Jets fans still have some disdain for the Adam Gase era – and so do some players, as Le’Veon Bell revealed on Carton & Roberts Thursday.
“I mean, I liked the Jets overall, I didn’t like the coaching, though,” Bell said. “At the time, Gase wasn’t the guy. I felt like we had a good team, and the roster we had could’ve won a lot more games.”
Bell held out from the Steelers for the entire 2018 season and ended up getting a four-year, $52.5 million deal with $35 guaranteed from the Jets – but he lasted just a season and change with Gang Green, released in October 2020 after he missed a handful of games that season with a hamstring injury and then liked a tweet suggesting that the Jets should trade him.
Gase said at the time that “"I hate that's the route that we go with all of this instead of just talking to me about it, but it is the way guys want to do it nowadays,” and to this day, Bell believes Gase never wanted him at all.
“That was a rumor before I even got there, and once I got there, I got the same exact vibe,” Bell said. “I would get there and they wouldn’t have any plays or routes for me, so I felt like I was just there.”
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He ended up in Kansas City for the remainder of 2020 and spent time with the Ravens and Bucs in 2021, but he says he hasn’t watched one down of football this year – only highlights, some of which have been sent to him of Jets rookie Breece Hall, who has drawn comparisons to Bell.
“People send me clips all the time so I’ve seen it, and he looks good. He looks like he has some special talent to him,” Bell said. “He doesn’t just depend on his athletic ability, and that’s where patience comes from. It’s manipulating the holes. It looks like he’s setting things up.”
And while he hasn’t watched any NFL action, he has gotten calls about a return, but he would only come back if he had a legitimate chance at a Super Bowl ring.
Bell wouldn’t name teams but did say the Jets are not among them, although he has a lot of respect for Joe Douglas and what the Jets are building.
“Joe Douglas is a dude I respect so much – when I was there, I would talk to him a lot,” Bell said. “He’s a big reason the Jets are turning it around – he’s there and he got the right coach. That makes a big difference.”
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