has been on the field more.
Now, the next step is to actually get him the ball.
Despite the high percentage the Steelers' rookie is tied for 17th in the league in overall touches with 32. McCaffrey is second in the league behind leader Derrick Henry of the Titans with 59 touches. Henry leads the league with 61.
The Steelers (1-1) have wanted to weave Harris into their offense slowly -- despite his large percentage of snaps on the field -- but with the defense and quarterback Ben Roethlisberger nicked up heading into this weekend's game at Heinz Field against the Bengals (1-1), it might be time to take the kid gloves off when it comes to the rookie's usage and run the offense through him.
Harris got 17 touches -- 16 rushes and one catch -- in the Steelers' 23-16 win over the Bills in Week 1. But he was utilized less in Week 2, particularly as a runner, getting just 10 carries for 38 yards, though he did produce five catches for 43 yards and a touchdown in the passing game.
"We didn’t win, so we need to do a lot of different things. We thought he improved from (Week) 1 to 2, as far as being comfortable with things," offensive coordinator Matt Canada said when I asked if he needs to increase Harris' workload. "Our job is to get everybody more involved."
But that has to start with Harris, a 6-foot-2, 230-pound running back who catches the ball well out of the backfield.
The Steelers did do that more last week against the Raiders, as Harris caught all five of his targets to get to 15 touches in the game, leading to 81 yards produced.
Whether it be in the passing game or on the ground, the Steelers need to utilize Harris more.
"With each passing quarter, he's been better. Not that that's unexpected," said Mike Tomlin. "We spent a lot of time talking about the cohesion and the development and the comfortability of the blockers, but the same could be said for the runner who's also played eight quarters of NFL football. He was better last week than he was in Week 1 in terms of the things that we value, maybe some things that aren't valued to the naked eye but just our professionalism things, mechanic things, technical things. He's going to continue to get comfortable."
The Steelers went into this season with the demand from team president Art Rooney II to run the ball better after finishing dead last in rushing in 2020 -- something that led to Canada replacing Randy Fichtner as the team's offensive coordinator.
Two games into the season, however, the Steelers are last in the NFL averaging 57.0 yards per game on the ground. Perhaps more damning is the fact that only the Jaguars have run it fewer times than the 35 rushing attempts the Steelers have this season.
That won't be easy against the Bengals, who are allowing just 95 rushing yards per game despite playing the Vikings and Dalvin Cook in Week 1 and David Montgomery and the Bears in Week 2.
But if the Steelers are intent on getting a running game established and backing some people out of the box, the first step is to, you know, run the ball.
"We’ve got to do things better. We’ve got to be on the field more," Canada admitted. "Our plays have been too low the last two weeks. Two weeks ago we had a blocked punt, maybe that was part of it. OK, whatever. We’ve got to do a better job of staying on the field, whether that’s third down. Running is part of that. There are a lot of different things to look at."
Winning on first down is the key. And thus far, the Steelers have averaged more yards per play simply handing the ball to Harris on first down than they have throwing it. Harris has averaged 4.9 yards per rushing attempt on first down, while when the Steelers have thrown the ball on first down, they have averaged 4.5 yards per play.
Some big runs have helped that. Harris has had runs of 18, 14 and 9 yards on first-down plays, meaning he has gained 23 yards on his other 10 first down carries. but he also has been stopped behind the line of scrimmage on four of those other six first down runs.
Compare that to the 12 of 28 passing plays the Steelers have run on first down this season, and perhaps simply giving the ball to Harris on first down doesn't seem all that outrageous, despite analytics showing that it's usually better to throw on early downs than it is to run.
The idea is to do whatever necessary to stay on schedule offensively.
"As a defense, if the offense is in second-and-4, second-and-5, they're a lot less predictable," said Steelers defensive coordinator Keith Butler. "If they're in second-and-9, you pretty much know what they're doing."
Thus far, however, the Steelers haven't had the patience to stick with the running game at all, regardless of down. And if you don't do it, you can't do it consistently.
"Right now, we don’t have the rushing stats and all the things we would like to have," said Canada. "There have been a lot of guys (dedicated) to stop the run. There have been a lot of guys in the box to stop the run. We did have some things matchup-wise that were there that we didn’t execute. Ultimately, the matchups we had based on looks we wanted didn’t equate to the success we wanted.
"The run sets up the pass. The pass sets up the run. Offensive football, they’re going to take something away and we have to take advantage of what they give us. We didn’t maximize those matchups well enough. I didn’t get those things done well enough or we didn’t pick the right ones for that to happen."
The right ones could be the ones that feature Harris.
"He's been through a couple of weeks, he's been through a couple of those cycles," Tomlin said. "He's gaining an understanding about what the process does in terms of setting them up for performance and, thus, it should put him in position to let his natural talents come out in play."