Bell who? Some players silent
Football life goes on; RB’s ex-teammates remove nameplate, plunder locker
His former teammates celebrated the end of Le’Veon Bell’s Steelers career not with Champagne or confetti as Cam Heyward joked about doing the previous day.
Instead, the players removed Bell’s name plate atop his locker, and then a bunch of them plundered it. They divided among themselves the many football shoes that had piled up inside it along with other stuff. Linebacker Bud Dupree nabbed an entire box of shoes that sat on top of the locker.
They acted more like pirates than Steelers.
“Oh,” guard Ramon Foster said in the middle of an interview, laughing, “They’re checking his locker right now.”
That locker not only was emptied by his teammates and any evidence that it was his removed, but it also likely will remain empty next year, or at least not filled by Bell.
As his teammates showed by their actions, they are done with him, and the off-the-record vibe from the front office is the same. No one mentioned him by name in the locker room and some did
not even want to talk about him anymore.
“I don’t talk about players who are not on the team,” said Maurkice Pouncey, an offensive captain, told reporters who gathered around him after practice. “So if you guys want to ask me any of those questions, you’re going to waste your time.”
Surely, though, he had to be happy the drama was over when the 4 p.m. Tuesday deadline passed and Bell had not signed his $14,544,000 franchise tag that barred him from playing the rest of the season.
“Nothing ever started. What are you talking about?” Pouncey said. “No drama, you guys made it drama, it was cool for us, we went out there and played football.”
The Steelers have won five games in a row to bring a 6-2-1 record to Jacksonville for the 1 p.m. game Sunday against the Jaguars, who beat them twice last season and knocked them out of the playoffs. James Conner, Bell’s replacement, leads the AFC with 771 yards rushing.
“It’s kind of nice that’s it’s over,” guard David DeCastro said. “We can just move on, keep getting James some more yards and keep winning games. It’s been fun, we’ve been on a fun roll, and the season goes by a lot faster when you’re winning games.”
Foster, the Steelers union player rep, said none of his teammates has talked to Bell, long before or after the deadline. There was one exception because Conner said Bell has been texting him. Asked if he talked to him since the deadline passed, Conner said it was personal.
“It stinks when the guy doesn’t have to answer his own questions,” said Heyward, the team’s defensive captain. “But if they’re not on the team I’m not worried about it.”
Heyward said he never thought it would get to the point that Bell stayed away the entire season.
“No, but I’m not going to cry about spilled milk. We’ve got capable guys. If one guy’s not here that doesn’t stop the goal. We move on. Get back to football, that’s all we can do. Wish him the best. This train doesn’t stop for anybody.”
Foster said Bell’s refusal to communicate with his teammates all season was “his business.”
“He rolled with how he wanted to roll with it, him and his team. They released their stuff to y’all so you guys find a time to pick an interview with him and his team.”
His teammates did not offer much when asked if Bell might some day have regrets for skipping the entire season, even if the Steelers go on to win a Super Bowl.
“I have no idea, I really don’t care,” DeCastro said. “At the end of the day, it’s his decision.
“You have to respect that from his business standpoint or whatever you want to call it. You just move on with life. I just wish he would have communicated a little better, but hindsight is what it is.”