PITTSBURGH -- Turns out, there is at least one man in the NFL that Le'Veon Bell can't evade in the open field: Mike Tomlin. Bell sauntered out of pregame production meetings in a Kansas City hotel last week in his usual sweats, braids woven with the precision of his outside zone runs, when he heard the booming voice of the Pittsburgh Steelers head coach.
"Hey Steph Curry, you better lead us to an NBA championship," Bell recalls Tomlin saying.
Bell laughed along. He was used to the barbs. Earlier this month, Bell referred to himself as "what Steph Curry is to basketball" in an interview with Bleacher Report. "I think I'm changing the game," he said, with a patient running style that could influence young players, just as Curry perfected (and popularized) the deep 3.
In truth, Tomlin simply delivered a clever line. But Bell's mind quickly parachuted into deeper thought. Tomlin's words, to Bell, were a friendly challenge: Trend-setting is great. Title-winning is better. Let's go win a championship.
"I was like, 'You know, yeah, let's do it!'" Bell realized.
A day later, Bell went off for 170 yards in Kansas City.
This is Bell: He says he can, and so he does. With that boundless confidence, Bell has catalyzed the Steelers' run of nine straight wins heading into the AFC title game Sunday in New England. This transformative season serves as a bold example of how to run the ball effectively -- not to mention the textbook entry for how to rehabilitate a career.
Just six months ago, Bell's recovery from two torn ligaments in his right knee and NFL substance abuse violations in back-to-back years had cast a pall over his future with the team, at least publicly. Media branded him a case study for how to blow impending free agency with off-field problems.
Now, 2,224 yards later, Bell's status as a franchise cornerstone has no skepticism attached. "No question about it," Steelers guard David DeCastro says. "He's an awesome success story."
Bell knew things would play out this way. He stresses this as if he has been trying to tell you for months, with a subtle head shake and a smirk for emphasis. At the very least, he has been telling himself, at the lifelong advice of his mother, Lisa Bell: Speak your goals into existence.
"The tongue has power," she says.
The concept marks this season as fulfillment more than vindication. When doctors said Bell's knee would return to full strength in November, Bell told himself August. When the NFL told Bell he'd sit three games because of missed drug tests, he promised himself the next 12 would be memorable.
"I don't let doubt in -- ever," says Bell, who averaged 157 yards per game during the regular season, the third-highest clip in NFL history for a running back. "I live that way in my life, for real."
BELL'S RUNNING STYLE is slow-cooked to perfection, an amalgam of Frogger, "Happy Feet" and Charlie Brown's shuffle. At the goal line during the AFC wild-card game against Miami, Bell paused along the left side of his line for what seemed like a full two seconds, flat-footed until flickering through the open hole. He scored a 1-yard touchdown because he was simply waiting for the guard to move.
Debate whether Bell is revolutionizing the NFL game, but there's no denying his imprint is all over it. Just ask Los Angeles Chargers running back Melvin Gordon, who noticed it while watching the Packers-Cowboys playoff showdown.
When Ezekiel Elliott burst through expansive holes created by the Cowboys' offensive line, Gordon expected typical Zeke -- grab the ball and go. Instead, he saw Elliott shift to his left, pause in heavy traffic, then cut inside.
That's Bell's style, Gordon thought.
"I think more running backs will definitely start to run [like Bell]," Gordon says. "You could see it in that Dallas game a little bit. ... It's not really that the players don't want to do it, it's more the coaches being comfortable with it. And maybe the coaches will change their mindset as they see [Bell] have more and more success."
The seeds for Bell's style were planted way back in youth football in Columbus, Ohio, when Bell's uncle, Clarence, told him to stop running over the guys who blocked for him. Once Bell started to learn blocking schemes, he couldn't get enough. "He always wanted to go over to Clarence's house to watch college football," Lisa Bell says. The determination followed. The two-star high school recruit wasn't invited to participate in a Nike camp at Penn State, so he begged his mom to call organizers and persuade them to reconsider. She did, and they did, and he balled.
