30% of Pittsburgh Steelers pre-draft visits have been with running backs, with just a few day to go until draft night. Not a good sign for Jaylen Warren’s outlook as a featured back this season.
Jaylen Warren has put together impressive spot performances for Pittsburg, especially for an undrafted free agent walk-on. It’s easy to be captivated by efficiency metrics such as his 5.2 yards per touch (#13 last year), or 4.17 yards created per touch (#9 LY) and project those into a monster season post Najee Harris departure. However, reading the tea leaves and looking at historical data should really temper those expectations.
Pittsburg has hosted 30 pre-draft visits with potential rookies, 9 of those have been running backs. The list of backs include: TreVeyon Henderson, RJ Harvey, Ollie Gordon II, Omarion Hampton, Bhayshul Tuten, Kaleb Johnson and Dylan Sampson. Thinking critically through this list, any of those backs could supplant Warren and keep him in a secondary role. Add to this Coach Tomlins propensity to feed his primary back when he has a stud on his hands, and the frequency of which NFL teams have completely abandoned UDFA running backs even after productive seasons – Jalen Warren should be a stay away in Dynasty at this point in the process.
Author: Lukasz Stec (@Lukasz_FF01)
