Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger feels like the Le'Veon Bell situation hurt the team in a couple of different ways this season.
Bell chose to sit out the entire 2018 regular season, which certainly came as a surprise considering that many people expected him to return to the field at some point after his holdout.
However, the Steelers went the entire way without him, with Mike Tomlin's team finishing 9-6-1 overall in missing the playoffs.
And Roethlisberger thinks that Bell's absence played a role in a few different areas.
From Chris Adamski of TribLIVE:
“It hurts you when you don’t have one of the better players in the game,” Roethlisberger said, “but I think the biggest thing that hurts us was that it was a distraction. At his position we got to see James Conner and Jaylen Samuels, and I thought we got to see guys come into their own and see a glimpse of the future. I was really encouraged about life without Le’Veon.”
There's no doubt that Bell's situation caught a lot of people off guard, as the Steelers went into the season expecting to get his usual production in the backfield.
But, James Conner deserves a ton of credit for the way that he embraced his role as the team's starter, even if Pittsburgh didn't do enough on both sides of the ball to secure a playoff spot.
Now, Roethlisberger and company will turn their attention to 2019 in hopes of getting back to the postseason.
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