It has been released to the public that Le’Veon Bell will be returning to the Pittsburgh Steelers week 7 of the NFL season. Now if you didn’t know, Bell has been on a 6 week long hold-out with the Steelers feeling as though he hasn’t been offered the proper amount of money for the services he provides to the team. In doing this, Bell has missed organized team activities (OTAs), training camp, the NFL preseason, as well as the first 4 weeks of the regular season. The Steelers organization and head coach, Mike Tomlin, said they were going to be okay and they were “going to do what we do with or without him”. However, if doing what they do is starting off the season 1-2-1 then they are doing a great job.
Now after these first few weeks it has become apparent that the Steelers do need Le’Veon to be successful. Now don’t get me wrong, the Steelers roster does still have talent with two thirds of the big B’s in Ben Rothelsberger and Antonio Brown as well as young stud receiver Juju Smith-Schuster. So the passing game was still intact but there running game however, not so much with their lead rusher James Connor at 272 yards so far in the season. When you hear 232 yards and 3 touchdowns you think that it’s not bad at all but by this time last year Bell had 310 yards and 4 touchdowns logged by week 4.
With that being said their rushing game has been the second worst in the league since week 2 so its pretty clear that the Steelers do miss the rushing presence that Le’Veon presents to the team and opposing defenses. On the other hand, whenever Bell does decide to return it will be a sight to see whether he will be welcomed back with open arms or not. Seeing as the Steelers offensive line has gone on record criticizing Bell for his holdout.
“Why play hide and seek? Why let your agent say this? Just man up and tell us what you’re going to do?”, said Maurkice Pouncey, Center. “We all thought he’d be here today. He makes us all kind of look stupid a little bit”, David Decastro, Guard, went on record to say. “What do you do?\”, said veteran guard Ramon Foster. Here’s a guy who doesn’t give a damn, I guess so we’ll treat it as such. I just hate it came to this.” Ramon also thinks that Bell was being stubborn saying that “He’s making 7 times what I make twice as much as Al Villenueva is making and we’re the guys who do it for him.”
Either way Bell is a top Running back in the league and does deserve his praise and it will be exciting to see what he attributes to the team upon his return.