LATROBE, Pa. -- This might've been Najee Harris' second or third rep at dodging reporters. Maybe the fourth. I'd lost count.
But it definitely was his most dynamic.
On one of them, upon arriving at the designated entry to the team's main dorm at Saint Vincent College on this sunny, steamy Wednesday reporting day for the Steelers, the franchise's former franchise running back kept it smooth and simple: He just passed right by everyone.
"Got a minute, Naj?"
"Nah. Meeting."
There are no meetings on reporting day.
On another, a driver was moving Harris' cart while he lay sideways in the bed, his back turned toward everyone. Mere minutes after the "meeting," by the way.
And then there was this first-round effort:
Sometimes you gotta forge your own path pic.twitter.com/egd4Fo2RA5
— Brooke Pryor (@bepryor) July 24, 2024
Oh, my. I'm guessing Arthur Smith might've loved it. A little misdirection, ducking behind the reporters this time by darting directly down the grass hill despite lugging some significant luggage. We'd never seen that one on film.
I'm not complaining. Let me be clear about that.
For one thing, I've always kinda liked Harris. He moves to his own beat. He'll behave in some boorish ways. But at the end of his figurative day, he's hardly some bad dude. Breathtaking back-story. Beloved as a teammate. Really, really cares about what he does for a living.
For another, he did eventually return to talk, even if that came with some coaxing behind the scenes. He talked at length, too. And with the standard charisma he's capable of summoning for such occasions.
Small sampling:
See that smile make that cameo in there?
I wouldn't see it again. His expression was dour in all of the above sequences, his body language that much worse. And when I'd later witness him walking toward the team's cafeteria across campus, all alone, he came across no different. Other players moved in packs. Dan Moore was beaming. Minkah Fitzpatrick, too. I saw Payton Wilson, the rookie, leaning against a railing high above the practice fields that'll be populated for the first practice Thursday, gazing out as if he was surveying several glorious levels of heaven.
Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Maybe I'm not reading enough.
Here's what I'm plenty comfortable presuming, though: This person, this player isn't happy.
And I get that he wouldn't be: He was the resident darling in 2021, the overdue replacement for Le'Veon Bell, the bell-cow out of the Alabama football factory who'd restore the offense to two-yards-and-a-cloud tradition, and he'd arrived with a ten-watt persona to boot. Everybody loved Najee. Ben Roethlisberger loved Najee. Eddie Faulkner, the running backs coach, handled Najee like the golden child. And I'd be willing to bet no one loved -- or still loves -- Najee quite like Mike Tomlin. To see them together is to see a borderline father-son bond.
But there are bonds, and there's business. And when the Steelers this past spring stunned even some inside their own orbit by declining to exercise Harris' fifth-year option -- which would've guaranteed him a largely team-friendly $6.7 million in 2025 before the team would need to decide on his further future -- the latter obviously took hold.
Not going to lie here: I was stunned, too.
And now ...
"I was disappointed for a minute," he'd say on this day, his first public speaking on the subject. "But it's nothing really where sitting around and being disappointed for too long will help me out. I think it is what it is. You've gotta keep pushing and, knowing that, coming out here and doing what's best for the team and having a good year is what's most important right now."
And what was told to him by Tomlin and/or Omar Khan about their call?
They told him, as Harris recalled, that "they didn't know which direction the offense is headed."
Uh, what?
There can't have been a coordinator hire anywhere in the NFL over the past decade that was more transparently aimed at a power running game than the Steelers adding Smith. The man was born with a tight end to either side of him. It's beyond unfathomable that this could've been seriously put forth by anyone at any level of the organization, never mind the top of football ops.
Might it somehow be a fit issue with Smith?
"I mean, I feel like I fit pretty good," Harris replied to that. "Given his history, you would think they wouldn't say that. But that's just what it is."
Harris' 'direction' remark was relayed to Tomlin at the latter's press conference later on this day, and the head coach's reply was entirely as follows: "No need for me to add any more to his answer to your question. If that's what he was told, that's what he was told."
Yikes. As, in all-around yikes.
So again, I get that Harris wouldn't be happy. And again, he really, really cares about what he does, and he's invested a ton into this team, only to have this odd scenario pop up in the summer after his third consecutive 1,000-yard rushing season. It seems to be, at least on the surface, a disingenuous attitude/approach toward an individual who deserves better than that.
Now, that said ...
(Deep breath here, OK?)
... I also get what the Steelers want out of this.
With respect to Harris' consistency, and even with respect to his having run under the worst coordinator in the NFL and having run behind some of the worst offensive lines in the league, it's close to impossible to argue against Jaylen Warren being the better back. Sure, as both freely acknowledge, they're better in part because of each other and how they share the load and how one softens up the defense for the other, but Warren's still better. At almost everything.
What I've heard from within is that Smith loves Warren. Doesn't mean he doesn't love Harris, but he loves, loves Warren.
What I've also also heard from within, though not necessarily related, is that Harris wants to be paid in the range of the Patriots' Rhamondre Stevenson, who a month ago signed a four-year, $36 million extension that made him the league's sixth-highest paid running back. And being blunt, the Steelers would be idiots of a cosmic order to offer something of that scope for any reason -- sorry, but Harris isn't in that class -- never mind that they've already got a better back in-house.
So, where'll all this wind up?
There've been no extension talks, though all concerned, including Harris, claim to want them.
"I like it here in Pittsburgh," Harris would say to that. "I like Coach, Mr. Rooney, Omar, even Kevin Colbert when he was here. It’s a good city. Obviously, the people are nice and welcoming. But it’s a business. This comes and goes in your life."
As for my own expectation: Ask me after Russell Wilson takes the season's first snap in Atlanta, then spins around to hand off to Warren, after which the camera pans to the sideline to show the saddest face in the stadium.
• Speaking of Wilson, this might be the most thorough answer I've ever received from a Pittsburgh quarterback in my time around the team:
That's wild, huh?
Dude listed literally the entire starting offense, when all I'd asked about was the wide receiver group. And even then, as it sounded like he'd finally finished, he catches himself to express that none of it matters without the offensive line.
Give credit where due: He's trying. In every setting. That goes a long way at his position.
• Notice that Calvin Austin III was Russell's second receiver mentioned?
Mm-hm.
• I'll cut off here after reporting day, remind that it all really gets rolling Thursday with the 10:30 a.m. opening practice of camp on Chuck Noll Field. I'll be there, along with Chris Halicke and Greg Macafee, for the coverage.
• Bookmark our Steelers Feed. Pound away on that button all day. We won't disappoint.
• Thanks for reading.
• And for listening:
