The Steelers should swallow their pride and pay Le'Veon Bell

It may be about a decade now since the Pittsburgh Steelers' last Super Bowl title, but in one sense they are the envy of the NFL. No other team can claim to have three skill players on offense who are arguably among the top five at their respective positions with Ben Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown and Le'Veon Bell. The Falcons probably come the closest with Matt Ryan, Julio Jones and Devonta Freeman, though the latter isn’t quite up to the star level of Bell. The Patriots have Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski and Julian Edelman. It’s a stretch to claim Edelman is a top five receiver. There’s the also the recurring issue of Gronk and Edelman staying healthy.

So it’s fair to say the Steelers currently have the best big three in the NFL. Ever since the success of the Dallas Cowboys in the early '90s, with Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith as the cornerstones of the offense, the concept of the big three has often been regarded as one of the surefire routes to a championship.

Of course, while the Steelers have enjoyed considerable regular-season success with the Killer B's, they’ve yet to break through and win a championship with that trio. Title windows in the NFL are difficult to sustain in the long term. One of the chief weaknesses of having a big three on offense is it is incredibly expensive to maintain. Quarterbacks and wide receivers are among the highest paid positions in football on average. Running backs as a whole might not earn as much, but the stars can still carry hefty price tags. Since running backs have shorter careers, however, they are generally seen as more interchangeable.

Bell is one of the best backs in the NFL with a versatility in the pass game that makes him a valuable, multifaceted weapon. At the age of 26, it’s fair to assume he’ll still be at his peak for another three or four years, plenty of time to justify a long-term deal, and yet in 2018, the Steelers hit him with the franchise tag for the second year in a row.

After being tagged last year, still frustrated with the lack of a long-term deal, Bell sat out all offseason workouts and training camp before reporting to the team the first week of September. His 2017 was impressive overall, though it took a few weeks to get going. In the first three weeks of the season, Bell didn’t eclipse 100 yards combined rushing and receiving in any game and only scored one touchdown. He went over 100 total yards in nine of the final 12 games he played, while scoring 10 touchdowns.

This year appears like it will be more of the same. Bell didn’t report to OTAs this spring. That alone doesn’t mean much, but it indicates another lengthy holdout might be imminent. Back in January, Bell threatened to retire if the Steelers tagged him for a second straight year. He dialed back on those comments, except in March he hinted at possibly holding out until Week 10. Just this past week, Bell, who is a rather prolific rapper for an athlete, put out a track firing back at his critics. There’s a valid argument for a player trying to maximize his earnings in a sport that destroys his body and discards him around the age of 30. Still, most media that covers the NFL will describe a player voicing his side of the argument publicly as a distraction.

As per the league’s rules on the franchise tag, the Steelers and Bell have until July 16 to reach a long-term deal. If they fail to come to an agreement by then, they won’t have another opportunity until after the 2018 regular season. Bell is set to make $14.5 million for 2018 based on the franchise tag and is unwilling to settle for less on a per-year basis from a longer deal. The Steelers currently have about $5 million in available cap space after tagging Bell, so they could afford to go a little higher with a long-term deal.

But for whatever reason, Pittsburgh seems content to treat Bell much the same way Washington did for several years with Kirk Cousins. We all now know how the Cousins saga wrapped up there, and it seems like Bell is going to play out similarly.

That is a mistake, because the Pittsburgh offense is demonstrably better with Bell on the field. Perhaps the team convinced itself, with the way DeAngelo Williams played in his absence, that it can easily find someone else to plug in and get good output.

Given that the Steelers are seldom big spenders in free agency, where else is the cap space going to be productively used? If the defense could use more playmakers to make the team a champion, they likely won’t come from free agency. As usual, the Steelers will build through the draft and hope for the best. That’s been a fine strategy for them over the years, and they’ve lucked out when deciding who to pay and who not to pay, as the decision between keeping Brown over Mike Wallace worked out wonderfully.

However, no team bats 1.000 with these decisions. With Roethlisberger in his final years, the Steelers need to do whatever they can to take advantage of that championship window. Keeping Bell would do that and wouldn’t even mortgage the future. Say Roethlisberger retires in another season or two. Would the Steelers really want his successor to inherit a more difficult situation without a handy crutch like Bell, who is seemingly always around to turn a dump pass into a first down?

Unfortunately, the two sides have become hostile enough that the Steelers can’t pay Bell without fans or the media accusing them of caving in some way. Already this spring, Pittsburgh traded away a talented offensive player in receiver Martavis Bryant, who, like Bell, has shown dissatisfaction with his treatment from the team and had a weed-related suspension. If they let Bell walk for being a distraction, the Steelers will not only be costing themselves, showing with Roethlisberger’s continued presence that they are willing to tolerate some players being distractions but not others.