All you need to know about Le’Veon Bell’s first season with the Jets is his best game of 2019 came in a New Jersey bowling alley.
That 251 he bowled two weeks ago looks much better than what he has accomplished on the field. His play this season has not quite been a gutter ball, more like a 7-10 split.
There was excitement in March when the Jets signed Bell to a four-year, $52.5 million deal. There was hope in August when Bell looked spry in training camp. There has been mainly disappointment from September through December, as Bell is averaging a career-low 3.3 yards per carry and has not rushed for 100 yards in a single game all season.
As Bell prepares to face the Steelers, his former team, on Sunday, The Post took a look at what has gone wrong this season for Bell in green and white.
We have divided the issues into three main categories and take a look at what’s next:
The Offensive Line
The Steelers had three offensive linemen make the Pro Bowl in 2017, Bell’s last year with the team. David DeCastro made first-team All-Pro at guard. Maurkice Pouncey is viewed as one of the best centers in football. They also were coached by Mike Munchak, one of the game’s best offensive line coaches.
This season, Bell has run behind nine different starting offensive linemen — two different starters at every position. Only two of those linemen had ever been to a Pro Bowl — Kelechi Osemele and Ryan Kalil — and both looked far removed from their glory days.
Bell must quickly have realized he was no longer in Pittsburgh. He spent the first few weeks of the season getting hit behind the line of scrimmage and trying to fight for yards. Todd Haley, who was Bell’s offensive coordinator from 2013-17 in Pittsburgh, said Bell’s patient running style takes time to get used to for any line.
“I think he’s such a unique talent, and he runs different than most everyone else I’ve ever been around from a patience standpoint, that it’s a real adjustment for linemen,” Haley said. “It took time for our linemen to really get a great feel that you’ve got to hold your blocks much longer, you don’t really want to pick a side for Le’Veon. You just want to take it down the middle and let him find where he’s going to run. It’s just different.”
Bell has adjusted his style a little bit in recent weeks. His coaches have been telling him it is important to pick up 3 or 4 yards on a run rather than trying to break long runs in order to avoid negative runs when the defense breaks through. When that happens, the Jets end up in second-and-long or third-and-long and things have snowballed.
“When you delay that much, you have to have a terrific offensive line in front of you,” said Paul Alexander, who coached the Bengals offensive line from 1994-2017 and has studied O-line play. “You can’t have guys come free. He had that in Pittsburgh. The Jets due to personnel aren’t there.”
The Layoff
Bell sat out the 2018 season after the Steelers placed the franchise tag on him for the second straight year. Bell has said the year away did not hurt him, but he has not looked like the same back.
“History is not on your side when you sit out of football for an extended period of time in terms of regaining your form,” Alexander said. “Why is that? It’s timing, it’s a lifetime of accrued muscle memory, quick twitch. That’s been my experience.”
Bell’s longest run of the season is 19 yards. He had one for 23 that was wiped out by a holding penalty. He has rarely gotten to the third level of the defense. Even with poor line play, you would expect Bell to have broken at least one long run.
“Great backs make yards when there is nothing there,” NFL analyst Brian Baldinger said. “I played with [Tony] Dorsett. I played with Eric Dickerson. These were great backs, obviously. Even if you blocked the play poorly, they still found a way to make the run. You don’t see that from Le’Veon. Yes, he’s still powerful and breaks tackles. He’ll get you the yards that are there, but he’s not an explosive back right now. He doesn’t have one explosive run. When you see that, that’s a lot on the back.”
There have been 41 players with at least 100 rushing attempts this season. Bell is 40th at 3.31 yards per carry.
Play Calling
A lot has been made of coach Adam Gase being opposed to signing Bell in the first place and whether that is influencing how he has called games. Bell said last week he does not feel he has been utilized correctly.
It is debatable whether Gase has used him correctly, but not about whether he has given him the ball enough. Bell is 10th in the NFL in touches by a running back (261), and that is with him missing one game. It is not as much as he got the ball in 2017, when he led the league with 406 touches, but it is still a good number.
He has had more than 30 touches just once and fewer than 20 five times.
“I’m not criticizing the coaches, but he’s a workhorse back that needs touches,” Haley said. “The more touches he gets, the stronger he gets, the more productive he’s going to get and the more the guys blocking for him are going to understand how he runs.”
Alexander pointed out the Jets have run outside zone runs just 18 percent of the time, 5 percent below the league average, despite that being a specialty of line coach Frank Pollack. Bell is more of a between-the-tackles runner.