Najee Harris has generally been a disappointment this season, but he's at least played his best ball the last two weeks. He has a tough matchup this week, at Indianapolis, but I think he'll keep things going.
Jaylen Warren injured a hamstring against the Bengals, leaving early, freeing Harris up to play all but six snaps and finish with his top performance of the reason -- 116 total yards and 2 TDs. Mike Tomlin says Warren is questionable for this week, but I can't think of many occurrences when a guy has left a game with a hamstring injury and been on the field a week later. I think he's sitting, and we know that Benny Snell can't play (barely played and didn't touch the ball after Warren left last week).
Opportunity counts for a lot in fantasy football, and Harris has generally put up good numbers when he gets more opportunities, at least in PPR scoring.
Harris has played in 27 games the last two years, and he's been on the field at least three quarters of the time in 18 of those. He's scored at least 15 PPR points in all but four of those games.
| HARRIS WITH 75 PERCENT OF THE SNAPS | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Opp | Run | No | Yds | TD | PPR |
| 2021 | Clev. | 188 | 3 | 18 | 1 | 29.6 |
| 2021 | Cin. | 40 | 14 | 102 | 0 | 28.2 |
| 2022 | Cin. | 90 | 4 | 26 | 2 | 27.6 |
| 2021 | at Min. | 94 | 3 | 10 | 2 | 25.4 |
| 2021 | Sea. | 81 | 6 | 46 | 1 | 24.7 |
| 2021 | at G.B. | 62 | 6 | 29 | 1 | 21.1 |
| 2021 | at Clev. | 91 | 3 | 29 | 1 | 21.0 |
| 2021 | L.V. | 38 | 5 | 43 | 1 | 19.1 |
| 2021 | Det. | 105 | 4 | 28 | 0 | 17.3 |
| 2021 | at LAC | 39 | 5 | 20 | 1 | 16.9 |
| 2021 | Chi. | 62 | 3 | 16 | 1 | 16.8 |
| 2021 | at K.C. | 93 | 5 | 17 | 0 | 16.0 |
| 2021 | Balt. | 71 | 5 | 36 | 0 | 15.7 |
| 2022 | at Clev. | 56 | 3 | 5 | 1 | 15.1 |
| 2022 | at Mia. | 65 | 3 | 15 | 0 | 11.0 |
| 2022 | NYJ | 74 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7.4 |
| 2021 | at Buf. | 45 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 5.9 |
| 2021 | Tenn. | 18 | 2 | 8 | 0 | 4.6 |
Harris hasn't been as good this year, no getting around that. All but one of his best games was in 2021 (2022 games are in bold). He was losing work to Warren, and there's no guarantee Pittsburgh won't bring in other competition next season. And the Colts rank 11th in run defense, so not a great matchup.
But I'll be using Harris, and expecting his typical 15-plus points this week.
--Andy Richardson