While it was highly unlikely that Le'Veon Bell would play this season, it looks like we can finally call the star running back's season a wash. According to ESPN's Adam Schefter, Bell has no plans to report to the team before today's deadline and will therefore be ineligible to play this season.
"Le'Veon Bell is not reporting to the Steelers by the 4 pm deadline today and is now ineligible to play the remainder of the 2018 season, source tells ESPN. His season is over," Schefter revealed on Twitter. "Bell will become an unrestricted free agent this winter, when the bidding for his services will begin."
Bell hasn't been shy about sharing the reason for his no-show. The back feels that he's being unfairly compensated by the Steelers. Rather than risk injury in the final year of his contract with the team, Bell opted to sit out and try his chances on the open market next year.
Bell's tactics were similar to the Seahawks' Earl Thomas, who skipped practices to avoid wear-and-tear playing for a team that had no intention of re-signing him when his contract ended. After Thomas went down with a worse-case scenario leg injury, flipping his team the bird as he was carted off the field, Bell promised to play the bad guy for the both of them.
Given the lack of gameday news and Bell's relative silence, fans have dug for just about anything they can find on the absentee back. Unfortunately for Bell, that led to digging up an old tweet of his that did not age well.
"If youu could sit out a year of a sport youu play and your not injured or somethin else is preventing youu to play, then youu don't love it!" he wrote back in 2013.
It's clear that Bell has changed his mind in the years since, now that his year is officially over.
