Rico Dowdle Camp Update — August 23: Five Carries, Same as the Incumbent

Rico Dowdle made his Pittsburgh debut Friday night and carried five times for 18 yards, adding the backfield's only reception, one catch for two yards — while Jaylen Warren carried five times for 17. Those lines are from Josh Carney's positional grades at Steelers Depot after the 17-to-nothing loss to the Jets, a night Carney graded the running back group C-minus. Behind the veterans, Lew Nichols took three carries and rookie Eli Heidenreich two. Nobody ran well; the offense didn't score. But for this file the yards were never the point — the distribution was, and the distribution was a coin flip.

That lands directly on the question the whole Dowdle case turns on. Back on August first, Mark Kaboly projected Dowdle as "the main guy," 65 to 70 percent of the snaps, per Andrew Vasquez at Steelers Wire, while DK Pittsburgh Sports' same-week practice observations described an alternating first-team rotation, via Jon Conahan at Roundtable Sports. Friday was the first chance for a game to break the tie, and it declined: five and five, with Dowdle's lone catch a small marker on the passing-down side that has been Warren's specialty. One scripted preseason half is thin evidence, and August rotations are built for evaluation rather than declaration. Still, a staff intending a two-to-one backfield had the stage to hint at it and split the work exactly evenly instead.

Back in June we said the runner was proven — back-to-back thousand-yard seasons — and the job was not, with the McCarthy connection from Dallas as the thumb on the scale. The thumb has yet to show up in the usage.

The checkable things this week: who takes the first backfield series Thursday at Buffalo, whether the carry pattern tilts at all, and the final shape of the running back room when rosters cut to 53 on Sunday, August thirtieth. We'll check after cut day.

_Data via nflverse._