Najee Harris 2023 Fantasy Football Re-Draft Profile
The hype surrounding Najee Harris coming out of Alabama in 2021 was real. He was a bulldozer with good feet and very nimble. Fans were split on the pick, but he would prove the doubters in Pittsburgh wrong his rookie year, going for 1,667 all-purpose yards and 10 total touchdowns.
Last season, his numbers regressed a little, in part due to being banged up and a bad offensive line, rushing to a tune of 1,263 yards but matching his touchdown total from the season prior. Could Najee Harris return to prime fantasy football form in 2023? I think he just might.
We can start with the health aspect. While we can’t predict a player will be healthy or hurt, we can look back on what hampered him last year. Najee Harris entered 2022 with a pedal lisfranc injury, which was suffered in a practice on the first of August. With a full off-season to recover and heal up, this should be long behind him and his movement should not be an issue, one can hope.
As far as the offensive line goes, the Pittsburgh Steelers made some big improvements to an offensive line that was part of a rushing offense that finished smack in the middle of the league in 2022. The Steelers added Guards Nate Herbig and Isaac Seumalo to push for starting jobs. They weren’t done there, as they traded up in the 2023 NFL Draft and took OT Broderick Jones out of Georgia.
The Steelers have needed to invest in this offensive line for years, and they finally pulled the trigger this off-season.
Najee Harris is currently RB12 in re-draft leagues, with an ADP of 27.6 Ahead of him are guys like rookies Bijan Robinson and Jahmyr Gibbs. He also sits behind Breece Hall, who is coming off a torn ACL suffered last year. With a full training camp with Kenny Pickett, I expect Harris to see an uptick in his numbers across the board. Harris is great receiving out of the backfield, something the Steelers love to target. He finished as RB3 in his rookie year in PPR leagues, and I don’t see why he can’t finish in that range in 2023.
