Lev Bell: "They didn't want [my contract] to work"

Slow time in the offseason....

Interesting article on the Depot.
https://steelersdepot.com/2026/03/t...e-change-that-couldve-kept-him-in-pittsburgh/

Bell seems to imply that the issue was maybe some personal friction between his agent and Colbert. Thinks if it was Omar, the deal would have gotten done.

I think the actual reason was that he wanted more guarantees (most important) and more money (2nd most important) than the Steelers were willing to give him.

And that Omar (the cap guy) being the GM would have made it less likely that he got the big deal he wanted. Because the cap guy probably has a much better understanding of positional value and aging curves than the non-cap guy IMO.

If we look at our last two high pedigree RBs, I think it's more likely that Colbert would have made a different decision re: Najee (exercise the 5th year option) than Omar making a different decision on Bell (big contract with lots of guarantees).

I do agree with him that his agent handled it poorly by trying to negotiate his contract in public (although he seems to be blaming it on Colbert). And that his agent (and presumably Bell since he was the client) wanted him to be paid like a RB1 and WR2. Which would clearly have been idiotic.

Anyway...thankfully, Bell saved us from ourselves.

I don't begrudge him for trying to get all that he could. And it does suck for RBs that teams can basically prevent them from seeing the UFA market before they decline. But this was a pretty bad financial decision for him (which shouldn't really matter given all he's earned).

Ultimately, the joke here was on the Jets. Who paid ~$14.5MM in cash (in 2019/2020 money!) for about 850 yards rushing (~265 carries), 500 yards receiving (~69 receptions...nice!), and 2 TDs.

I still appreciate all the good seasons he had with us. Especially the playoff run where he got us to the AFCC (before getting hurt in the playoffs again). If Tomlin had discovered load management of RBs during Bell's time, I think we would have had fewer playoff dissapointments. Because we wouldn't have had to play the Fitz Toussant's (sp?) of the world in the playoffs.

In the end, I'm glad we weren't left holding that bag on that contract.

https://overthecap.com/player/leveon-bell/2258
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/B/BellLe00.htm

 

And the joke was on Bell himself too. He missed out on the....what....$7 million franchise tag by not signing and playing. Out $7 million.

Yeah, it was everybody else's fault...

 

Our OL learned how to block and hold the block for Bell and his style of patience running. I have no doubt he would’ve continued to succeed had he stayed with the Steelers

 

Obviously I don't have any special information.......but it seemed like the Steelers were not going to pay Bell what he wanted and were waiting for him to climb off of his Antonio Brown influenced high on what was possible. The Steelers were not going to reset the market on the RB position or any other spot under the management back then. It then became a spot where neither party felt they could back down from and he went to the Jets, where players go to see their careers die.

 

SOFT SERVE BLIZZARD

 

I could easily be wrong, but the impression I got was that his agent (and Colbert) negotiated a big contract, were close to signing it, then Bell changed his mind and asked for more. And after more negotiating, that kept happening.

Maybe it was his agent, but it seemed like Bell was the one who kept asking for more and more no matter what offer was on the table.

 

This is what I remember but I blame his agent, who was an idiot.

 

I do think he would have ended up with more cash in his pocket if he signed the deal the Steelers offered him. But I'd also take $14.5MM from the Jets as a consolation prize.

 

We'll never know.

But his YPC (4.9 --> 4.0) dropped hard. Success% was also down (not publicly available at the time IIRC, but went from 53.3% to 45.5%...although he bounced around a lot year to year...maybe he was typically delivering right around the success distance?).

What we do know is that he was not a starting RB anymore after the "Summer of Lev".

 

I think the contract we offered him (that he turned down) was relatively high for a RB.

IIRC, his agent was talking about how he deserved to be paid like a RB1+WR2 or something.

The structure was never made public, but my guess is that we offered a reasonably high value, but didn't give much in the way of guarantees (especially outside of year 1...which we'd only done for Ben at that time). My guess is that (like Colbert and Omar) Bell and his agent were well award of RB aging curves.

 

Details never quite revealed. But my guess is that guarantees were the main issue.

 

He’s still trying to stay relevant

Sad

 

You may be right.
I’m thinking though, the contract he signed with the jets was the same contract he turned down from the Steelers…so that kinda tells me the Steelers judged his market value correctly!

 

What I do know is he faced the league least amount of stacked box's in 3 of his years. This helps all rbs out.
Like DeAngelo Williams said when he took over for Bell when he was suspended, and led the league in rushing while Bell was out, nobody is keying on me 1st.
DeAngelo also said when Bell left he was going to find out what it was like to have the Ds focus primarily on him. Guess what??? He found out.

 

Bell was simply too greedy in his demands, and that hurt the running back market for at least five years. Barkley and Henry's big season in 2024 helped boost the value of running backs.

 

And I wonder if Barkley reverting back to a normal year (almost 900 fewer rush yards than last year) will cool the market again.

Henry is just an alien.

 

does his agent get a cut of his dairy queen earnings?

 

I don't know but I still expect Robinson and Gibbs having a contract at over 20 millions in this offseason

 

You might be right if you're talking about new money average on a 4 year extension.

I wouldn't want to pay that though.

Tag value is $14.3MM. 2nd tag is an extra 20% = ~ $17.2MM.

They're probably at the decline by then.

Let's say they want 4 year extensions. That's the team taking on a lot of risk if the structure isn't something like pay as you go.

I'm using $14.3MM in year 1 and $17.2MM in year 2. Let's say $21MM in year 3 bigger jump because now they don't have the option to tag. And $26MM in year 4. So, 4 years $78.5MM. Pretty close to your $20MM/year.

Note that these are just the "new years". Gibbs and Robinson are both at the end of year 3. So the team still has even more leverage because next year is still really cheap for both of them ($5.6MM for Gibbs and $7MM for Robinson). Barkley and Henry had a huge advantage over these guys in negotiating their latest deals because they didn't still have a cheap rookie year still on the books.

If I was a team that did sign these guys to a big AAV contract, I would want to make it so it wasn't very painful to walk away in the 3rd new. These kind of deals happen all the time IMO. And I think it sucks for players because the IIRC agents get paid on full contract values, so there's a perverse incentive for them to try to add in big money years at the end of a contract that everyone knows won't get paid out.

But really...I'd want to do what we tried to do with Bell. Wait a year for the rookie deal to run out. At least one tag. 2x tags if healthy and productive after the first one. Let him walk after the 2nd one.

I don't think many backs have more than 6 strong years in them. And RB is the easiest position to replace.

 

Henry is 10th all time rushing yards (about 5k behind Emmitt) and 4th all time rushing tds(42 behind Emmitt) with about 70 less games played. Barring no major injuries he will truly be King Henry in the end.

 

No , but he is entitled to a free medium size Blizzard once a month for a few more years.

 

One injury is all it will take.

 

I like Snickers Blizzards!

 

Winner. I pretty much like all of them.