Steelers: Hot Takes on Le’Veon Bell

Opinions are like, well you know. A certain Steelers running back could be facing some trouble and everyone and their mother has an opinion on the subject.

Friday the news broke that Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell could be looking at a four-game suspension for violating the NFL’s substance abuse policy for supposedly missing several drug tests. Bell was entered into the substance abuse program thanks to a 2014 arrest for DUI and marijuana possession.

Because he was in the program he was subjected to random tests for the unforeseeable future.

Bell was suspended for the first three games of the 2015 season, which was later reduced to two games and tore his MCL and PCL during a Nov 1^st loss against the Cincinnati Bengals.

The funny thing about dealing with alleged or actual marijuana use in professional sports is that it turns everyone into uptight straight-laced people who call it “dope” or assume that anyone who uses marijuana is a drug addict.

When a professional athlete is accused of doing anything, anything else their fan base immediately jumps to their defense. This doesn’t seem to be the case with failed drug test accusations. The hot takes about Bell have come from all over and some of them are doozies.

Local cohost of 93.7 The Fan Morning Show Colin Dunlap wrote an open letter to Le’Veon Bell essentially playing the ‘you let us down’ card with Bell. Dunlap acts as if fans who buy merchandise and game tickets are somehow entitled to set a code of conduct for the players to follow.

Dunlap needs to have several seats. His sanctimonious crap about how “we forgave” Bell’s first transgression with LeGarrette Blount but he owes the city the fans, the Rooney’s, the little old ladies at Giant Eagle and everyone else a lot more than what he’s given so he just needs to behave.

Then there’s ESPN’s professional hot-taker Stephen A. Smith (A for asshat) who went off on this rant on how he claims to know and love Bell but he just can’t get passed the fact that apparently Bell can’t give up the weed.

Charles Barkley even chimed in because, why not?

Bell said in a reply on Instagram that he’s confident that he’ll win his appeal and his defense essentially is that he changed his number and never got the notice that there was a test.

I sure hope when he says that he changed his number and didn’t get the notice that there was a test he means he changed his number and provided the NFL with the new number and they messed up on their end and tried to contact him at the old line.

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We’ll see how this plays out but one thing can be sure; the hot takes won’t slow down at all.