BELL CRITICS DOING OWNERS A SOLID
Steelers running back rebelling against a system that’s stacked against the players
Former athletes tend not to like it when current athletes exercise power that retired players didn’t know they had.
Witness Cris Carter on the subject of Le’Veon Bell and his impasse with the Pittsburgh Steelers: “Either sign the contract and come in or just shut up.”
It was a mild surprise, then, to see Emmitt Smith, another hall of famer, give his thoughts on the Bell situation and specifically the criticism he’s suddenly taking from his Steelers teammates. “Shame on them,” Smith said on TSN. Oh?
Smith, though, knows of what he speaks. Coming off a Super Bowl win with the Dallas Cowboys in 1992, he held out during training camp of the 1993 season and didn’t come back until his team was 0-2 and he had owner Jerry Jones right by his sensitive parts.
The NFL salary cap came in the next season and the leverage that Smith enjoyed during his holdout was largely erased. Player salaries have escalated over the last 25 years — the four-year contract that Smith signed after his holdout paid him less than what Rams running back Todd Gurley could make in the 2020 season alone — but even that hasn’t kept pace with the huge increases in NFL revenues, profits and franchise values. Jerry Richardson bought the Carolina Panthers for US$200 million in 1993 and he just sold them for US$2.2 billion.
Those numbers alone don’t begin to explain the way NFL players have been affected by the salary cap. Because their contracts aren’t guaranteed, they are routinely cut when teams realize they can get similar production from a younger, cheaper player.
Every off-season brings stories of productive players who are cast aside for reasons related to the salary cap, an instrument brought in entirely to artificially suppress salaries. New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick alone goes through players like a wheat thresher and is generally lauded for his willingness to be nakedly disloyal. The only protection from injury a player has in this system is whatever guaranteed money they can get written into their respective deals. They can be owed tens of millions in salaries on paper, but see that vanish the moment they blow out a knee.
The NFL system doesn’t just allow disloyalty to a player from management, it all but demands it. More recent CBA changes that suppressed the cost of rookie deals have led teams to roster more younger players at the expense of middle-tier players, the kinds of guys who used to make more than rookies, but much less than stars.
Now, once a serviceable veteran has outlived his entrylevel deal, he almost immediately becomes more of a burden than an asset. That this system has developed over the period of years where the physical risks of playing football have become much better understood only makes it that much more incongruous. Players serve at the mercy of the teams to which they give their few productive football years.
And now here comes Bell, trying to squeeze whatever leverage he has out of his contract stalemate and his own teammates blast him. Centre Maurkice Pouncey said “honestly it’s a little selfish” and guard Ramon Foster said Bell is a “guy who doesn’t give a damn.”
Bell has been getting the selfish tag for months from some Steelers fans. This is now the ingrained attitude in football and, to an extent, in all sports. Teams can do whatever they want in the name of sound business, but athletes should shut up and play. Be grateful for the opportunity, you overpaid jerk, says the guy who just had several $15 beers at the NFL stadium that was built with hundreds of millions in public subsidies for the billionaire owner.
Bell, who has averaged more yards from scrimmage per game than any running back in history over his first five seasons, is, at 26 years old, trying to maximize the amount of guaranteed money he will get in what would surely be his only big-dollar, multi-year deal. When the Steelers could not sign him to such a deal — he reportedly turned down a US$70-million contract with US$33 million guaranteed — they used salary cap rules to offer him a one-year deal worth about US$14.5 million.
They did the same thing last year. As it did then, the one-year deal would give him zero protection against injury at a position where NFL careers are notoriously short. If the Steelers were only following CBA rules by offering Bell the one-year deal, why should Bell be vilified for following the same rules? (He is allowed to hold out for as many as 10 games without losing a year of service.)
That fans gripe about holdouts isn’t surprising, but you’d think players would manage a little solidarity. NFL players in particular often go googly-eyed when they see what athletes are paid in other major leagues and with good reason. The $33 million that the Steelers offered Bell in guaranteed money matches exactly what the Toronto Blue Jays gave Kendrys Morales, at 32 years old, to be their designated hitter for three seasons.
Even amid controversies, the NFL continues to book record profits with estimates as high as US$15 billion for the 2017 season. It does this thanks to a system that fosters ruthlessness. Good for the player who tries a little of that himself.