RADIO
Recently, I joined a Twitter Spaces hosted by fellow RotoBaller Kyle Lindemann (@LuckIsMadeFF on Twitter). It was right after news dropped that RB Jeremy McNichols signed a one-year deal with the Pittsburgh Steelers. You may think this news is highly insignificant, but I'm here to make the case that it's not, and I made that abundantly clear in the Twitter Spaces conversation. My reasons for fading Najee Harris were met with haste and doubt.
Now, I was already generally out on Harris this season at his ADP of RB5, but I'm even MORE out now that the Steelers have "tipped their hand" in terms of how they could deploy their running backs in 2022.
I'm here to plant my flag and make the case against Najee Harris in fantasy football in 2022. But first, let's take a look at what he did during his rookie season.
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Najee Harris as an NFL Rookie
Harris was taken as the 24th overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft by the Steelers after they let James Conner walk in free agency. The Alabama product immediately became the workhorse back in Pittsburgh. In fact, he ranked first amongst all running backs in snap share (84.5%), opportunity share (86.4%), weighted opportunities (331.8), targets (94), and routes run (424), per PlayerProfiler. Talk about a bell cow, Harris rarely came off the field as a rookie.
But even with all that opportunity, Harris finished as just the RB9 in half-PPR leagues on a points-per-game (PPG) basis in 2021. His 15.5 PPG ranked behind Derrick Henry, Jonathan Taylor, Austin Ekeler, Joe Mixon, Alvin Kamara, James Conner, Leonard Fournette, and Christian McCaffrey. Fast forward to the 2022 season, and for some reason, Harris is being taken as the fifth running back off the board. Why?
Even with league-leading opportunities, Harris found himself just barely inside the top-1o running backs a season ago. In 2022, there are multiple reasons to believe that workload goes down. The case against Najee Harris.
Mitch Trubisky the New Starting Quarterback
Some people believe Trubisky (the likely starter) is an upgrade over Ben Roethlisberger. While that may be the case, the jury is still out. But that's neither here nor there. The reason Trubisky could be "worse" for Harris is the fact that he won't check down as much as Big Ben did a season ago.
Let's take a look back at the 2020 season, the last time Trubisky was a starting quarterback (for the Chicago Bears). That season, Trubisky started and finished eight games, while Nick Foles started and finished seven games (and played the majority of snaps in an eighth game).
In his eight games, Trubisky targeted the running backs 5.4 times per game for a 15.6% target share. On the other hand, Foles targeted the running backs 7.9 times per game for a 20.3% target share. Quite the difference, huh?
So what's the biggest difference between Trubisky and Foles? It's easily the fact that Trubisky is a dual-threat quarterback that is capable of making plays with his legs.
Essentially, Foles' style is much more similar to Roethlisberger's style of quarterbacking, which involves passing to his running backs at a much higher rate. With Trubisky under center, we should naturally expect to see Najee Harris' targets decrease from the 94 (or 5.5 per game) he saw as a rookie from Big Ben.
It's not just the probable fewer running back targets that's going to negatively affect Harris' fantasy value, but the red zone rush attempts Trubisky is likely to handle as well. Per Pro Football Reference, in 2020, Trubisky rushed nine times in red zone (13.6% of the team's total).
Foles on the other hand rushed just twice in the red zone (3.0% of the team's total). Instead of Harris being the only rushing threat to score a touchdown, we now have Trubisky that can punch it in.
So far, we already have two reasons why Harris is likely to see a decrease in value, and we haven't even gotten to what the signing of Jeremy McNichols could suggest.
Jeremy McNichols Signs with the Pittsburgh Steelers
I get it, this signing seems SUPER insignificant. But I promise you it's not. It's not necessarily Jeremy McNichols as a player that's going to somehow take away 100 opportunities from Harris. That's not going to happen. Rather, it's the very specific role McNichols played a season ago in Tennessee. That was the ever-so-important third-down role.
Remember earlier in the article I mentioned that Harris ran the most routes of all running backs in the league last season with 424? Well, that's pretty much what McNichols did (and was pretty good at) last season with the Titans.
In games he played more than 20% of the snaps, he ran an average of 10.3 routes per game. Over the course of a full season, that's nearly 175 routes run out of the backfield operating strictly as a third-down back.
In 2021, Steelers running backs not named Najee Harris only ran 76 total routes out of the backfield (Benny Snell Jr., Anthony McFarland Jr., and Kalen Ballage). By signing McNichols, the Steelers could be indicating to us that they want a specific skillset for that ever-so-important third-down role since they clearly couldn't find it a season ago. And Harris himself even admitted recently that he was tired on occasion last season due to the heavy workload:
Let's go back to those 11 games McNichols played over 20% of the snaps. In those games, he caught 27-of-37 targets. Per PFF, he earned a receiving grade of 73.8. Compare that to Harris, who earned a 66.1 receiving grade last season.
Clearly, the Steelers brought someone in they thought could complement Harris, rather than just another backup like Snell or McFarland that haven't been asked to handle that kind of assignment thus far in their careers.
As a rookie, Harris was targeted 94 times on his 424 routes run, good for a 22.2% targets per route run (TPRR) rate. Even if his TPRR stays at 22.2% if you take away 99 routes run in 2022, that would leave him with just 72 targets, 22 fewer than he saw in 2021.
Now let's not forget about that one game in Week 3 where Najee saw a whopping 19 targets. Diontae Johnson was out that game, so Big Ben relied heavily on his running back. That's a big-time outlier, which is probably over-inflating Harris' value as a pass-catcher this season.
Based on the presence of both Trubisky and McNichols (or any other running back the Steelers bring in to play the third-down role), I think it's safe to say Najee Harris won't see more than 60-65 targets this season. At a catch rate of 78.7%, that would be 47-51 receptions compared to his 74 from a season ago.
That isn't great, we want our running backs in fantasy football to get as many targets as humanly possible since they're worth 1.6 points per in PPR leagues compared to carries, which are worth just 0.6 points per (thank you, Scott Barrett). And if they're not going to get the receptions, we want them to have as much touchdown equity as possible, which could also decrease this season playing with a dual-threat quarterback.
Closing Arguments in the Case Against Najee Harris
It's a fact that Najee Harris finished as the RB9 on a points-per-game in half PPR formats last season after seeing the most opportunity of all running backs, both on the ground AND in the passing game. So right there, he probably shouldn't be considered as the RB5 like he is right now ahead of 2022 fantasy drafts.
Now you add in all the other factors that likely decrease his fantasy value this season. Trubisky's presence alone likely decreases Harris' targets and may increase competition for touches in the red zone. McNichols (or another receiving back that can play on third downs) also likely decreases Harris' targets.
But what about the rushing volume, that's sure to stay around 300 carries, right? Yes, it definitely could, but Harris is running behind an even worse offensive line than last season, per PFF. Have a look:
So, if last season Harris averaged just 3.9 yards per carry behind a subpar offensive line on a team that went 9-7-1, what's he going to do behind an even worse offensive line on a team only projected to win just seven games this season?
It's possible the Steelers find themselves in even more negative game scripts than a season ago, which could lead to another dip in Harris' routes run (and subsequently targets) if they're serious about having a "receiving" running back like McNichols to share the workload in the backfield.
For all the above-mentioned reasons, I just can't convince myself to draft Najee Harris around his ADP of RB5 this season, not even close. To me, there are at least 12 running backs I'd rather draft in fantasy football in 2022.
Thanks for reading, and I hope I've convinced even just one other person that Harris' value heading into the 2022 season should be far less than it's currently projected to be by the general consensus.
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