Najee Harris has moved on from the Pittsburgh Steelers, finding a new home with the Los Angeles Chargers. And he’s become much more of a hot topic than anybody really anticipated this offseason. His latest comments sparked the most discussion, with Harris speaking on the lack of leadership on the offensive side of the ball early in his Steelers career.
ESPN’s Damien Woody thinks his comments might be a slight against Mike Tomlin.
“I think it’s fair,” Woody said on First Take on Friday. “I think it’s an indirect shot at Mike Tomlin, to be honest with you. When you don’t have a QB, you don’t have an identity offensively. So for a young guy coming in, you’re thinking ‘okay who can I go to as a resource to see how this thing is done.’. As a running back, you want to be able to look on your side of the ball… Who do I look to? They didn’t have anybody. I think indirectly he was talking about Mike Tomlin.”
In Harris’ interview, he wasn’t saying there wasn’t any leadership in the organization as a whole. He specifically spoke about trying to talk to some of the leaders on the defensive ball. It’s easy to understand the frustration there, though. Having to talk to people who play on the other side of the ball because there isn’t enough leadership on the offense isn’t an ideal situation for a young running back.
Not being able to throw the ball also makes life significantly harder on running backs. If the defense knows you can’t push the ball down the field, you’re not going to get many favorable looks trying to run the ball. During Harris’ time as a Steeler, we’ve all endured some ugly quarterback play. Aside from the first seven games we saw from Russell Wilson in 2024, Harris never really had any consistent quarterback play.
This is where Woody thinks it may be a shot at Tomlin. For all the things Tomlin does well, developing a quarterback has not been one of them. Harris may not have meant it that way, but his comments do reflect one of Tomlin’s inefficiencies recently.
At the end of the day, Harris is not a perfect back. He has his faults. However, that doesn’t mean he’s wrong, either. At a point in time, the Steelers offense was led by Kenny Pickett, George Pickens and Najee Harris. It may have looked like an offense with a lot of potential at the time, but there certainly wasn’t much of a veteran presence.
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