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Najee Harris is a difficult player to value for fantasy football drafts. Eli Grabanski analyzes Harris's profile and determines whether the running back will outperform fantasy expectations in 2022.
In our fantasy football leagues, we are constantly striving to be the best we can be and beat our competition. In order to beat our competition, we need to draft players that will live up to expectations - or better yet surpass them.
One player that people are debating whether or not they will live up to expectations in 2022 is sophomore running back Najee Harris. In order to determine whether or not Harris will live up to expectations, we will need to look at where the average person is drafting him, the positives of his fantasy profile, and the concerns of his fantasy profile in 2022.
Without further ado, let's dive in and figure out how we should be looking at Najee Harris in 2022!
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The Standard
Before making predictions about whether Najee Harris will be a value or not in 2022, we need to figure out where he's starting from by looking at his 2021 fantasy finishes and his current 2022 average draft position (ADP).
Looking at the data, Najee Harris finished as the RB4 in standard & 0.5 PPR formats and the RB3 in full PPR formats during the 2021 season. In addition, his average draft position (ADP) is RB5 (8.4 overall) on ESPN and RB6 (7.6 overall) on Yahoo as of June 14th, 2022. We've established his standard of expectations, so now we can dive into the key arguments surrounding Najee Harris in 2022.
What Najee Harris Believers Are Arguing
"There's no situation where you have to take him off the field since he's a dual-threat back"
Najee Harris put up a stat line of 307 carries, 1200 rushing yards, and seven rushing touchdowns on the ground. He earned every yard, posting an above-average broken tackle rate of 15.0% and evading 106 tackles, which was the second-best among NFL running backs during the 2021 season. He also showed that he is capable through the air, finishing with 74 receptions on 94 targets for 467 receiving yards and three receiving touchdowns on the year. Clearly, Harris proved that he's a true dual-threat back, which will keep him on the field regardless of the game script and raise his fantasy potential in your leagues.
"Workhorse. Lock it in, he's going to be among the league leaders in touches with the lack of competition in his backfield"
Najee Harris was second among NFL running backs in carries with 307 and first among NFL running backs in targets with 94. He’s by far the most talented running back on the Pittsburgh Steelers depth chart that includes Benny Snell Jr., Anthony McFarland Jr., and Trey Edmunds. Even with the recent comments from Najee about his workload decreasing a bit, it's still likely that he sees one of the larger workloads in the NFL once again in 2022.
"The offensive line can't possibly get worse"
During the 2021 season, the Steelers' offensive line generated “just 0.9 yards before contact on average,” which ranked 29th in the league. In 2022, they will bring back three of the same starters from the 2021 offensive line in LT Dan Moore Jr., LG Kevin Dotson, and RT Chukwuma Okorafor, and make slight upgrades at Center (going from Kendrick Green to Mason Cole) and Right Guard (going from Trai Turner to James Daniels). Even though they are still unlikely to be one of the better offensive lines in the league, the bottom line is that this group can't possibly get any worse and should improve in 2022.
"Offensive coordinator Matt Canada will actually get to run his ideal offense this year - not a weird hybrid of him & Ben Roethlisberger's preferences."
When he was a coach at the college level, Matt Canada was well known for his offense that had a balanced run-pass attack and utilized a lot of pre-snap motion. This type of offense proved very effective for his team's backfield. During his 175-game college career, Matt Canada saw his running back room average 26.62 carries, 135.95 rushing yards, 1.33 rushing touchdowns, 2.66 receptions, 26.22 receiving yards, and 0.19 receiving touchdowns per game.
Last year, Canada did not get the opportunity to run his version of the offense as much as he would like because it was Ben Roethlisberger's retirement tour. With Roethlisberger out of the picture and a pair of quarterbacks who better fit his offense schematically, Canada can now run an offense that is more similar to what he had success with at the college level.
"He isn't even close to the RB age cliff or the RB touches cliff...which makes him a lot safer to draft"
We know that running backs can fall off the cliff in a hurry as we've seen with players like Todd Gurley and David Johnson in recent years. There are many theories about when this generally occurs, but two of the most popular ones in fantasy circles are the age 28 cliff and 1800 carry cliff. For Najee Harris, he isn't even close to these numbers - he's just 24-years-old and has only 307 carries (381 touches) under his belt at the NFL level so you don't have to worry about him showing up and being washed nearly as much as some other running backs.
What Najee Harris Non-Believers Are Arguing
"He's going to decline without Big Ben"
The Pittsburgh Steelers will have a new quarterback leading their team after Ben Roethlisberger retired. Going into the 2022 season, the team will have a quarterback competition between rookie Kenny Pickett and former second overall pick in the 2017 NFL Draft Mitch Trubisky to see who will be the starter. This change and general uncertainty about who the starter is makes it a little more difficult to project what we should expect out of the Steelers' offense as a whole, and there’s a chance that they don’t throw as many passes Najee’s way (94) as he saw in 2021.
How Big A Concern Should This Be: This is a valid concern with any skill position player getting a new quarterback. But it is also possible that this could end up being a blessing in disguise as Ben Roethlisberger checked down on just 5.0% of his dropbacks in 2021 - which was the 10th lowest rate in the NFL.
"There's no way that he matches his receiving numbers from 2021."
Najee Harris saw about a fifth of his 2021 receiving production during Week 3 against the Cincinnati Bengals, where he caught 14 passes on 19 targets for 102 receiving yards. He did not see more than seven targets in any other game during the 2021 NFL season. In addition, he posted a drop rate of 7.4% in 2021, which was below average. He’s not a liability or anything in the passing game, but it doesn’t seem likely that he builds much upon his 2021 receiving numbers for the 2022 season.
How Big A Concern Should This Be: This is a mild concern. While Najee's receiving numbers probably won't be at the level they were in 2021, we should still expect him to be one of the top pass-catchers among running backs in 2022.
"His Red Zone Usage Leaves Something To Be Desired."
Najee Harris was a top fantasy back in 2021, but his red-zone usage left something to be desired for fantasy players. He had 29 carries inside the 20-yard line (T-24th), 17 carries inside the 10-yard line (T-20th), and 10 carries inside the 5-yard line (T-14th), according to Pro Football Reference. He’s going to need more red zone opportunities in order to make a strong case for challenging for the #1 overall fantasy back spot in 2022.
How Big A Concern Should This Be: This is another mild concern. The Steelers probably won't be a top-10 offense or anything in 2022, but it seems very doable for him to improve in this area and see more red-zone usage next year.
Personal Thoughts
It's hard to necessarily call Najee Harris a draft steal or anything since he's going in the first round of most fantasy drafts. But Harris is clearly one of the safer running backs you can draft this year because he’s relatively young (24-years-old), yet he has the ceiling you want out of a first-round pick because he's going to get a large workload again and has an opportunity to improve his efficiency (3.9 YPC in 2021).
He’s probably going a couple of RB spots too low right now as he has a solid case to be drafted over Derrick Henry and Dalvin Cook on Yahoo since Najee has similar upside but is a little safer due to his youth. However, the bottom line is that he's a great building block to have for your team and a player who should live up to expectations in 2022 as long as he's healthy.
Make sure to follow Eli on Twitter (@3li_handles)
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