Le’Veon Bell might be the best running back in the NFL, a fact that’s complicated because he hasn’t actually played football yet this season, and we’re coming up on the halfway mark. Bell made a cryptic tweet yesterday that kicked off speculation that he would be reporting to Pittsburgh to play soon.
Fairwell Miami 👋🏾
— Le'Veon Bell (@LeVeonBell) November 5, 2018
If you haven’t been paying attention, Bell has been holding out for a guaranteed contract. While the Steelers had offered Bell $70 million for five seasons, only $10 million was guaranteed, meaning he woudn’t get a large majority of it if he’s injured. After teammate Ryan Shazier’s career-ending injury last season, I can’t blame him. It took Shazier eight months just to walk again, you don’t want to lose $60 million on top of something like that.
Now, everyone has been reporting that Bell needs to report by next Tuesday in order to be a free agent next season, but ESPN is now reporting that Bell will be a free agent next season even if he doesn’t play at all this year, and in light of that, it seems unlikely he’ll play even if he is leaving Florida. Maybe he just got chased by a guy with an alligator and went “f**k this, I’m out.”
But one source pointed out to ESPN that it “doesn’t make any sense for [Bell] to play now.”
“If he doesn’t want to play for $14.5 million, why would he want to play for $5 million?” the source told ESPN, referring to the prorated balance remaining on Bell’s $14.5 million franchise tender.
That makes incredibly good sense. Bell told ESPN that Pittsburgh is going to transition tag him after this season, meaning he’ll be able to shop for offers from other team, but Pittsburgh will be able to match any offer he gets to keep him.
Or maybe he can become a pro Fortnite player, that seems to be a better career path. You get to be openly misogynist and have everyone bend over to defend you and there’s a much lower risk of a CTE.