A number of teams reportedly looked into acquiring Le’Veon Bell ahead of Tuesday’s NFL trade deadline, according to the Jets running back himself. And one team may surprise you.
Bell appeared on Nate Burleson’s “17 Weeks” podcast this week and went into detail about the teams attempting to acquire him at the deadline. According to Bell, his former team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, had interest in bringing him back.
“There was a lot of trade speculations and rumors about, you know, me getting traded obviously from the Jets to other, multiple teams,” Bell said, as transcribed by the New York Post’s Brian Costello. “And they were actually true. There were times where – I found out from my agent, you know, he had talked to the Jets and things like that. But there were teams like Houston, the Packers, the Kansas City Chiefs, and surprisingly the Steelers, were all in the mix of trying to trade for me.”
Bell sat out the entire 2018 season because he believed he deserved more money than what the Steelers were offering him. He stands by that to this very day, which he noted in the interview.
“To be honest I obviously was not trying to take a pay cut simply for that fact that I sat out a full year of football to get what felt like I earned and deserved,” Bell said.
It’s interesting to think that the Steelers would approach a trade for Bell considering the relationship between him and the team was completely ruined following last year, but the National Football League is an interesting world.
Of course, this is only Bell’s account, so it’d be interesting to hear the Steelers’ side of the story.