He refined his approach in East Lansing, channeling his inner John Nash during 11-man tests from Michigan State coaches. Bell perked up when asked to identify protections, routes and audibles for each player on the offense from the white washboard. For extra credit, he'd point out the need to abandon his assignment for extra blocking if the defensive end ran free. "He would point out things that most people wouldn't see or even know to ask about," Michigan State assistant Brad Salem says. "Just a joy to coach."
But back then, Bell was a 230-pound rusher, more power than finesse, with one of his most translatable NFL skills as a pass-catcher out of the backfield. Bell's backfield mate at MSU, Larry Caper, remembers Bell as a thoughtful runner but more of an "urgent" back in a zone scheme.
"We all saw him being a productive back in the league. I didn't think it would be this big where they are talking about him revolutionizing the position and all that," Caper says. "It came from his self-confidence and staying true to himself."
He began to fine-tune his new style as soon as 2013, when, before the draft, he and longtime trainer Pete Bommarito looked to drop weight to enhance his quickness. Bommarito was wowed the moment Bell caught passes in running-back-vs.-safety drills. His hands and body-contortion abilities could make him an elite receiver if he had focused on that position full time.
The NFL was fine with Bell at 230. But he could maintain his strength at a lighter, more explosive weight. "Power back was the label. But we knew -- and he knew -- he was more than that," Bommarito says. "The great ones are psychologically tough enough to trust the knee and do everything I asked. He just goes. My biggest issue is holding him back."
With the Steelers, offensive line coach Mike Munchak was among those yelling "hit it, hit it" from the press box in 2014 when the second-year back wouldn't accept the first available hole. But largely, Bell has felt the team accepts who he is. Tomlin, who was the only NFL head coach at Bell's pro day at MSU, never tried to change his thinking. Bell is rewarding that faith with a mushrooming arsenal of cuts and wait-for-its.
"He kind of understood it's just the way I run the ball, and they kind of just let me do my things and evolve as a, I guess, unique runner," Bell says.
Now, Bell culls life experience to fuel his art form, citing his patience with ornery Rottweiler puppies Buddy and Beautiful as good on-field practice to breathe and relax, or his love for chess as adequate training for setting up blocks. But at the core, Bell has been honing his greatest skill since he sat on his uncle's couch watching college football -- the ability to view what he calls the "three levels" on every play: linemen, linebacker, safety. His linemen can handle the defensive line, then the real game begins with the remaining two levels, using peripheral vision to scan intruders off the edge. When running inside zone, he wants the linebacker to think he's going outside or cutting into a different hole.
"I never feel like I'm in a rush," Bell says. "I'm controlling the pace. If I have the ball and hit the hole right now and get 3 yards, I feel like I can be patient, work for something, knowing I can still get the 3. It's something that's hard to be coached on. I just feel I've perfected it over time."
Bell's slow internal clock can make teammates uneasy. Ask any blocker on the Steelers' offense, and they will say the same thing: They have little to no idea where he'll end a given play. Just hold your block, and expect him to pass you.
ALL THAT SEEMED in jeopardy this August when Bell, just off a monthslong rehab for his torn MCL/PCL, was suspended four games for his second substance abuse offense after allegedly missing several drug tests (but not failing one). The NFL reduced the suspension to three games upon appeal.
Bell had spent the previous six months splitting time between checkups in Pittsburgh and five-to-six-hours-per-day training sessions at Bommarito Performance Systems, a sprawling facility in North Miami that provides muscle activation training, acupuncture and an in-house chef.
The task of making a full recovery from a complicated injury was arduous, but it kept Bell's mind off the suspension, which he had heard would be coming. But outside Bommarito's facility, the media was blasting Bell, who's set to become a free agent in 2017 (and will likely get the franchise tag). Would his past deter the Steelers from making a deal? What would be his market elsewhere, after two suspensions in as many years?
