It’s Not Thunder and Lightning, Steelers Jaylen Warren Drops New Backfield Nickname

Steelers Running Back Duo Have Tandem Nickname

The Pittsburgh Steelers’ “Young Money Crew” was a nickname given to their 2011 wide receiver group Mike “Fast Money” Wallace, Emmanuel “Easy Money” Sanders and Antonio “Cash Money” Brown.

To this day, I remain convinced I was the first person outside that locker room to learn the nickname.

Fifteen years later, I think it happened again.

Sometimes you walk into the Steelers locker room looking for a story. Sometimes you stumble into one by asking the most ordinary question imaginable.

Jaylen Warren is typically quiet.

Reserved.

He’ll answer your questions, but Warren isn’t usually standing at his locker looking to turn question into a conversation.

Wednesday was different.

There was something frisky about Warren after practice. You could feel quickly that this conversation might have somewhere to go.

It started innocently enough.

I asked Warren about Pittsburgh’s new offensive scheme and how comfortable it has become after months of repetition.

“I mean, obviously it’s a scheme; it’s their scheme, and so you know, coming in OTAs, we’ve been practicing since then,” Warren said. “So, it’s not nothing new. Like game day doesn’t, you know, it ain’t nothing new under the sun. And so, you know, we just come out, we just practice, and once we hit game day, then it’s probably like our 800th time seeing it.”

A Football Answer

Good answer.

Then came Rico Dowdle.

I asked Warren how Pittsburgh’s two running backs feed off one another what happens when one comes off the field and the other goes on.

That cracked the door open.

“It’s good. You know that’s my dog,” Warren said. “We tell each other what each other sees on the field. You know when we’re on the field, especially when we’re on the sideline, we see what we see, and so you know every time we come back and we get together, we tell each other like what we’re noticing.”

Then, I asked casually and Warren dropped it.

“We call it ‘This or That.’”

Really?

“This or That,” Warren calmly fired back immediately.

Now we had something.

Who came up with it?

“Both of us.”

And suddenly my brain went somewhere other than football.

Like the song?

Warren looked at me.

Who sings it?

Hell, I couldn’t remember.

So, there I was standing with an NFL running back after practice, unable to produce Black Sheep but perfectly capable of supplying the evidence.

“You can get with this, or you can get with that.”

Now Warren and I are quietly singing a 1991 hip-hop song in the Steelers locker room.

This is how good stuff happens.

No marketing department.

Just random moments.

No Thunder and Lightning cliche attached to two running backs because one supposedly does this and the other does that.

Warren and Dowdle apparently handled that themselves.

This or That.

Two backs exchanging information on the sideline, sharing the workload and now sharing a nickname.

Young Money had its day in Pittsburgh.

Maybe I just happened to be standing there when This or That had theirs.