The Pittsburgh Steelers have been something of a disaster to start the 2018 season. It all began with Le’Veon Bell’s holdout in an effort to get a new contract that saw him skip camp, but then not report for the first game of the season.
Bell’s absence continues, and tensions in the locker room appear high as their star back remains at home. Bell’s offensive line was extremely critical of his decision to skip games ahead of Week 1, ripping into him for not being there in a rare instance of teammates speaking out on a fellow player’s contract situation.
Not everyone was against Bell’s holdout, as Antonio Brown voiced support for his fellow star teammate, but Brown himself has been in the news for the wrong reasons recently, including skipping Monday’s team meetings after tweeting about how the Steelers should trade him if people think he’s only good because of Ben Roethlisberger. All of his is happening for a team off to an 0-1-1 start, far below expectations, and on Sunday it was reported by ESPN’s Adam Schefter that the front office has finally decided to at least pick up the phone and listen to offers for Bell.
Steelers now listening to trade offers for RB Le’Veon Bell, league sources tell ESPN.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 23, 2018
It will be interesting to see what comes of this, as a team looking to trade for Bell would assuredly need to be comfortable paying him handsomely almost immediately. The value for running backs is never as high as most would expect, but that may be changing some, as evidenced by Todd Gurley’s new deal. Pittsburgh would likely need to be blown away by an offer, but that they’re willing to listen says a lot about their expectations when it comes to whether Bell will join the team anytime soon.
If they do trade Bell and this season continues to go downhill, one has to wonder if this spells the end of the road for this core group on offense — and if they’d consider dealing Brown as well.
