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NFL Never Announced Anything on Bell

By Ed Bouchette
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 8 years ago

Good morning,

Some reaction to the news on Le’Veon Bell and Tom Brady:

--- It was interesting to me that some local news stations led with the news on Brady and not on Bell. Brady is a much bigger story nationally but Bell does play for the Steelers, is an All-Pro who was the NFL’s second-leading rusher last year and there was news because his suspension was reduced. Just a curiosity, that’s all.

--- Another thing that grabbed me was that Brady sent 10,000 texts in the four months from the time he got a new cell phone until he destroyed that phone on the eve of his hearing in late June. Ten thousand! I did the math – that comes to an average of 83 texts a day, every day, over the course of four months. Does he do anything else in the offseason besides write texts? His thumbs must really hurt. I just looked in my phone and I sent 8 texts yesterday. What, is the guy 14 years old?

--- As I’ve written and said many times, Bell’s suspension should have been either one or two games, not three. They disciplined him under both the old and new drug policies and that was not fair.

--- For a 10-year veteran, halfback DeAngelo Williams sure does get touchy about softball questions of how much he believes he is going to play this year. We now know he will not start in the third game of the season. And if he thinks he’s going to split time as he did in Carolina, he should look at some game tape of Le’Veon Bell last season. Bell did not need to be spelled last season and he won’t this year either, barring injury and blowout victories.

--- There’s still a good chance the Steelers will face Brady in the opener because all he has to do is sue the league and get an injunction to halt his suspension until the legal proceedings end, which often they never seem to do.

--- I’m not quite sure why the NFLPA is suing the league over this. The union agreed to all the wording in the CBA and Roger Goodell followed the CBA wording to a T. The Steelers players, you might recall, were the only ones among the 32 NFL teams to vote against the new CBA during the 2011 training camp. They did so mainly because it gave Goodell the kind of power he wielded on Tuesday. Do you think Tom Brady urged his teammates to vote for it so there would be no more work stoppage and he could continue to collect those fat paychecks?

--- The NFL sent out a treatise to the media announcing its Brady decision and then explaining what went into it. They sent out nothing on Bell. They never officially announced Bell’s original 3-game suspension and they never officially announced that it was reduced. 

--- Another Saint Vincent 50th anniversary camp story:

The Steelers lost Leon Searcy in free agency to the Jacksonville Jaguars early in 1996 and went looking for another right tackle to take his place. They drafted Jamain Stephens of North Carolina A&T in the first round. He was terrible and I drew the ire of Bill Cowher one day when I asked him bluntly if he were a bust. I was correct, and it was proven definitively during the annual run test to open training camp in 1999.

Stephens was terribly out of shape and hardly could run at all that day. He finally just gave up and walked through the rest of the series of 40-yard “dashes” that were left. It wasn’t the first time he had done that during a run test – he once collapsed and lay prone as Greg Lloyd famously waived a towel over him -- but it would be his last. Cowher was so disgusted with the ongoing performance or lack thereof from Stephens that he cut him that night.

Cincinnati picked him up and he played into 2002 for the Bengals before Marvin Lewis, Cowher’s first linebackers coach with the Steelers, cut him in 2003 when he became head coach in Cincinnati.