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The Steelers have now played half a season without running back Le'Veon Bell, and their offense hasn’t missed a beat with James Conner in Bell’s place. And the Steelers’ next opponent even thinks Pittsburgh might be better without Bell.

Ravens defensive coordinator Wink Martindale said today that statistically speaking, the Steelers’ offense has performed better in a lot of respects without Bell on the field.

“There are a lot of stats [since 2015] that the Steelers are actually better without him,” Martindale said, via ESPN. “That might be why he’s riding a jet ski down in Miami right now.”

That might sound crazy at first: After all, Bell is widely respected in the NFL. He was voted a first-team All-Pro by the media last year, and his peers voted him the fifth-best player in the entire league when NFL Network did a survey of NFL players for its annual “Top 100” list.

But the fact is, the Steelers’ offense has been just fine without Bell this season. Conner is actually on pace to finish this season with more rushing yards, more receiving yards and more touchdowns than Bell gained last year: Conner is on pace to finish this season with 1,369 rushing yards, 738 receiving yards and 21 touchdowns. Bell finished last season with 1,291 rushing yards, 655 receiving yards, and 11 touchdowns.

So if Bell was one of the five best players in the entire league last year, does that mean Conner is one of the five best players in the league this year? With all due respect to Conner, no. What it means is that the running back position just isn’t as important in today’s NFL as people make it out to be. If you can lose an elite running back like Bell and not miss a beat when you plug in Conner to replace him, that should probably tell you that an elite running back like Bell just isn’t that important a player in a modern NFL offense.

Whether the Steelers are actually better without Bell is debatable. The Steelers obviously don’t think they are, or else they wouldn’t have put the $14.5 million franchise tag on him this season. But Martindale makes an important and correct point when he notes that the Steelers are, at the very least, not much worse without Bell than they were with him.