Somewhat strikingly, the stall at No. 26 inside the Steelers' locker room did not sit empty Wednesday afternoon at the Rooney Complex. A couple hangers held a couple of jackets and shirts, no doubt belonging to other players. The folding chair in front was home to someone's iPhone for the moment. A pair of random shoes sat at the foot.
It's a spare cupboard, basically. A storage bin.
Nothing I saw or heard on this day summarized the scene more sullenly.
Because Bell, of course, isn't here. Because his teammates, of course, are moving on to Cleveland, both literally and mentally. And because neither side -- and make no mistake, Bell and his teammates are now officially at cross-purposes -- seems to care all that much that this has occurred.
I mean, wow ...
“I want to root for him. I am rooting for him,” Ramon Foster was speaking before the cameras and microphones, no doubt cognizant of his dual role as the Steelers' union representative. “But my perspective is different now. I’m in year 10. I want to win a Super Bowl. The ultimate team sport has become a very selfish game now."
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Oh, just wait. The big men were only clearing their throats.
“It’s just that you sacrifice so much in this damn sport," Foster continued. "My mom died and I went to her funeral and went to camp the next day. I’ve got torn ligaments in my thumb, almost-torn ligaments in my knee. For everybody not to be fully in on a team, who is one of the best players in the world, that’s where it … Maurkice almost lost a leg. Al has seen people die."
Those are references to Maurkice Pouncey's injuries and Alejandro Villanueva's military service.
"Everybody has their issues to where he should at least have the courtesy, at least say something. I guess it is a little different now. I’m tired of the questions. Tired of the answers.”
Pouncey went further, if you can believe that.
"Obviously it's Le'Veon over the Steelers, and we're the Steelers," he said. "At this point, that's bigger than business. Now that it's game time and you have $14 million looming out there and your team really wants you here ... "
There was much more of this around the room, but none spoken as passionately as from the elders of the offensive line. And it was pretty telling that those were the guys essentially allowed by the collective itself to address Bell's absence. It was Foster, Pouncey and Villanueva who stood up.
I spent my own time with Marcus Gilbert.
"I'm tired of it, brother. I am," he told me. "And the funny part is, people think this is what we're focused on in here. It isn't. Believe me. I've got to go out there Sunday in Cleveland and line up across from another man I've got to beat. People think we take this stuff out onto the football field. We don't. It's just when we come in here and get asked about it."
I raised one eyebrow.
"No, I'm serious. Go ask any of our guys. We've been out on that field, it's 90-some degrees, and we've been blocking for the same guy now for six months."
Ouch. James Conner.
"James is ready," Gilbert told me. "We're out there with him. We see how he's hitting holes. It's a totally different look. For me, I've got to hold my block maybe a second longer, make sure he can get the look he likes ... but he's getting there. He's attacking it."
I took Gilbert's advice and shared the thought with his guys. They didn't exactly have to dig to respond.
"James is getting the job done," Foster told me. "We're getting him the holes, and he's hitting 'em. We did that for D-Will, too, and he's a similar-type runner."
DeAngelo Williams. He came up a lot. Not to weigh achievements, naturally. Just style.
"It could be D-Will, it could be Fitz, it could be whoever," Pouncey told me, with a passing reference to Fitzgerald Toussaint. "We've always gotten the job done."
The franchise quarterback, the most important voice in the room if not the most influential, sounded similar notes.
Asked about the times the offense has played without Bell, Ben Roethlisberger replied, "We did pretty good then, too. James is a different player than he was last year at this time, so I think we’re all pretty excited for what he can bring to this offense and this team. We have a lot of weapons. We’d like to have him out there, but we have guys who can make plays.”
They do. It remains to be seen to what extent Conner can come through, though he's shown well all summer and, for what it's worth, spoke all the right words when I asked about getting his first NFL start:
Being skeptical about Conner is a losing proposition, in any walk of life. I won't go there.
Being skeptical about life without Le'Veon, though, that's different. He's legitimately the NFL's best running back, legitimately one of the most dynamic, unpredictable weapons in the league. Any notion put forth by anyone that the Steelers will be the same without him, at least for any sustained period, is plain silly.
Except for this: Look again at all of the above, purely from the existing Steelers' perspective, and ask yourself how badly they'd really want him back if this were to drag on, say, more than just a week or two?
I'm being completely serious.
All team sports are founded on camaraderie, and camaraderie founded on trust. There aren't exceptions. Baseball, which has one pitcher facing one hitter, is founded on camaraderie, on trust. But even so, football stands out, in part because it loves to stand out. It's as deeply rooted in the sport's culture as all those HBO matinee depictions of Coach Rah-Rah tearing into the varsity captains and reducing them to tears. And it's real.
If Bell were to pop up, say, next week, I could envision a scenario in which he and the team leaders talked it out, hugged it out, and he committed himself fully, brought back that big smile and showed everyone he did, in fact, keep himself in shape and was ready to run the following Sunday. It's plausible.
But again, the longer this lingers, the more that trust dissipates. They're already surprised, disappointed and angry, probably in that order, primarily because of the uncertainty, because he hasn't told anyone his intentions, like it's all some social media game. And they view that as his prioritizing himself over the team.
