If and when Pittsburgh Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell shows up this season to play, it will certainly be interesting to see how he’s integrated back into the offense and especially now that fellow running back James Conner has done nothing to warrant him being pushed back to the sideline permanently. While several fans and analysts might suggest that offensive coordinator Randy Fichtner find a way to get both Bell on Conner on the field at the same time with the former playing some as a slot wide receiver, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger let it be known on Tuesday that he’s not to keen on that idea and he explained why.
“No, not really,” Roethlisberger said during his weekly interview on 93.7 The Fan when asked if he’d be intrigued to see Bell split out wide some as a wide receiver when and if he ever shows up to play this season. “I mean, he does some things when you put it out there, match up things, but like in terms of the slot receiver, you’ve got slot receivers for that. You’ve got a Switz [Ryan Switzer] and you’ve got JuJu [Smith-Schuster] and you’ve got Eli Rogers when he gets back healthy.
“You’ve got slot receivers that create better matchups because they are all receiver. When Le’Veon is good at receiver is when he’s that third or fourth guy on the field in the personnel where you’ve got receivers, tight ends and him. That’s where he creates a mismatch problem. If you were just to put him out there as your third wide receiver, that’s not really where he would thrive. He would thrive more as a guy that can match up on linebackers as that extra receiver.”
So, there you go, don’t expect Bell to be used as a wide receiver should he show up and play this season and dont expect to see him and Conner in the same backfield much, if any, either. As was reported by us in a different post from this past week, Roethlisberger made it clear that he and the rest of his teammates don’t miss Bell one bit right now and thus they really don’t care when he decides to show up to play.
“James has been playing unbelievable football,” Roethlisberger said.
