Maurice Jones-Drew believes Steelers RB Le’Veon Bell is ‘worth five wins’ a season

While the national sports media will offer up an endless stream of opinion about the Pittsburgh Steelers and their troubled star players this offseason, very little of the insight shared will be based on fact or or common sense. As such, there is no real real value highlighting their remarks on these pages, but once in a while something will appear that is just so stupid it warrants the extra attention to bring ridicule to the person who said it.

This week that honor goes to Maurice Jones-Drew of the NFL Network, a former player and analyst who has already provide some some of the more absurd takes on Le’Veon Bell heard over the last six months or so. But on Thursday, Jones-Drew reached new heights of insanity.

After extolling the virtues of the Los Angeles Rams having signed Todd Gurley to a huge contract and celebrating how much he did for their offense (it seems MJD did not watch the playoffs), he would go on to make an outrageous claim about the value of Bell.

“If I’m a team that, we feel like we’re close, I’m going to go spend the money to get Le’Veon Bell because, to me, he’s worth five wins. Pittsburgh was 13 and three the last time he played, they won eight games the next year. That’s five wins to me, that can make a difference.”

Glossing over the rather obvious facts that the Steelers won nine games last year and only 12 in 2017 with Bell in the lineup that should have made Jones-Drew’s math three rather than five, it would appear he has somewhat overlooked the Pro Bowl season James Conner had in place of Bell. For those wondering what happened to Pittsburgh’s 13th win last season for the calculation, the running back sat out the final game of that year.

Had Jones-Drew done just a small amount of research, he would also have found that prior to last season, the stats really did not support his statement.

It is worth noting that Jones-Drew is the same man who said Bell deserved to be paid like a quarterback last year and also employs the same agent in Adisa Bakari. But even if no one else agrees with him, it would appear Bell approves.