Every team is going to have its occasional ‘what if’s. While the Pittsburgh Steelers have failed to return to the Super Bowl since 2010, for example, they did have some very good teams, and particularly in 2016 and 2017, it’s fair to ask how things might have gone differently if not for one key injury.
In 2016, it was running back Le’Veon Bell. He became the straw that stirred the drink on offense in the second half of that season, and even into the postseason. He was the workhorse. But he was also working down a wheel. And it finally caught up to him in the AFC Championship Game against the New England Patriots. He suffered a groin injury several weeks earlier at the end of the regular season, but was playing through it—sometimes with the aid of Toradol shots.
“I’m like, Coach T, let’s go. Coach T, gimme the ball, let’s go. This is my game’”, he said on the Steel Here podcast recently with Kevin Adams and Jersey Jerry, recalling feeling good before the Patriots game after a light week of work. “First play of the game, they give me the ball, handoff, I get like three yards. I get tackled, instantly, all this pain just comes to my groin. It was like a normal tackle. Wasn’t no freaky, nothing crazy. And I just go down”.
His memory is on the mark there. He got the first touch of the game for the Steelers, picking up three yards. He already felt it, but tried to stick it out through the first quarter before being forced to tap out. And that hit him hard, in more ways than one.
“I kind of felt it on the sideline even though I wasn’t trying to show it”, he said of his emotions. “I just think guys were looking at me and they could feel that energy, because I was in pain, and I just wish, going back, I didn’t show that shit at all so my team can be strong”.
“I was just so let down, I was so sad, and I was hurt because I couldn’t play and it’s the AFC Championship Game and I don’t even know if I’m gonna get back here and it’s like, ‘Damn’, so I’m damn near about to cry”, he added.
Let’s just recall for a moment just what Bell meant that year down the stretch. Between the final six regular season games in which he played and the first two rounds of the playoffs, he rushed for 1172 yards in eight games with eight touchdowns. He cleared over 200 rushing attempts. Taking Bell out of that equation, the offense was a shadow of itself. He probably felt he had to play through injury. And it was already significant.
“My groin was done for”, he recalled about the round-one game against the Miami Dolphins by the second half. “Luckily, we were blowing them out, I was able to finish the game and then I’ll get into the locker room and tell them, like, ‘Hey, somebody’s gonna have to check my groin out. I don’t know. Something happened’”.
“My leg was like damn near about to fall off, it felt like”, he said of playing through the groin injury by the end of the run. He ended up having surgery the following offseason, as you might recall, and then played under the franchise tag.
You know the rest of the story. But how might the story of the 2016 have ended had Pittsburgh been able to ring the Bell all the way through? Might they have fared better against New England, perhaps even made it to the Super Bowl?
