Harris: We need to do better
confident he’ll be back under center at 1 p.m. Sunday, although he isn’t sure if he’ll be in that brace for the game.
“It depends how the week goes and how I feel Sunday,” Pickett said and was later asked if he had a normal workday to start this week of practice in terms of snaps. “I took what I needed to take in terms of what they were telling me — the doctors and the trainers we have here.”
It’d be fair for you to wonder how much optimism there should be in Pickett if he’s less than 100% trying to evade the pass rush from a defense that’s fourth in the NFL with 15 sacks, sixth with 30 quarterback hits and fifth with 59 blitzes on the season, according to Pro Football Reference. Pickett was tough to keep off the field at Pitt when he was banged up and missed just one start last season when he was coming off his second concussion of the year (which came on a hit by Ravens linebacker Roquan Smith).
Given the knee injury, Pickett didn’t do interviews after the loss in Houston, so this was his first chance to explain what went wrong on the 4th- and- 1 sack that knocked him out of the game.
Pickett seemed somewhat unsure of the diagnosis when he detailed it from his perspective.
“Um, you know, get
backto [looking at] Calvin [Austin III] possibly faster, from watching it,” Pickett said of what he could’ve changed on his end. “We wanted to take a look at the front side and get to the back side. I tried to extend with my legs and make a play. It just didn’t work out.”
One option instead of that play call from offensive coordinator Matt Canada on what turned out to be their final offensive snap of the third quarter would’ve been simply handing it to Harris, who to that point after halftime had rushed for 55 yards on just nine carries, all but one of which went for positive yardage. Harris, who made his way to the microphones about 15 minutes after Pickett, admitted he wants the ball more when he’s running hot.
But Harris framed any frustration with his role as being a byproduct of how competitive he is.
“In the bigger picture, I understand it. I might argue with them a lot. You guys seen that?” Harris asked, referring to a clip making the rounds on social media where the TV broadcast showed him having words
with Tomlin as he came to the sideline after a play. “It may look like something else that it’s not. ... We’re good. It’s all good. It ain’t like nothing where it’s becoming an issue or nothing. We’re just in the beginning of the year. We’re trying to get things going right now and we’re not blinking or nothing like that.”
For someone who carried the ball fast and furiously in the second half against the Texans and for someone who’s no longer a team captain after carrying that title last year, Harris had no problem upping the ante within the locker room. He even used the dreaded Sword: “Right now we’re just playing soft.”
“The coaches only can coach,” Harris said. “At the end of the day, we have to do what we have to do. I see everybody talking about this coaching stuff, about play calling, but bro, do y’all know how football works? Coaches only can coach. We’ve got to execute the plays. We’re not trying to point the finger at all. This is not the time to do that. It keeps being a conversation that’s brought up or things that’s talked about so much. It’s crazy. We have to execute at the end of the day, no matter who’s back there calling the plays. I honestly say that we’re not doing it right now. It has nothing to do with coaches. It’s just players. We have to play better.
“We can’t just keep looking at the coaches as an outlet or whatever [the media] puts out there as outlets. That’s just stupid, what y’all are doing, really. We can say what we want, but like I said, players play; coaches coach. We can’t just keep looking and pointing fingers. We’ve got to point at ourselves. It’s the man in the mirror, really. This is the NFL. Everybody runs the same damn plays. Everybody disguises differently, but it’s just how we’re gonna play it. Truthfully, I think that we’re just not playing with that edge right now. That’s what we need to do better.”
Got all that? It’s nothing if not interesting when Harris decides to speak up, much like he did last year around this time. That was going into the Jets game Week 4 of 2022, and more fireworks ensued. We’ll see what happens this time.
Surely, Harris and the Steelers hope change takes place quicker than it did a season ago.