PHOTOS BY KARL ROSER | PITTSBURGH STEELERS

After boiling over on Sunday in Houston, Najee Harris was still simmering on Wednesday on the South Side.

He’s as frustrated as you are, maybe more so, about a 2-2 start that includes an almost unfathomable, 30-6 loss to the Texans.

But Harris is equally aghast about the narrative suggesting it’s the Steelers’ coaches who are most responsible (and by “narrative,” what I really mean is the tsunami of criticism launched from Steeler Nation as well as local and national media at offensive coordinator Matt Canada).

Canada might not be Bill Walsh, or even competent.

But Canada is being misidentified as the scapegoat, Harris maintained.

“The coaches only can coach,” Harris insisted. “At the end of the day we have to do what we have to do. I see everybody talking about this coaching stuff, about play-calling. Do y’all know how football works? Coaches only can coach, we gotta execute the plays.”

It was a mouthful, to be certain.

But Harris was only clearing his throat.

“We’re not trying to point the finger at all,” he continued. “This is not the time to do that, either. It keeps being a conversation to be brought up. Or, not even a conversation, but things that are talked about so much, it’s crazy. We have to execute at the end of the day no matter who’s back there, calling the plays. I honestly say that we’re not doing that right now, not coaches. It has nothing to do with coaches. It’s just players, we have to play better.

“We can’t just keep looking at the coaches as an outlet or whatever y’all are putting out there as outlets. That’s just stupid, what y’all are doing, really. We can say what we want, but like I said players play, coaches coach.

“We can’t just keep looking and pointing fingers. We gotta point at ourselves, it’s the man in the mirror.”

That’s not what Steelers fans want to hear.

Especially, the, “Do y’all know how football works?” part.

And the “that’s just stupid” part.

But he’s not wrong.

Harris, likewise, hit the nail on the head when he called his offensive teammates “soft.”

They couldn’t have liked hearing that, either.

It’s about the worst thing a football player can be called.

But Harris thought they needed to hear it to the degree that a meeting was held this week, “something extra,” Harris confirmed, as opposed to standard operating procedure, to make certain the necessary message was received.

“Truthfully, I think we’re just not playing with that edge right now and that’s what we need to do better,” he said. “We had a talk as a team to kind of get that conversation going.

“Right now we’re just playing soft.”

Harris acknowledged he prefers to lead by example in such situations.

That explains why he came out of the locker room breathing fire with the Steelers trailing, 16-0, entering the third quarter in Houston.

He caught the ball and ran it with abandon, with effort and urgency and determination and desperation, qualities the Steelers’ offense has far too often lacked.

At one point he blasted into teammate Darnell Washington and just kept going after Washington had gotten in the way while trying to block.

At another juncture Harris got rocked by a safety after catching a pass but somehow kept his balance and kept churning toward the Houston goal line.

And when they took him out of the game Harris voiced his displeasure to the head coach and then to the running backs coach, and then threw his helmet for emphasis.

That’s what true leaders do in times of crisis.

Harris was also a captain-like presence in delivering his stone cold assessment on Wednesday of what’s really to blame.

We’ll find out if anyone on offense is willing to follow on Sunday against Baltimore.

“I try to be that guy, they feed off me,” Harris said. “This game (against the Ravens), it’s a challenge to see who else is gonna be that person. It can’t just keep being one person. It has to be more people.

“It’s a challenge to the receivers room to have that guy, the O-line room to have that guy, the tight end room have that guy. We have to be that.”

What they’ve been hasn’t been cutting it.

If nothing else, Harris has cleared up who’s most responsible.