Within 12 days from now we’ll find out whether or not Pittsburgh Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell has signed a long-term contract extension as July 17 is the league deadline for that to happen. In the meantime, however, here is an interesting 2016 stat of Bell’s that Pro Football Focus posted on Twitter.
According to their stats, Bell led the NFL last season in lowest percent of total runs that resulted in lost yardage. I even highlighted this in my recent 2017 preview of Bell and according to play-by-play stats from last season, just 13 of Bell’s 261 2016 regular season caries resulted in lost yardage and that was the best/lowest percentage in the league for running backs with at least 120 carries.
So, just how good has Bell been over the course of his short career when it comes to percentage of runs resulting in lost yardage? According to some quick research on Pro Football Reference, Bell has lost yardage on just 8% of all of his career regular season carries. To put that into some sort of perspective, of the 19 total running backs who have carried the football at least 600 times since 2013, only one, Rashad Jennings, has a lower lost yardage percentage than Bell does.
As you can clearly see, Bell does a great job of getting positive yardage even when hit or bottled up in the backfield and even while being very patient at times. Below are a few more Bell stats from PFF that might interest you as well as we wait to see if the Steelers are able to sign him long term.
