SteelerWatch

Pittsburgh native Kevan Barlow is coming home.

The Steelers on Thursday signed the six-year vet for the 2007 season. He will likely compete for the number two spot behind Willie Parker against Najeh Davenport and possibly Verron Haynes, if he can successfully recover from a knee injury suffered last season.

What does Barlow bring? For starters, a love for the team. he grew up a fan of the Steelers and idolizing Hall of Famer Franco Harris. He also brings a lot more skill than he’s show in recent years. His best season was 2003 when he went over 1,000 yards rushing as a backup to Garrison Hearst in San Francisco.

While he’s about 30 pounds shy of former RB Jerrome Bettis’ wrecking ball-like size, Barlow is likely to serve at least on third downs. Injuries last season to both Haynes and Davenport resulted in Parker shouldering more of the load, particularly on third downs, than the team would have preferred.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 10th, 2007 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Team News, Offense, Free Agency. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.