It’s never a good thing to hear a football opponent call one soft. But Pittsburgh Steelers running back Najee Harris didn’t seem to care all that much about the derogatory descriptive word on October 3.
Reporters asked Harris if he had any reaction to Indianapolis Colts linebacker Zaire Franklin calling him soft after Week 4. Harris smiled and responded, “No.”
“He’s a great player, man. Great player. We were going back and forth at it all game,” Harris said to the media, via ESPN’s Brooke Pryor. “Competition man. It is what it is. Tip my hat off in victories, tip my hat off in defeats. So when I saw the comment, I was just laughing.”
“You can talk whatever you want. It is what it is. You can’t win them all.”
Najee Harris on Zaire Franklin’s post about him after the Indy game, “He’s a great player … I was laughing, like ‘hey man, you won, you can say whatever you want.’”
Franklin’s “soft” comment describing Harris came on his X (formerly Twitter) in response to a Colts fan writing the Indianapolis defense “owned” Harris on September 29. Franklin wrote, “Kid is soft. 84 run harder.”
The No. 84 referred to fellow Steelers running back Cordarrelle Patterson.
Patterson ran for 43 yards on just six carries, averaging 7.2 yards per rush against the Colts. In the same game, Harris averaged under 1.5 yards per carry, running for 19 yards on 13 attempts.
Dave Holcomb is a sports reporter covering the NFL and MLB for Heavy.com, with a focus on the Pittsburgh Steelers, Philadelphia Eagles and Detroit Lions. Originally from Pittsburgh, Holcomb has covered college and professional sports for outlets including FanSided, Rotowire and Yardbarker. More about Dave Holcomb
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