Nov 12, 2016 4 min read

Could defenses be catching on to Le’Veon Bell?

Bell is averaging 4.5 yards per carry and you can’t expect much more from a running back, but he averaged eight yards per carry in his first game back after the suspension – 18 carries for 144 yards.

Since then he has 232 yards on 65 carries. That’s a less-than-mediocre 3.4 yards per carry. Bell is healthy and should be fresh after missing the first three games, so what’s the problem?

The Steelers should hope NFL analyst Charley Casserly isn’t on to something. After Bell had 32 yards on 14 carries against the Ravens, Casserly said, “Bell is a patient runner. He’ll stop, hesitate and then run. (You’ve probably noticed that he has had a lot of success doing that since a mediocre rookie year.)

Casserly continued: “What do you do on defense? Stop, hesitate and stare him down. Just stop and stare him down in the hole and don’t give him any holes. And then you can stop him.”

That makes a lot of sense. It will be interesting to see if other defenses imitate the Ravens.

Bell’s style is unique and has been wildly successful. He’s especially elusive when he gets beyond the line of scrimmage because he’s unpredictable, a common trait among great backs. But the going might get a lot tougher for him if defensive coordinators can convince tacklers to make Bell make the first move.

• The Steelers will face one of the most successful rookie quarterbacks in NFL history this Sunday. Dak Prescott of the Cowboys has completed 66 percent of his passes with 12 touchdowns and only two interceptions. He has a Hall of Fame-like passer rating of 104.2. The inflated stats show he has adapted well to the dink-and-dunk world of the NFL.

Prescott throws high percentage passes and hands off to Ezekiel Elliott, who’s on pace to set a rookie rushing record.

In eight games, he has attempted 21 passes that were in the air for 20 yards or more and has completed seven of them. So, he throws an average of about three 20-yard passes per game. He’s one for seven on throws longer than 30 yards.

The Steelers defense is going to see lots of impossible-to-stop passes to tight ends and a running back who nobody seems to want to tackle.

It’s not a promising scenario for the Steelers’ defense. This might be a good time for their offense to get those 30 points it was hoping to average.

• For a guy who doesn’t seem to think that the NFL’s TV ratings are a problem, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sure seems to spend a lot of time talking about them.

Thursday he said the league is looking at ways too shorten games. If you’re a fan, you should be hoping that the plan is different from the last time games were shortened.

In case you’ve forgotten, the NFL bragged about shortening the games by giving fans less football. The number of commercials stayed the same but, after an incomplete pass or a play out of bounds, instead of starting the clock on the next snap, it was started when the referee placed the ball.

Goodell actually allowed for the possibility of fewer commercials this time. If he and the advertisers were smart, they would run fewer commercials and make them shorter.

Squeeze 15 or 20-second commercials into natural pauses in the game.

Be honest, when you see a punt in a Steelers game, aren’t you grabbing for the remote to switch to another game or just about anything else?

You know three minutes of commercials are coming. And, if you have DVR, you know if you miss something in the Steelers game, you can rewind to find it.

Yet TV games are structured the same way now as they were back in the ’70s when a viewer had to get up out of chair and cross the room to change the channel.

And back then there only three other channels available.

Want the games to move quicker? Have fewer and shorter commercials that sneak up on the viewer and stand a much better chance of being seen. And get rid of replay challenges.

Put an NFL referee in front of a big screen in the press box. If he sees a questionable call, he can buzz the ref on the field and tell him to wait for his decision. If he can’t overturn it after looking at it for 45 seconds, move on to the next play.

No need to thank me.

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday sports column for the Observer-Reporter.