If there's one thing we've learned about Le'Veon Bell this week, it's that he definitely isn't the most popular person in the Steelers locker room right now.
After Bell was a no-show at practice on Wednesday, his second missed practice of the week, several Steelers offensive linemen apparently decided that enough was enough. Multiple players went out of their way to rip Bell, which was unusual, because you'll almost never hear a teammate publicly call out another teammate. However, that's exactly what Maurkice Pouncey and Ramon Foster did.
"Honestly, it's a little selfish," Pouncey said of Bell after practice. "I'm kind of pissed right now. It sucks that he's not here. We'll move on as a team. It doesn't look like he'll be in the game plan at this point (for Week 1). (Second-year running back James) Conner looks great. We'll worry about (Bell) in Week 2."
On Foster's end, he seemed frustrated with the fact that Bell isn't reporting, despite having a contract on the table worth $14.54 million.
"He's making seven times what I make, twice as much as Al (Villanueva) is making and we're the guys who do it for him," Foster said.
So what was Bell's response when he saw these comments?
Apparently, he was pretty shocked. The guys over at Bleacher Report rounded up several of the comments from Bell's teammates and posted them to Instagram, and that's when we got Bell's reaction.
At some point Wednesday evening, Bell saw the Instagram post from Bleacher Report and he ended up reacting with one word, "Whoa."
Although this is only a one word reaction, it seems fair to say that Bell was definitely surprised by what his teammates said.
Since "Whoa" can mean multiple things, here are four theories on what Bell meant with his, "Whoa."
"Whoa, I can't believe my teammates said this about me."
"Whoa, I can't believe they're mad at me, I'm just trying to get paid what I'm worth."
"Whoa, I thought we weren't supposed to air out our dirty laundry in public."
"Whoa, I need to find a new team."
Basically, there aren't a lot of instances where this would be a good "Whoa."
If Bell thought things got ugly on Wednesday, they're likely only going to go downhill from here. Bell is expected to skip the Steelers' opener on Sunday against the Browns, and who knows what's going to happen after that.
During an interview with ESPN's NFL Live on Wednesday, Bell's agent Adisa Bakari, insinuated that this thing might drag on well into the regular season.
"Le'Veon has several years ahead of him in football. We know right now his days in Pittsburgh are precarious at best. We also know how he's been utilized in the past by the Steelers organization," Bakari told the show. "That's nothing to say negative about the Steelers. They had one of the best players to have ever played this position and they rely on him heavily for the production he can provide, but in doing so, you take away from his future years."
Based on comments from both sides, this is a situation that seems like it's only going to get uglier. Under NFL rules, Bell has until 4 p.m. ET on Nov. 13 to sign his franchise deal, which means he could legally sit out for 10 weeks and there's nothing the Steelers could do about it.
Of course, if Bell goes that route, it will cost him some serious money. The Steelers running back would lose out on roughly $855,000 per week for any week he sits out, which means he'd have to be willing to lose roughly $8.55 million in salary if he's going to sit out the full 10 weeks.
