For once, I’m not the only skeptical one digging into how the details of an injury don’t match up with what the player is saying! In this piece by NFL.com’s Chris Wesseling, someone else points out how Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell’s words don’t quite match up. Bell hyperextended his knee at the end of the regular season. He ended up missing the following playoff game in which the Steelers lost to the Ravens. At the time of the injury, the Steelers seemed mostly optimistic about Bell’s chance to suit up the following week for that Ravens game. The injury was explained as a hyperextension without any accompanying ligament damage. I wrote about it here, backing up the opinion that, if it really was a simple hyperextension, Bell might be looking at only a very limited absence.
Now, for reasons unknown, things seem to have changed. As Wesseling does a good job of pointing out in that piece, Bell is now saying some incongruent stuff. In late January, Bell said that he was, “close to 100%.” That alone is a little suspicious for being one month removed from a knee hyperextension, but you could also just chalk that up to a player being cautious with his words or his rehab (that is, if players were ever cautious with their words). Now, nearly four months after the injury, Bell again said that he’s, “getting close to 100%.”
So what’s the deal here? As always, I’ll point out that I don’t know anything specific. I’m not wired in to anyone worth being wired in to. But it’s now officially fair to wonder what really happened inside Le’Veon Bell’s right knee. Perhaps the original injury was more severe than a hyperextension. Maybe the Steelers knew that at the time, or maybe they only discovered it later. Perhaps Bell has had some setbacks in his rehab. Without knowing a damn thing, I can tell you that his timeline (based on his quotes) now resembles that of a player with some decent knee ligament damage. Nothing big like an ACL tear, but perhaps something that heals on its own without surgery. Maybe an MCL, LCL, or PCL tear/sprain. We know the injury was from a direct hit by a tackling defender, so perhaps we’re looking at a deep bone bruise here. For what it’s worth, I’ve actually had that, and it sucks. Whatever it is though, we can be pretty sure that it’s not just the simple hyperextension that it was originally billed as. All of this might be a bit of a moot point though because, as long as this wasn’t something major like an ACL tear (and we have no reason to believe that it was), Bell will still be ready and running for all the offseason training camps, and in zero danger of missing any actual playing time.
