Pittsburgh Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell left the AFC Championship Game in the first half with a groin injury Sunday night, and he was unable to return. The Pro Bowler revealed after the game that the injury was not a new one. Does that mean the Steelers violated NFL rules?
According to Bell, a groin issue he has dealt with for weeks flared up.
“I had no burst anymore,” he said, per Jeremy Fowler of ESPN.com.
Not having Bell was one of several reasons the Steelers lost to the New England Patriots by a score of 36-17. Bell said he felt the injury grab at him on the second play of the game and that it “progressively got worse.”
“I felt like I was holding the team back,” he said. “It’s real disappointing. We work so hard to get here. I felt like I had done a lot to help us get here. To not play and not go to battle with my teammates, it hurt.”
In his previous two playoff games, Bell rushed for a total of 337 yards on a whopping 59 carries. The groin couldn’t have been bothering him that badly, but as Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk pointed out, Bell did miss two practices before Pittsburgh’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs for non-injury reasons. He missed another this past week. If at any point he received treatment for a groin injury and the team did not disclose it, that would be a violation of league rules.
NFL teams hide minor injuries all the time, but talking about it publicly raises a red flag. Pete Carroll recently made the mistake of revealing that Richard Sherman played through a significant knee injury for much of the season, and now the Seattle Seahawks could be facing a steep penalty. Don’t be surprised if the league looks into whether or not Bell was hurt prior to Sunday.
