How Najee Harris and others strike fear with their strong-armed tactics taken in Columbus, Ohio (In-depth)

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Najee Harris (22) celebrates after scoring a touchdown in the fourth quarter against the Browns at Heinz Field on Monday.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — With the full weight of franchise history behind him, Najee Harris drove his right hand under the chin of poor M.J. Stewart during the third quarter of Monday night’s game.

The perfectly delivered stiff-arm came at the end of a 30-yard run that broke the Steelers’ rookie-rushing record previously held by Hall-of-Famer Franco Harris. It also sent the overmatched Browns defensive back tumbling helplessly to the turf much to the delight of Heinz Field fans, social media and honorary Yinzer Snoop Dogg.

“I think (Najee Harris) is related to Franco Harris the way he’s running the ball, man,” said Snoop, making a guest appearance on ESPN2’s ManningCast. “He’s got a mean stiff-arm. He’s like baby Derrick Henry. Gimme some of that, ‘Uh, sit down, clown.’”  

Before Harris could accept congratulations and Stewart could pick up the pieces of his manhood, Twitter erupted with a volley of posts. GIFs were made. Snoop’s “sit down, clown,” zinger was endlessly quote-tweeted. Memories of Derrick Henry’s abuse of Josh Norman were invoked.

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Six minutes later it happened again. This time, Browns running back Nick Chubb sent Steelers defensive back Miles Killebrew to the ground with a smack to the side of Killebrew’s helmet. 

“You better bring something when you go to tackle both Najee Harris and Nick Chubb,” ESPN analyst Brian Griese said. 

“Yes, indeed,” fellow ESPN analyst Louis Riddick added. “You don’t want to be on the receiving end of that.”

Nothing titillates the masses quite like a good stiff-arm — football’s emasculating equivalent to a posterizing slam dunk. They have been around for at least 100 years, dating to the leather-helmeted days of Red Grange. Even the iconic figure atop the Heisman Trophy is striking the pose of a ball-carrier fending off an imaginary defender with one arm extended. 

But few gridiron techniques have undergone a more radical transformation in the past century. Once employed as a tactic to shield a ball-toting runner from a would-be tackler, the stiff-arm has been weaponized by receivers and backs to inflict pain and embarrassment on defenders. 

Highlight-reel stiff-arms don't occur often — and almost never twice in a six-minute span — but few plays create a greater buzz. 

“In the 1920s and 1930s, guys were trying to ward off a tackle,” said football historian Chris Willis, an NFL Films researcher. “Much later, I think it became coached and taught. Now, it’s a kind of forceful technique, almost a punch. The way a Derrick Henry and Najee Harris use it, it’s like a weapon.”

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Najee Harris hurdles a Notre Dame defender while playing for the University of Alabama.

Harris arrived in the NFL with a signature move — one he uses as a silhouette image for his personalized merchandise. In high school and college, he frequently hurdled defenders. The daring leaps produced great highlights, but also strong condemnations from coaches and his mother, who feared the risk of injury. 

"I tried to teach him not to do it and it didn’t work,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said last year.

Since joining the Steelers, Harris mostly has resisted temptation to go airborne while leading the NFL in touches (366) and ranking fourth in rushing yards (1,172). 

He’s evolved into a punishing pro runner who seems to be growing stronger as the regular season enters its final week.

“In my opinion, he hasn’t slowed down, he’s gotten better,” Ben Roethlisberger told reporters Wednesday. “It speaks volumes about the preparation and the work he puts in. . . . He’s going to be a lot of fun to watch here for a long time.”

Harris’ speed and athleticism were so dominating at Antioch (Calif.) High that he rarely made use of stiff-arms.

“(It) wasn’t a huge part of his game,” Antioch offensive coordinator Brett Dudley told DK Pittsburgh Sports on Tuesday. “He more so juked guys or ran them over.”

When it comes to ramming a gloved hand into the face of defenders, Henry has kept the rest of the NFL at arm’s length. The Titans running back is the league’s best at jolting tacklers with a free hand. His strong-armed demolition of Norman last season on a 4-yard carry, one negated by a penalty, nearly broke the internet. 

Harris is proving a quick study. Like Henry, he’s a big, powerful runner blessed with a 33-inch reach —ideal for creating separation from would-be tacklers. 

In Week 2, the Steelers running back destroyed Jonathan Abram with a straight left that sent the Raiders safety sprawling to the sideline. On Dec. 26, Harris punctuated a 21-yard run by planting Chiefs defensive back Juan Thornhill like a lawn dart.

 But it was his prime-time toppling of Stewart that stood out on a night Harris rushed for a season-high 188 yards. It was reminiscent of Vance McDonald’s brutal 2018 stiff-arm of Buccaneers defensive back Chris Conte en route to a touchdown. 

“That one blew up,” Willis recalled. “McDonald slings him to the ground and he barely breaks stride. People just exploded when they saw it.”

Harris clearly has put some thought into his stiff-arm techniques. He was asked about them by DK Pittsburgh Sports writer Dale Lolley after Wednesday’s practice. 

