PITTSBURGH (AP) — Leslie Dowdle called it.
Months before her son Rico entered free agency after running for more than 1,000 yards for Carolina, Leslie Dowdle rang Rico just minutes after the Pittsburgh Steelers announced that Mike McCarthy would replace Mike Tomlin as head coach in January.
“She called me and said, ‘You’re going to Pittsburgh,’” Rico Dowdle said Thursday. “Like, soon as he got hired, that’s the first thing she said.”
As McCarthy joked a few minutes later, “mothers know best.”
Or in this case, at least she knows a good match when she sees it. Rico Dowdle and McCarthy spent five seasons together in Dallas, where Dowdle evolved from an undrafted rookie free agent into a versatile playmaker who rolled up more than 1,300 yards from scrimmage and five touchdowns during his final year with the Cowboys in 2024.
Dallas fired McCarthy shortly after the season ended, and Dowdle left for Carolina in free agency not long after. He then spent 2025 proving that his breakout with the Cowboys was no fluke, supplanting Chuba Hubbard as the starter down the stretch while helping the Panthers to an unlikely playoff berth.
Carolina, however, remained committed to Hubbard over the long term, and when Dowdle hit the open market in March, it didn’t take long for him to reconnect with his old coach. He signed a two-year deal with the Steelers when free agency opened, joining a backfield searching for a proven veteran after 2025 team MVP Kenny Gainwell agreed to terms with Tampa Bay.
Enter Dowdle, a former high school quarterback who quickly won over McCarthy with his mixture of toughness and football intelligence.
Dowdle spent four productive if injury-marred years at South Carolina, and teams saw enough red flags that he went undrafted in 2020. The Cowboys took a flyer on him, and he repaid their confidence in him by making the roster as a special teams ace. McCarthy saw enough glimpses of Dowdle’s potential out of the backfield that he planned to give him a larger role going forward.
Injuries, just as they did during Dowdle’s time with the Gamecocks, got in the way. He didn’t play at all in 2021 (hip) and was active for only five games in 2022 (ankle) without a carry or reception, though McCarthy kept the faith.
“I really had to wait probably longer than I know he would have liked for his opportunity,” McCarthy said.
Those opportunities finally started to pop up in 2023, when Dowdle ran for 361 yards while occasionally spelling Tony Pollard. By the end of 2024, Dowdle was the starter, averaging more than 100 yards from scrimmage over the final seven games of the season, one of the few bright spots for an offense that had trouble at times generating much of anything while missing quarterback Dak Prescott.
McCarthy was fired in the aftermath and Dowdle made his way to Carolina, where he went on a midseason heater that included a 206-yard performance against Miami in Week 5 and followed it up seven days later by piling up 239 scrimmage yards in a win over the Cowboys. Dowdle remained the featured back over the final two months, though he was more of a bystander during a spirited first-round playoff loss to the Los Angeles Rams.
A fresh start awaits in Pittsburgh, where he has a backfield mate in Warren who is used to working as part of a tandem. A former undrafted rookie free agent himself, Warren spent his first three seasons spelling — and sometimes outplaying — Najee Harris, then doing the same last season with Gainwell.
While McCarthy has declined to offer any insight on how he plans to divvy up the workload — it is May after all — running backs coach Ramon Chinyoung knows his boss wants “fresh backs all the time.”
“It’s a ‘Thunder and Lightning’ type of atmosphere with those two guys,” Chinyoung said. “Both of them have the ability to do multiple things from a scheme standpoint, and they’re interchangeable.”
Well, maybe not exactly. The 5-foot-11, 218-pound Dowdle is a little more upright than the compact, 5-8, 208-pound Warren, who still prides himself on being a menace in pass protection. Both can catch the ball and both still carry massive chips on their shoulder after being overlooked coming out of college.
And while there will be competition, they both enter the season with a little professional stability. Both are signed through 2027 and are eager to grow together after respecting each other from afar.
“We got two guys who can go out there and do the job at a high level,” Dowdle said. “The coaches will decide how that goes. And I just come out here and put my best foot forward each day and let the rest take care of itself.”
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Will Graves, The Associated Press
