RB Rico Dowdle with the steelers

They are saying locally that Warren will be third down back.
Looks like his run attempts will go down considerably?

 

?
Dowdle signed for more than Warren.

 

Dowdle ran for more yards and averaged more yards per carry than Warren did last year. He also has more experience in McCarthy's system from their time in Dallas. I wouldn't be surprised to see them splitting the touches evenly, but Dowdle could end up with more of the carries. Gainwell was excellent in 2025, but Dowdle is a better partner for Warren, allowing him to take over the third-down role as part of his workload. That is an an area in which Warren excels.

 

Thanks Toml .... er, Kahn.

 

RB is not a problem for the Steelers.... OL is.

 

I would agree with this, Dowdle is really good and I think he will be the lead back.

 

That is a strong possibility. He was better than Warren last year and in 2024.

 

I think he'll still end up with more touches.

Good news here is that if either of these guys goes down, the other will likely be able to carry the load.

Personally, I was hoping that Johnson would get a chance to show that he could play this year. I think this doesn't bode well for the team's opinion of him.

Hope we also bring in a day 3 RB (and a UDFA or two) to compete. Personally, I think I'd always try to bring in 2x UDFA RBs to camp. I bet RB has the highest hit rate for UDFAs.

 

oh boy
that 2nd statement is unproven

Dowdle do

 

I'm not sure about Warren carrying the load by himself. He simply hasn't proven he can handle that sort of workload.

 

I wouldn't want him to do it for the entire season.

But I think he could do it for stretches.

He did have 211 carries last year. Not as much as the 236/235 that Dowdle has had the last 2 seasons. But close.

Probably enough that he can be the lead back in a lopsided distribution for a fair amount of time.

I don't think either will get the max Najee load. Most guys can't survive that work.

FWIW, I felt the same way about Gainwell last year.

IMO, the worry with both Warren and Dowdle will be fumbles.

 

I want your $2k in my bank account!!

 

You'd still want a RB2. But I think both of these guys can be a lead back in the current NFL sense of the word.

Once you get outside of the top 5 RBs by attempts in 2025, you're at 280 carries. Outside of the top 10, you're at 252.

Last year Dowdle was 15th most carries in the league (236). Warren was 21st (211).

 

• Gainwell got 2x $14MM ($7MM / year). Reportedly $10MM guarantees.
• Dowdle got 2x years $12.25MM ($6.125MM / year). Guaranteed money not yet reported (these numbers are usually "leaked" by agents...so when details are slow to come out, they are usually better for the team).

So close to $1MM less per year. And it's probably going to be a "pay as you go" contract where there isn't as much pain if we move off Dowdle next year.

 

Wouldn't be surprised if both get a lot of burn. Both Zeke and Pollard got significant touches in the same backfield in Dallas.

 

Last year Gainwell got 114 carries.

But since our D couldn't get off the field, we were 28th with 58.0 plays per game. https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/plays-per-game

If we can get around average (~ 62.5 plays), that's an extra 76 plays.

While we were supposed to be a running team last year, we were 26th in run% at 42.5%. Probably because we were losing more than we wanted to be. https://www.fftoday.com/stats/25_run_pass_ratios.html

Average run% was ~ 46%.

So if we got the average number of offensive plays (~ 1062) with the average run% (~46%), we'd have just under 490 carries.

So maybe something like ~220-230 for each of them. And another 30-50 for others? For context Patterson had 32 carries for us as our RB3 in 2024. Maybe Johnson has that role.

We won't get many rushes from our QB if it's Rodgers.

If we can get to that kind of a distribution, we'd expect both of these guys to be close to 1k yards on the ground given their past performance.