The groin injury that knocked Le’Veon Bell out of the AFC championship game had been bothering him for a couple of weeks, and offseason surgery might be an option.
“I’m kind of in the process of seeing a couple of doctors, seeing if I have to get surgery or not,” the Steelers running back told the NFL Network’s Good Morning Football.
Bell ran for 1,268 yards and seven touchdowns in 12 games this season. He was suspended for the first three games for missing a drug test and sat out Week 17 with the Steelers resting their starters.
The Steelers’ 30-12 wild-card win over the Dolphins, in which Bell ran for 167 yards and two touchdowns, was Bell’s first postseason game. He suffered season-ending injuries in 2014 and 2015 and missed the playoffs.
Even though Bell set a single-game franchise record for rushing yards in a postseason game against the Dolphins, and topped it the next week with 170 yards against the Chiefs, he wasn’t 100 percent.
“People don’t understand I was kind of fighting that through the playoffs,” he said. “I really hurt it in the Miami game. I played through the whole Kansas City game with it. The beginning of the Patriots game, I felt it.”
Bell ran the ball just six times for 20 yards in the Steelers’ 36-17 loss to the Patriots. The Steelers still are left wondering how far they can go with a healthy Bell. To have any chance of finding out, they have to prevent him from hitting the open market in free agency. He’s a candidate for the franchise tag.
“Obviously, I want to play with the Steelers,” Bell said. “Hopefully they show some love because obviously I feel like I’m the best running back in the league.”
But as Steelers coach Mike Tomlin once said regarding Willie Parker, he doesn’t walk past rushing titles when he goes to work, he walks past Lombardi Trophies. For the Steelers to get more of the latter, Bell has to get that groin straightened out.
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