Workload A Concern For Le’Veon Bell?

Le’Veon Bell‘s usage rate over the past two seasons has dwarfed every other running back’s, making it somewhat curious the 26-year-old All-Pro would chance trying to go through another high-volume season without a long-term contract.

He may not be. Bell’s agent, Adisa Bakari, said in a Sirius XM interview Wednesday (via Ray Fittipaldo of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) Bell is interested in making it to the 2019 free agent market without the wear and tear of another 400-touch season.

I’m not going to discuss our plan publicly, but if you’re Kevin Colbert and you’re Mike Tomlin, and you have a once-in-a-generation type of player for one more season, what would your plan be? You can read in between those lines,” Bakari said.

Bakari’s likely hinting at the presumed plan of the Steelers running their workhorse back ragged, with his presumptive Pittsburgh departure coming in March. That said, Bell put himself in this position by not agreeing to a deal at the franchise tag deadline.

Bell led the NFL with 406 touches last season and paced the league in 2016 on a per-game basis, averaging 28 in his 12-game season — nearly five more touches per game than David Johnson, second in this category, racked up that year. However, it’s unclear how Bell and Bakari plan to coax the Steelers into limiting the sixth-year back’s workload this season if/when he returns. This sets up conflicting agendas for a team that’s running out of time in its hopes to win a Super Bowl with its historically dominant skill-position duo of Bell and Antonio Brown.

Bell said after another tag deadline came and went without a deal that he would report to the Steelers before Week 1 “unless something exceptional happens.” Bakari said today “something exceptional” has occurred. It’s unclear what, in fact, has transpired. But Bell remains estranged from his team as the league’s last holdout. Mike Tomlin said (via ohio.com’s Nate Ulrich, on Twitter) he’d cross the Bell-usage bridge when that became relevant.

Nevertheless, Bakari said the Bell camp remains intent on making this a dominant season.

I said Le’Veon has every intention to make this the best season of his career. That has not changed,” the agent said (via Aditi Kinkhabwala of NFL.com, on Twitter). “That’s his intention, to make this the best statistical season of his career.”

The Steeler back can hold out until Week 10 before a November 13 deadline looms regarding his playing status in 2018, but he would lose $853K for every week he misses. Having accumulated 1,229 carries through five years, Bell would be an unusual free agent hoping to cash in. Teams could well view him as a diminished commodity as a free agent, which would hurt his chances of signing for Todd Gurley-type money.

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