Pedigree or performance? It’s time for Jaylen Warren to be the Steelers’ No. 1 running back option

by Aubrey Bruce, For New Pittsburgh Courier

When it comes to collegiate players who are chosen in the first round of the NFL Draft, there is usually an enormous amount of hype that comes along with any team’s first-round player of choice.

There are also players that may not hail from established institutions of higher learning/player factories that produce NFL-ready athletes on a regular basis. When those so-called “under the radar” athletes gain notoriety, generally there is some sort of superficial analysis offered up such as: “That player is hungry and just flat out plays harder simply because he does not have a guaranteed spot that is reserved for a first-rounder…”

What about the undrafted or free-agent performer that is just better than the player of a supposed higher pedigree? In the case of two Pittsburgh Steelers running backs, first-rounder Najee Harris and Jaylen Warren, I strongly suspect that at this juncture, Jaylen Warren is the better player.

Harris was the team’s 2021 first-round pick and performed admirably during the 2021 season but due to injury, he seems to be just a shell of the player that he was during the 2021 season.

The time has come for Warren to sit in the first chair at running back; he has earned the opportunity. Pedigree is not worth the paper that it is written on if the performance of the profiled athlete does not transcend to the next level. For a few moments during the Steelers/Eagles game, I was forced to take a second look at Najee Harris because for a brief period, I thought I was looking at “Tiny Tim” tiptoeing through the tulips trying to coerce Miss Vicky into his ukulele-filled boudoir at 12:01 a.m. as opposed to a valid NFL running back putting his head down, plowing straight ahead to a hard-earned and much-needed first down during a vital period of the game.

The Steelers’ 2022 first-round draft pick, Kenny Pickett, wasn’t very complimentary as far as the effort of his teammates was concerned. “Guys need to know what they’re doing,” he said. “We need to study more. I don’t think we study enough as a group. There are way too many penalties, which we can control. It’s all mental. There’s really no excuse for that to happen.”

Pickett has been the starter for four games. There has not been a great improvement because Pickett has currently established an unenviable pattern of committing a turnover at the most inopportune times.

Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin was not in a mood to celebrate any effort in a losing cause. “We all weren’t good enough today. I’ll just assess it in that way,” coach Tomlin said. As for Pickett: “He’s a young guy getting an opportunity to play and all that. I’m just not in that frame of mind right now. I’m going to assess what transpired from a collective perspective.”

So I gather at this point in the season if any studying needs to be done, maybe just maybe, the Steelers’ rookie QB might be at the head of the line waiting for the library to open and the first one to burn the midnight oil watching game film.

Pickett continued with his questionable analysis and critique. “A guy dropping a ball or missing a block, or I miss a throw, the physical things, you can pat each other on the back and say we’ll go get them next time. You can put up with that. But the stuff you can’t put up with is the mental mistakes and that needs to get fixed.”

Hey Kenny, I, along with others, may respectfully disagree with your assessment. Missing blocks, missing throws will almost always guarantee that there will not be a next time.

Up in the coach’s box, Steelers offensive coordinator Matt Canada had a celebratory leap of joy when the Steelers ran a fake jet sweep with (now former) Steelers wideout Chase Claypool stopping to lob a sort of ugly pass in the end zone to fullback Derek Watt for a Halloween-style, trickery-laced touchdown. The celebration by Canada would be short-lived.

Steelers outside linebacker T.J. Watt is a great player when he is on the field. In the recent past, his sibling, Arizona Cardinals defensive end J.J. Watt, has been a stellar performer as well. Aside from being brothers and both being great performers on the defensive side of the ball, they also share a not-so-complimentary characteristic: they both suffer from the “China Doll Syndrome” because they are more often bitten by the injury bug then a beachgoer using honey as sunscreen. The Pittsburgh Steelers must overcome all shortcomings on offense, defense and special teams in order to salvage the remainder of the 2022 season.

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