Le’Veon Bell Can’t Be This Out of Touch, Can He?
Le’Veon Bell is widly regarded as the best running back in the NFL. In case you haven’t heard, he’ll be a free agent when the new league year opens in March. Some would argue that Bell could possibly be playing this weekend, but I mean sometimes we all just gotta get in some good Twitter trash talk at midnight the night before a playoff game.
I love round 2’s…we’ll have two round 2’s in back to back weeks…
— Le’Veon Bell (@L_Bell26) January 14, 2018
Holy hell man, the Pittsburgh Steelers are the gift that keeps on giving. Which brings us to this outrageous Twitter interaction today.
@L_Bell26 I speak on behalf of the New York Jets, well give you $60 million in cash if you come play for us
— Erich Sternkopf (@ErichSternkopf) February 1, 2018
I did a little digging on this Erich guy, turns out he self-proclaimed himself as the spokesperson of the New York Jets (it’s right there in the Twitter bio, pretty proud of myself for finding that). Erich the Jets spokesperson has 535 followers. He should probably get a different hobby.
It also turns on that this Erich guy would make for a really terrible NFL general manager, so let’s hope he doesn’t fake appoint himself that next. If any NFL team gives Le’Veon Bell $60 million, I’ll probably be laughing until the day I die (given how much Coke Zero I drink, that day is coming sooner rather than later). But still, everyone needs a good laugh, and I’ll have plenty of them.
Running back is the most meaningless position in football, because the guys at that position take a brutal punishment for their entire life. The legs fade, and the players get worse. We know the deal with all of that by now. But more importantly, running backs are so meaningless because there are more than 1 of them. A quarterback? Yeah, pay that guy whatever the hell you want. There is one of them on the field during an entire game. They make a real impact. Running backs do not.
To pay a running back $60 million is an absurd thought. Devonta Freeman signed the biggest running back contract in NFL history last offseason (5 yrs, a touch over $41 million), which is about an $8.25 million a year average. At $60 million, Bell is getting somewhere between $10-12 million per year.
Just for reference, the Patriots have 5 running backs because, in my world, Brandon Bolden counts. They paid them a combined $9 million this year. This is just reason # 372 why the Patriots play in the Super Bowl every year (if you can make a definitive argument for this to be reason #373, I’ll listen.)
🙄 that ain’t enough to come run with the Jets… https://t.co/R0Ockg5Leh
— Le’Veon Bell (@L_Bell26) February 1, 2018
Since Bell will never win a Super Bowl with the Steelers, I don’t see what his big gripe is here. The Steelers are going straight into salary cap hell as soon as they ink Bell to a new contract, and they know it. Which is why they’ve delayed it for so long. If Bell really wants $60 million, he needs to pick a bad team with a lot of cap room. And hey, what do you know, the Jets are a bad team with over $100 million in cap space. You want that contract, you better get your ass to New York Le’Veon.
Deep down, I really hope that we can all strive to love ourselves as much as Le’Veon Bell loves himself. Because when we inevitably fall way short of that mark, we’ll still be able to tolerate ourselves, and that’s what life is really all about.
Written by: Brian Borders (@bborders12)