2024 Steelers Born to Run

But this will not happen without the participation of other players on the field.

“We have a group of young guys that are growing and growing together, and I think cohesion is a component of that,” Tomlin said Tuesday at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex. “Continuity is a component of this. And so it is reasonable to expect that the situation will get better. Our tight end team of Pat (Freiermuth) and Darnell (Washington) is in its second year, some of our young offensive linemen have been around. now they’ve grown a little bit, with Najee, Dan Moore, for example, and so I think it’s reasonable to expect that there will be a cumulative effect on some of them.”

But when you consider some of the moving parts, especially on the offensive line, it’s even more impressive. The Steelers had four different offensive linemen start this season for the first time in their careers. They’ve had nine different offensive linemen this season, including Ryan McCollum, who started for the second time in his career last Sunday against the Jets in place of injured rookie Zach Frazier.

Despite this, Harris is tied for eighth in the NFL with 478 rushing yards, one yard less than he had in his first seven games as a rookie, when he rushed for a career-high 1,200 yards as the Steelers gain averaged 134.0 yards per game. game, the ninth-highest in the NFL. The Steelers’ 235 attempts trail league-leading Baltimore by just four.

“I have to give our guys credit every week,” Tomlin said. “We just evaluate what’s available to us with our resources, whether it’s manpower or whatever, and we formulate a plan that we think we can accomplish, and these guys execute that plan. And so these guys deserve a lot of credit. The guys we’ve talked about, like Ryan McCollum and others, who are adapting, taking advantage of opportunities and making their dreams come true.”

While Wilson was nursing a calf injury, Fields provided relief work for the Steelers’ offense, rushing for 231 yards and five touchdowns.

But with Wilson in the lineup last week, the Steelers got 102 yards and a touchdown from Harris, 44 yards from Warren and three yards and a touchdown from Wilson for 149 yards.

And if the running game works as well as it did a year ago, things can only get better. The Steelers averaged 79.7 yards per game in the first seven games of 2023, but 145.2 yards per game in the last 10 games as the weather got colder and the defense began to wear down.

The one thing that won’t change is the Steelers’ desire to run the ball no matter who is available to them.

“I think it’s just football. I think anyone who is interested in running football will be fighting a war of attrition,” Tomlin said. “That’s what happens when I see Baltimore’s Derek Henry come out late. Dude, he’s been beating people up for an hour and a half, two hours, and eventually the dam breaks.”