Le’Veon Bell‘s run with the Jets might only last a half season. New York is “amenable” to trading their new running back, sources told Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News. Bell is drawing interest and the Jets are listening, but they aren’t “actively shopping” him, Rich Cimini of ESPN.com clarifies in a tweet. 
Although he’s not sure what kind of compensation the Jets are looking for in return, Mehta notes there are “legitimate buyers” for Bell’s services. If he really does get shipped out in the next few hours, it would end an extremely odd tenure with the team. Shortly after Bell was signed to a massive four-year, $52.5MM deal with $27MM guaranteed, Jets GM Mike Maccagnan was fired. Right after that, word leaked that head coach Adam Gase never wanted Bell in the first place.
The new Jets front office led by Joe Douglas clearly isn’t a fan of committing that much money to a running back, and at 1-6 it certainly makes sense for them to be sellers. As for potential suitors, Mehta floats the Texans, Chiefs and Bills as teams that could potentially be interested. After sitting out the entire 2018 season, Bell has been having a down year. Through seven games he’s averaging just 3.2 yards per carry, and only 5.8 yards per reception.
Of course that’s not really Bell’s fault, as he hasn’t been getting much help from the offensive line or the rest of the offense. All this being said, Mehta does concede that a trade might ultimately be challenging because of Bell’s contract. There are cheaper running backs on the market, and Kenyan Drake was only able to fetch a late-round pick yesterday.
As Albert Breer of SI.com points out in a tweet, Bell is only due a little over $1.3MM more for this year, so it won’t hurt teams too much in 2019. However, he’s owed $13.5MM in 2020, most of which is fully guaranteed. We’ll keep you posted once we hear anything more about Bell.
