INDIANAPOLIS -- Mistakes can be fixed.
Even meat-headed mistakes on some massive scale can be fixed.
But this ... I'm not so sure:
— DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) September 29, 2024
— DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) September 30, 2024
— DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) September 29, 2024
Again and again and again, as if nothing else was going awry, as if Jaylen Warren and eventually Cordarrelle Patterson weren't out with injuries, as if there were no other offensive options, the Steelers wasted way too many handoffs within their 27-24 loss to the Colts on this Sunday afternoon at Lucas Oil Stadium on Najee Harris that went ... well, it's up there.
No, seriously, scroll back and press play on all three of those. The pain makes the point for me.
But if not, he's still the franchise's headline running back, still the centerpiece of their new offense under Arthur Smith, still the first-round pick who somehow keeps being superseded by pretty much everyone else at his position, and all he'd accumulate across 13 carries in this one was 19 whole yards. Or an average of 1.5 yards, the essential equivalent of falling forward onto one's face.
And before anyone goes blaming anyone else for this, I've got a beautiful contrast below:
— DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) September 29, 2024
That's all 33 years of Patterson running. As in, you know, running. As in, he'd finish with six carries for 43 yards, an average of 7.2 yards, including runs of 4, 12, 11, 9, 10 on the Steelers' penultimate drive of the second quarter.
Compare that to Harris' three-hour slog of minus-2, 1, 1, 1, 3, 1, 3, no gain, no gain, 1, 1, 5 and 4.
Crazy, yeah?
Same schemes, same blocking, same opponent that'd leaked 174 yards rushing only a week earlier ... and the same old storyline for Harris: He's too slow to find the hole, too slow to hit the hole, too slow to compensate by breaking a big one occasionally. It's been true since he was drafted, and it's true again this season: His 228 rushing yards rank a respectable-on-the-surface 12th-best in the NFL, but that's required 68 carries, and his average of 3.4 yards per carry now ranks dead last among the league's top 32 backs, as ranked by total rushing yards.
There are 32 teams, I'll remind, which is why I chose that figure.
Can't win like that, my friends. Just can't. Not with this broader plan in motion.
And the principal reason for that is that the offense never gets started the way it absolutely must for any of this other stuff to become relevant. Meaning that the Steelers are now the NFL's worst team on first down, in large part because they can't run:
► 2.92 yards per rush (32nd)
► 65 carries (6th)
► 11 yards per pass completion (16th)
No lie: Harris' individual output on first down in this game was six carries for 8 yards. For the season, he's averaging 2.64 yards per carry on first down, and only 44.4% of his runs on first down have gone for more than 2 yards.
Now, keep that figure in mind when hearing my question to him afterward about the importance of improving on first down:
"What are you saying? You mean we need a first down on every first play?" he'd reply, though I obviously implied no such thing. "Getting 4 yards is an efficient first play. So, I guess, making a second down shorter than first, I guess, is important."
He guesses.
There was more:
• On his running: "They packed the box. They packed the box. They packed the box. They had a free hitter every time, and we didn't put hands on the guys that we needed to. That's what happened."
• On what changed between the halves: "You see how they was playing it?"
• On what Justin Fields showed him by rallying the Steelers: "I think we all showed it. I think we showed it as a team, what we can do. It's not one player. Y'all keep putting it all on one person. It's the whole team, all 11 of us. Y'all keep saying Justin as if he's the one throwing, catching and running ... like, come on, it's all of us."
Wow, where to start?
In order ...
• Yeah, getting 4 yards is an efficient first play. Getting 2.64, as he does, isn't.
• No, the Colts didn't pack the box, not as that's commonly defined. Almost all of their sets were a standard six-man front, though Harris was fair to emphasize the 'free hitter,' in that way too many Indianapolis linebackers went without a match at the line. But eight, nine in the box were rare and, yet again, Patterson blew through the same defense. In that clip above, Patterson blew through seven in the box.
• What changed at the half was that Smith let Fields -- finally -- start throwing to overcome Harris' lack of yardage, and to compensate for Patterson not being around to bail Harris out.
• Attempting to spread out what Fields did? Really? After Harris gained 19 yards on the ground, after Fields threw for 312, and after the offense as a whole amassed 404? After Harris' contribution through his main role was 4.7% of those 404 yards?
This is par for the figurative course with him, and all I'll say further is that he's got nowhere near the NFL achievements to match that attitude.
Look, I'm not piling a loss on one player. That'd be psychotic in a game contested by a combined 96 participants, which is why I never do it and won't start here. But in the same breath, I'm plenty comfortable stating -- or reiterating, really -- that I see most of the messes here as being eminently solvable stuff. In fact, the more separate scenarios there were involving dropped interceptions, fumbles, penalties and the like, the more convinced I became that this was exactly the kind of outcome a 3-0 team encounters with its first loss.
But this thing with first down, and Harris specifically, it's been there since Atlanta. And there's no solution in sight. Doubly so since Mike Tomlin seems married to this notion that Harris is the best he's got, no matter how much evidence everyone witnesses to the contrary. And triply so since neither Warren (knee) nor Patterson (ankle) might be available for a while.
It's easy, arguably lazy, to suggest Smith should shake up the strategy. But this is where this offense has been committed since the spring, and it's committed for the long haul. The running game can't just be effective when it's convenient. It's got to be that even when it's expected by the other team. That’s the foundation of all else that follows, even the passing.
"It's always going to be important, because we're a run-first offense," Spencer Anderson told me. "If we get the run started, that's when everything else opens up, quarterback reads, quarterback pulls, downfield shots, everything."
"First downs and first-down runs are huge," Dan Moore told me. "They obviously did a really good job against us, knowing what our game plan was, and we've just got to execute better. Get a hat on a hat, start faster, stop shooting ourselves in the foot ... the kind of things that we've talked about in team development day. We've just got to bounce back from it."
Fields isn’t the issue, though I've no doubt that'll be a manufactured debate in the week ahead. He isn’t even an issue.
First freaking down is the issue. Try setting up Fields with something other than second-and-9, and the rest of the playbook's got at least a prayer.
I guess, anyway.
• Chris Halicke was here, too, and his Chalk Talk breaks down all the breakdowns.
• Chris also shines a Spotlight on Fields, and appropriately so. He's QB1. He's it.
• Much more from both of us in our Steelers Feed.
• Anyone still fretting over the fifth-year option? Hello?
• Thanks for reading our football coverage.
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