There have been a lot of opinions flying around about the situation with Pittsburgh Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell. Everyone has very strong opinions about the situation and they typically fall into two camps. One, you defend Bell and believe he him partaking in self-preservation for financial game supersedes helping the Steelers win.

And the other camp considers Bell selfish and he has let his teammates down. But I’d ask you to listen to former NFL player and current analyst Cris Carter who offers a little different perspective on the matter that frankly hasn’t been discussed at length.

Carter believes that the reason his offensive linemen called him out publicly is Bell gave them assurances he’d show up last week and he then went back on that. Keep in mind, Steelers beat writer Gerry Dulac reported this and Bell fired back that it was fake news. But we all understand Dulac wouldn’t have said it if a player hadn’t told him that.

So from Carter’s point of view, Bell betrayed the trust of his teammates and forced their hand. Makes perfect sense to me. As deplorable as it is for a player who is set to make more than $14 million to decide that isn’t enough to help his teammates win a Super Bowl, to lie to his team and not follow through is probably worse.

Bell could have told the franchise on July 16 he plans to sit out to save himself and there would have been full transparency and the Steelers could have planned for it. But this move undermined his trust with his teammates and no matter how you feel about the front office if he said he would do something and didn’t follow through, the rest of the team isn’t the problem.

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