“It can happen a lot of ways, but the open-field stiff-arm that I’ve been doing . . . I try to get (defenders) to stop (their) feet, you know what I mean,” he said. “So they have no momentum or anything. They are just kind of in the ground. It’s just tactics to work on. It’s just me thinking too damn much at home.”

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BOBBY RAMSAY

Bobby Ramsay and his former high-school phenom Derrick Henry in Jacksonville.

In the early 1980s, eccentric Philadelphia 76ers center Darryl Dawkins, who claimed to hail from the planet “Lovetron,” had a penchant for naming his dunks. He twice shattered backboards with the force of his fierce flushes. 

The man known as “Chocolate Thunder” had a variety of colorful epithets for his dunks. There was the “In Your Face Disgrace,” the “Turbo Sexophonic Delight” and the legendary “Get-Out-Of-The-Waying Backboard-Swaying Game-Delaying If-You-Ain’t-Grooving-You-Best-Get-Moving” dunk.

Decades later, Henry’s high school coach Bobby Ramsay seemed to be channeling Dawkins as he went to work with his young running back in Yulee, Fla. 

When a would-be tackler tried hitting Henry low, the running back would take his free hand and push down on the defender’s helmet, shoving him into the turf. That became known as the “Time To Go To Bed, Son” stiff-arm. 

If a defender such as Norman attempted to tackle Henry high, he would take his free hand and toss the defender aside. That became the “Barroom Get The Heck Away From Me,” stiff-arm. 

There were times when Henry simply extended his free arm and kept defenders grasping at air as the running back churned for additional yardage. This one earned a nickname years later in honor of the global pandemic. It’s the “Social Distancing” stiff-arm.

Henry is the NFL’s most prolific and feared rusher — one who’s forced many undersized defensive backs into business decisions as they approach him, not wanting to become an internet meme, or worse. 

“I don’t think some of these guys want to tackle him any more than the 5-9, 175-pound DBs in high school wanted to tackle him,” Ramsay said. “They are thinking about their careers, about their next paycheck.”

Ramsay said he sees similarities in the two former University of Alabama running backs.  

“If there are 22 guys on the field, and Derrick or Najee is one of them, they will absolutely be pound-for-pound the strongest guy on the field,” Ramsay said. “That makes it tough on defenders.”

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Najee Harris scores a touchdown against the Broncos at Heinz Field on Oct. 10.

Harris ranks second in the league among running backs with 29 broken tackles, according to ProFoootballReference.com. It’s not a surprising stat given how hard he runs or his number of carries (296), which also is the second-most in the NFL. 

The charismatic Harris has spent the past two months fending off questions from the media about fatigue and concerns of hitting the “rookie wall.” The running back has said off-season training coupled with in-season yoga and therapeutic body maintenance have enabled him to remain fresh.

To that point, three of Harris’ top-5 rushing performances have come in the past four games.

What can’t be gauged is the long-term impact of a grueling rookie season in which the Steelers did not have a reliable secondary back to spell Harris. The great Earl Campbell, who was ground into the unforgiving Astrodome turf by Bum Phillips, remains a too-much-too-soon cautionary tale for today’s backs. 

So it’s interesting that Campbell offered Henry a bit of advice in 2019 when the two most relentless runners of their generations finally met. 

“How in the hell you don’t use that stiff-arm more,” Campbell asked. “Put that bone on them. Let them know you got it.”

Henry’s high school coach believes all high-volume runners should heed Campbell’s words once they break into the open field. 

The game’s evolution, with its emphasis on spread formations and the use of three- and four-receiver sets, has created more space for backs.

“Football is not played in a phone booth anymore, it’s being played on a par-4 (hole),” Ramsay said. “Yeah, you can run guys over, but you are accumulating a lot of road miles at the same time. When you run over a guy, it can hurt you as much as it does him.”

The way the game is played today, the coach contends, lends itself more to stiff-arms than bulldozing defenders in the open field. It also allows ball-carriers a better chance at staying on their feet after delivering a blow to the helmet or should pads. 

The stiff-arm has enjoyed a renaissance over the past decade with big backs such as Marshawn Lynch dropping defenders to their knees with a well-placed paw to the face mask. If social media and the internet had been around during Jim Brown’s era, it might have never gone out of vogue. 

Football fans can browse YouTube and find 28-minute compilations of the best stiff-arms. But it’s social media that has done the most to popularize them. There are hundreds of clips featuring play-by-play announcers screaming “stiff-arm” as a ball-carrier turns a would-be tackler into a chalk outline.

“Twitter is a big influence on a lot of things,” Willis said. “People love to see a stiff-arm and they love to retweet them and comment on them. It’s the same when someone posterizes a defender with a dunk in basketball.”

Harris has put NFL defenses on notice with a handful of stiff-arms in his rookie season. Cornerbacks and safeties beware. Especially on Monday nights when Snoop Dogg is yukking it up with Peyton and Eli. 

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