Former Steelers RB Le'Veon Bell makes a difficult admission
Former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Le'Veon Bell is still one of one. No other NFL player this century has sit out an entire season due to having the franchise tag placed on them. Bell's contract dispute still reverberates in and around contract discourse to this day, five years after the All-Pro running back stood his […]
Former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Le'Veon Bell is still one of one. No other NFL player this century has sit out an entire season due to having the franchise tag placed on them.
Bell's contract dispute still reverberates in and around contract discourse to this day, five years after the All-Pro running back stood his ground and effectively created his exit out of Pittsburgh.
While he eventually got a lucrative bag from the New York Jets, there's a sense of regret that lives within him, despite feeling like he was owed what he wanted from the Steel City.
The fallout between Bell and the Steelers was indeed centered around guaranteed money and a final offer that was lower than originally reported. Bell stated as such in a recent appearance on the Steel Here podcast, along with the realization that he should've taken the deal in the first place.
“It was like a little petty, the guarantee stuff," Bell said. "I’m thinking could I have just ate it. Yeah, I probably could’ve, yeah, I probably could’ve really ate it.”
Bell had already played under the franchise tag during the 2017 campaign, and Pittsburgh was ready to have him do the same in 2018. Bell was a year older, already with 1,541 career touches under his belt; 1,635 if you include the playoffs.
Losing that year of football severed the relationship beyond repair, and the Jets came into the picture with an offer that was too good for the former second-round pick to pass up.
Bell signed his four-year, $52.5 million deal that included $27 million in practical guarantees. That distinction is important, because when Bell was ultimately released after just one year in New York, he only earned $14.4 million of the total contract.
That figure is less than what Bell would've made had he played under the tag in 2018.
Practical guarantees are only as good as your ability to earn them. For Bell, who flamed out after his first year outside of Pittsburgh, he never bore the fruits of his labor. Had he stayed with the Steelers, his career earnings would've likely been much greater than it ended up becoming.
We shouldn't chastise Bell too harshly for seeking out real money in a sport where it rarely gets distributed to players of his position, but hindsight is clearer than 20/20 in this case.