By now, Bell has eased those concerns with his play (though his past might cause trepidation for the Steelers when it comes to a potential megadeal long term). But from the very beginning, his Steelers teammates were publicly supportive, more inclined to encourage the hard-working and likable Bell than lanky receiver Martavis Bryant, who has missed 20 regular-season games because of marijuana-related offenses. The tone Bell set in meetings and on-field work each day offset any potential character concerns because, as several players have said, "he works his ass off."
As Bell tells it, not once did the Steelers organization try to implement a three-strikes plan or deliver an empty pep talk. Tomlin didn't castigate the player he affectionately calls "Juice" because of a smooth open-field running style similar to O.J. Simpson. The edict: Come back stronger for the final 13 games.
That's exactly what Bell feels he needed to hear. Bell said he explained to several teammates, sometimes in groups, exactly what happened, and they believed the story was plausible. When asked by ESPN to retell the story, Bell cited a short-lived Twitter video in which he explains the confusion over an early-morning testing time and scheduling issues. In the video, which he posted and removed, Bell said he hadn't smoked marijuana since December 2014.
The whole ordeal was a bit clumsy, but Bell said he wanted his explanation on social media for a moment, not forever.
"[The Steelers] know I'm not a bonehead," Bell says. "I just had some things I had to improve on. I understand now that I'm representing my family, my team and the people around me. Things are magnified now. I maybe didn't realize all the way at first."
The first suspension -- after a DUI charge for marijuana possession in August 2014 -- infuriated Lisa Bell. For 40-plus years, Lisa kept a dry house for her children. But Bell, she says, has always been her most independent -- and impulsive -- child: When she told a 5-year-old Bell that he couldn't reach into the cookie jar on top of the fridge, he scaled the kitchen counters while she wasn't looking. She wasn't pleased with this second suspension, either, but she believes her son has remained clean and is passing all of his drug tests.
"I told him that 50-inch TV screen is where he's at now," she says. "He didn't think like that. He does now."
To help explain Bell's maturation, Caper looks through the prism of five-hour "Call of Duty" sessions or trash-can basketball in the locker room. Bell has an affinity for games of any kind and always will. But since the suspensions, Caper said, Bell plays less of them in the figurative sense. Conversations with Bell have more purpose now. For example, Bell recently recommended that Caper watch the documentary "Hungry for Change" about how the body processes food. The movie helped inspire Bell's steady diet of grass-fed meats, egg whites, bananas and grapes.
"He's definitely about his business and handling things like a grown-up more than ever," Caper says. "You can tell that difference. Not that he wasn't before, but life can hit you fast, and I think he realized that he had more to accomplish."
During those heat-soaked days of rehab in the late spring and early summer, Bell and Bommarito rehearsed their secret weapon -- they were ditching traditional running back drills for full-speed acceleration/deceleration work on a track, training the body to start and stop efficiently without overloading knee joints.
Now, at his locker, which is among the most circulated in the Steelers facility, Bell outstretches his right leg and points to various parts of his thigh and hamstring on his Steelers mesh shorts. When it comes to his command of each run with fluidity, "[the training] made all the difference," he said.
To unwind after those workouts, Bell would often scan his social-media accounts, retweeting compliments and taking mental notes of doubters. More fuel. Looking for a blueprint for post-knee-injury success, Bell found himself watching YouTube videos of Adrian Peterson's wildly successful comeback from a torn anterior cruciate ligament on his way to 2,097 yards in 2012.
"He won an MVP," Bell says. "I said, 'Why can't I have a season like that?'"
He got close this year. But play a full season, and Bell might answer his own question. He has a plan for that, too. What's the goal? Another 2,000? 2,500?
Another smirk, a look down at the floor and a goal quietly spoken into existence.
"I'm trying to get 3,000," he says.