Steelers Najee Harris has a career night vs the Browns in Week 17

Two rookie rushing records

Amidst all the hoopla, the first milestone in Najee’s night was that he surpassed  1,055 yards for the season, breaking the Steelers’ single-season rushing mark with one game left, via Pro Football Focus. However, one must be careful when you compare players in previous eras. Franco Harris set the record in 1972, and the record has stood for 49 years. Franco set the record over 14 games.

It took Najee 16 games. So if Franco played 17 games based on his performance that season, averaging 75.35 yards per game, he would have rushed for 1205.6 yards.

Najee will not break one of Franco’s records is his mark of four games in a rookie season of 128 plus rushing yards. That said, Najee finished the game with 1,172 yards for the season, so he only needs 33.6 yards against Baltimore to surpass that mark. He finishes the season as the Steelers best rookie running back in team history if he does that.

He then had a second milestone. Najee set the Steelers team record for the most single-game rushing yards for a rookie ever. He finished the game with 188 rushing yards. He surpassed Rashard Mendenhall’s 2009 single-game record of 165 yards set in 2009. Compared to the rest of the NFL, his rookie performance was the highest in the NFL since  Jonathan Taylors 253 yards exactly one year earlier and the second-highest total among rookie running backs since 2016.