During a podcast appearance earlier this week, Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin told listeners that he expects sophomore quarterback Nagy Harris to be the team’s “bell cow” this season.
I found this comment strange given that Harris was actually a bell cow last year. Harris was second in the NFL rush attempts Last season, only succeeding Jonathan Taylor. Harris carried the ball 307 times during his junior campaign, The 16-Most holds for the novice Ever. He averaged 3.9 yards per attempt. Since 2010, the only time a halfback has been aged 23 or younger has lunged more than 300 times in a season while averaging under four yards – 2010 Rashard Mendenhall.
You’d think the Steelers might have learned not to push their young backs too hard after Mindenhall. He retired the 2008 first-round pick at the age of 26. While Mendenhall did not explicitly say injuries played a role in his decision, claiming he had just finished football and wanted to”Travel the world and write,“He has also stated that he no longer wants to put his body in danger for the sake of entertainment.
Mendenhall has struggled with injuries throughout his career. Most notably, he suffered a shoulder injury in 2008, followed by an injury Asian Champions League torn In 2011, and a bad case of a toe in his final season with Arizona, 2013. We were really starting to see Mindenhall fall after rupturing his ACL, at age 24, one year after Mindenhall carried the ball more than 300 times. Do you see where I’m going with this?
The same can be said of Le’Veon Bell as well. Bale was the belle of the ball among their NFL debuts early in his career, but guess what? After carrying the ball 290 times in 2014, he missed 10 games in 2015 due to injury. After carrying the ball more than 300 times in 2017, he didn’t like using it and it sat all through 2018. Then we started seeing a drop in production. The Steelers are about to do the same thing to Harris: push him to the ground. This would be the third half of the franchise in less than two decades that fell victim to the Steelers’ massive reliance on the franchise’s emergence.
This is the thing. I’d be willing to let that slip if there was any indication that banning the Steelers would be more efficient in 2022, but that’s not the case. The team spent an impressive number of draft picks from scratch supporting an offensive line that ranked 28th in the Modified line yards To block running in 2021.
But in all fairness, goalkeeper Kevin Dotson missed half of the season last year, the team took over quarterback Mason Cole (a great running blocker, terrible pass blocker) and goalkeeper James Daniels in an off-season, and perhaps Dan Moore Jr’s interference could be improved. His disappointing rookie season, but that’s a lotifs’, ‘And the’Fingers crossed hoping everything would come together. I don’t buy it. Maybe the quarterback will improve, thus taking on the attacking weight of Harris, but Mitch Trubesky is not an upgrade, and as far as we can tell the rookie player Kenny Beckett timeline To become the team’s primary midfielder is still not specified.
Basically, Harris will likely work with a similarly inept offensive line unit and full-back (at least for now) while carrying a heavier workload than he gave him last year and likely not be that efficient. Come on!
There is a reason why many NFL teams choose committee approaches in their backcourts nowadays. Putting all your eggs in one half basket (buh dum tss) not only limits their longevity in the NFL, but also forces you to pay them more money when their contract expires. Even someone as permanent as Derek Henry didn’t reach 200 pregnancies until his third season. He was given time to adjust to the NFL and served on a committee for a few years before becoming King. While Henry suffered a serious injury last year, he was one of the strongest defenders in the league before 2021, even when he was 27 years old. See what miracles reducing Henry’s workload early in his career did for the Titans series. However, Harris does not possess Henry’s size, and this makes reducing his workload early in his career all the more important.
Harris is a tremendous talent with a lot of potential. Played right, Harris could have a long and prosperous NFL career that fans have fascinated and awed for a decade. Don’t deprive us of Pittsburgh. Don’t put this evil on him!
