Najee Harris Expects to Play Sunday, Wants Run-Game Improvement

PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh Steelers running back Najee Harris reiterated that he expects to play this Sunday against the New England Patriots after practice on Wednesday.

Harris, said he was able to practice on Wednesday, but added that the padless was practice was essentially a walkthrough. He said the real test will come Thursday, when the team will work in a more game-like setting.

Head coach Mike Tomlin said on Tuesday that he wants to see Harris practice before he’s willing to consider him ready to play. Harris confirmed that his injury was not an aggravation of the Lisfranc sprain that held him out of the preseason, but declined to get into specifics about the injury.

“It’s part of the sport, man,” he said. “I mean it’s a little injury. I got hurt plenty of times, you know? I mean I had like six, seven weeks to let it calm down – the original injury – and it’s good now there’s nothing wrong with it, man.”

Harris seemed more focused about improving the results of the running game than his injury. The Steelers struggled to move the ground on the ball on Sunday against the Bengals, with both Harris and backup Jaylen Warren averaging just 2.3 yards per carry.

“We’ve still got to work on some stuff,” Harris said. “We have a lot of opportunities because of the defense getting us the ball. We didn’t capitalize on most of them. We’ve just got to make sure that every time we get the ball from the defense, we at least put some points on the board.”

Harris said specifically he thinks the team needs to improve on third down conversions, and noted that he expects the offense to take a big jump forward from Week 1 to Week 2 against the Patriots.

“They’ve got a lot of playmakers, so we’ve got to do a good job of controlling the ball and making sure that we don’t let the ball get in their hands.”