11-18-2018, 05:53 PM
Think what you will about Le'Veon Bell's decision to sit out the season in pursuit of free-agent riches, but the key word there is "think."
It's tempting right now to retreat to your corner and settle into some insta-conclusion supported by decades of old, established NFL thinking: Bell's crazy. He overplayed his hand. He'll never get what he's looking for. He quit on his team. The Steelers are doing just fine without him. It's silly to pay running backs.
The facts are that this thing isn't over yet, that we can't see the future, and that no final conclusions about Bell's gambit can be made until March, when we find out what kind of free-agent contract he ends up getting. If he gets a Todd Gurley-style megadeal, then this was all worth it. But if he has to take a one-year, "prove-it" deal because not enough teams are interested, then this was a huge mistake. We don't and can't know the outcome yet.
What we do know is that Bell's situation presents us with a chance -- maybe even an obligation -- to think differently about the NFL and its economic structure. One of the best players in the world just kissed off his age-26 season because he thought it was the smart long-term financial move. An employee used the maximum extent of his own leverage to try to gain ground in a system designed almost entirely for the benefit of the employer. If that doesn't make us question what we thought we knew about how all of this works, that's a missed opportunity on our part.
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/25274...l-thinking
It's tempting right now to retreat to your corner and settle into some insta-conclusion supported by decades of old, established NFL thinking: Bell's crazy. He overplayed his hand. He'll never get what he's looking for. He quit on his team. The Steelers are doing just fine without him. It's silly to pay running backs.
The facts are that this thing isn't over yet, that we can't see the future, and that no final conclusions about Bell's gambit can be made until March, when we find out what kind of free-agent contract he ends up getting. If he gets a Todd Gurley-style megadeal, then this was all worth it. But if he has to take a one-year, "prove-it" deal because not enough teams are interested, then this was a huge mistake. We don't and can't know the outcome yet.
What we do know is that Bell's situation presents us with a chance -- maybe even an obligation -- to think differently about the NFL and its economic structure. One of the best players in the world just kissed off his age-26 season because he thought it was the smart long-term financial move. An employee used the maximum extent of his own leverage to try to gain ground in a system designed almost entirely for the benefit of the employer. If that doesn't make us question what we thought we knew about how all of this works, that's a missed opportunity on our part.
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/25274...l-thinking
