Sources: Jets are trying to trade Bell

The Jets and Le’Veon Bell appear to be headed for a divorce.

The Daily News has learned that Gang Green is trying to trade the perennial Pro Bowl running back amid this nightmarish season. Sources told the News that Gang Green is shopping Bell with the hope of trading him sooner rather than later. The NFL trade deadline is Nov. 3.

“I know he’s frustrated that we haven’t won,” Adam Gase said Monday after Bell had one target in a 30-10 loss to the Cardinals. “It wasn’t necessarily the plan of not targeting him in the pass game. It just kind of ended up being that way with how they were they were playing us. So that’s what it is. I mean, just try to find ways to move the football. That’s all we’re trying to do, and it doesn’t always go exactly as planned.”

Bell, who missed three games with a hamstring injury, took to social media to “like” tweets about his poor deployment in his first game back from injured reserve.

“I hate that’s the route that we go with all this,” said Gase, whose 0-5 club is circling the drain in virtually every offensive category. “Instead of just talking to me about it but seems the way that guys want to do it nowadays.”

Gase, who has repeatedly disparaged Bell behind the scenes after attempting to persuade decision makers not to sign him in free agen

cy last year, claimed that he would better utilize the best weapon at his disposal after his failures last season.

Bell, arguably the NFL’s most lethal dual threat with the Steelers, averaged a career-low 3.2 yards per carry in his first season with Gase after signing a four-year, $52.5 million contract. He is due $6 million base salary for 2020, including $2.5 million of his $4.5 million roster bonus due Thursday, according to spotrac.com. He has $500,000 in per-game roster bonuses, per overthecap.com.

If Bell is traded this week, his team would be on the hook for $6.3 million or $8.8 million depending on whether the Jets pay the roster bonus, per spotrac.

Gang Green tried to move Bell before the trade deadline last year, but found no takers because he was unwilling to restructure his contract. Barring a restructure, the Jets would absorb a $6.6 million dead money charge in 2020 and $4 million in 2021.

Would Bell will be willing to take pay cut now just to get away from Adam Gase?

The Jets are looking for a late-round pick and perhaps a middling player, according to sources.

The News reported earlier Tuesday that Bell told friends after last season

that he would likely request a trade if things continued to go south this season. He also expressed uneasiness about Gase’s weekly game plans last year without complaining.

Now, it looks like things have been pushed to the brink.

Gase’s poor deployment of Bell last season set the stage for this crash. The former Steelers star finished with 789 rushing yards on a career-low 3.2 yards per carry in his first season with the mercurial coach. Bell’s total production dipped by 21% from his final season in Pittsburgh. His usage dropped by 24%.

Asked the day after the season whether he wanted Bell back as his starter in 2020, Gase oddly quipped: “Ask Joe (Douglas) tomorrow.”

“My personal experience with Le’Veon has been very positive,” the Jets general manager said the next day. “He’s done everything we’ve asked him to do as a person (and) as a teammate. … He’s one of our best workers. He’s one of our best teammates. He connects and engages with everybody. So, I can’t say enough positive things about Le’Veon.”

“Le’Veon brought energy to his teammates,” Douglas added in January. “The goal

is for Le’Veon next year to have more production on the field.”

A rejuvenated 28-yearold Bell came to training camp in phenomenal shape with designs on proving that he could still be a difference maker. Gase gave more lip service in camp about how he was determined to get Bell more involved in the passing game.

“I feel like we can find better ways to get him the ball to help him create more explosive plays,” Gase said at the time. “We can get him in space better than what we did last year. I think there was a lot of good that did in the receiving game last year. But I don’t think we ever really gave him enough space to work. Because that’s his game. If he gets space to work, he’s going to make a guy miss … I think we really got to use the whole gamut and find as many different ways to get him the ball in space as possible.”

It was more mumbo jumbo by the fast-talking coach. In the end, very little changed.

Along the way, Gase and Douglas further insulted Bell, who mentored James Conner in Pittsburgh, by waxing poetic about how 37-year-old Frank Gore would be a great example for rookie La’Mical Perine.

In the end, Gase did what so many people thought he would do: Marginalize one of the best players in the NFL.