Mind you, they're talking about the team here, meaning their own group of actual humans. Not the Steelers as an institution, certainly not the NFL. They're talking about the team, the part that they value the most, what's right in front of them every day.
If they think that he thinks there's something more important than that, beyond God and family and health ... that could be a bridge too far.
Now, add to that the possibility that Conner fares well Sunday, then again the following week at home against the Chiefs, with Pittsburghers near and far singing his praises in a way we never could have conceived during his time at Pitt, then imagine the bond that'll be forged between these existing Steelers and their new back.
In that circumstance, Bell's return would come not only with the players having to do a 180 on Bell, but also basically discarding Conner in favor of a guy they already know doesn't consider them either a priority or part of his future.
As Pouncey powerfully stated Wednesday, "A star is born every year in the NFL. Did anyone know Kareem Hunt would be an All-Pro before last season? If James Conner didn't have cancer, he'd have been a first-round pick. Just watch him."
Yikes.
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Spare me, please, anything from Bell's side. He's being an absolute idiot about this and, if possible, his agent, Adisa Bakari, is somehow outdoing him.
“I’m not going to address our plan publicly," Bakari told SiriusXM Radio's NFL Network Radio on Wednesday before doing exactly that. "But I’ll offer this question to you: You’re Kevin Colbert, you’re Mike Tomlin, and you have a once-in-a-generation player for one more season. What would your plan be?”
Oh, yeah, he went there.
"Le'Veon has several years ahead of him in football," Bakari continued. "We know right now his days in Pittsburgh are precarious at best. We also know how he's been utilized in the past by the Steelers organization. That's nothing to say negative about the Steelers. They had one of the best players to have ever played this position and they rely on him heavily for the production he can provide. But in doing so, you take away from his future years."
He did. He went there.
He blurted out publicly that his client, whose 402 touches led the NFL last season and thus constitute the very cause behind his demand to be paid much more than the current franchise tag value of $14.5 million, is worried that he might again have that many touches, risking his ability to secure the clear contract of his dreams elsewhere.
This isn't some ordinary holdout. Don't describe it as such. This is a calculated -- at least within the context of idiocy -- desire of structuring a player's career around absolutely nothing more than the max payout.
I've never been one to begrudge professional athletes going for the money. But there's a way to do that without discarding everything else in the equation, which is what Bell and Bakari are intent on doing here. Right from the agent's lips. They're entering a walk year, as it's called in the industry, plotting out a player's future based on free agency.
"Stupid" is what Pouncey called that, and I could come up with much worse. "That's not how football works."
It isn't how any professional sport works. And it won't work.
The Steelers couldn't do anything about it now if they wanted. The tag's applied, the deadline for an extension has passed and, barring the unlikely event that they'd arrange a trade with a team willing to sign Bell to his ridiculous term -- which, by the way, Bakari conceded had just changed again in the past month with the recent signings of Aaron Donald, Odell Beckham Jr. and others -- they'd be setting the worst precedent in doing so.
Rescind the offer?
Come on. To what end? Being outwardly vindictive? Or worse, freeing him to wind up in Foxborough by Christmas?
Besides, what could they do with the freed-up cash? Go claim another Fitz off someone's practice squad?
It's easy to find fault with the Steelers in hindsight, specifically that they might have done more to bolster the depth chart rather than relying solely upon Conner coming off major knee surgery. The latter is a fair criticism. But the fact is, when Bell suited up last season, he ran hard and he was, in fact, team-first. Especially in AFC North competition, he ran as hard as any back I've covered, never shying from contact, never avoiding a route that might have cost him his head. Colbert and Tomlin had every cause, based on precedent, to believe he could replicate that in 2018.
There's just no accounting for idiocy.
My prediction: Bell will relent before long. And he'll do so, as one veteran player shared with me, because of money. He's been living larger, I'm told, than even his social media bluster indicates. He's made $14.5 million to this stage of his NFL career -- he'd double that amount this year, by the way -- and he's burning through it at an unsustainable pace. He won't be in position to pass up many more game checks of $847,000, as he will Sunday in Cleveland.
But then what?
He'll show up at the pay window to collect what's due. And why would anyone have faith in anything he'd say otherwise? Why would anyone have faith that he'd be the very best choice on third-and-1 in the AFC Championship Game, when his touches are climbing into his or his agent's perceived danger zone, and he'd have somewhere in his subconscious that he can't risk getting hurt?
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"Playing football. For me, at the end of the day, it's about playing football. I got an opportunity to play the game again. I'm excited anytime I can play football."
Damned right that wasn't from Bell. It was from Conner's answer to me in that video above.
He's been through more than most, so maybe it isn't fair to compare. But the point of view still comes with real value, real meaning here. Because while someday Conner, ideally, will seek out his own big contract, and heed advice from his own agent that's aimed squarely at dollar signs, no one could ever question why he's out there.
Nor could they question that of maybe, oh, 53 or so of the Steelers currently in the fold.
Move on. Beat the Browns. Get Conner 100 yards on the ground.
If that doesn't pry Bell off his couch for Kansas City the following week, if he's comfortable watching Tomlin allow the offense get introduced at Heinz Field with Conner as the starter, cut the bleeping cord. Because the Steelers will be a better team -- that's team -- without him.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Steelers practice, UPMC Rooney Sports Complex, Sept. 5, 2018. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS