I'm downgrading Bell a little bit and upgrading Blount after this news. Until now, I assumed Bell had this show all to himself for an easy bet at 300 carries. I doubt Blount splits as much as 50/50, but even 6-8 carries a game will significantly eat into the starter's workload.
I just signed up and feel this is a great post for my first comment. Dont you think that is a bit of an over reaction? Just because of coach speak you are going adjust rankings dramatically and let it effect where u take bell because he may get 290 touches instead of 310? Whats that mean you may end up taking Martin, Murray or Stacy likes instead? Seems like Bell would be the best still in that tier since most teams run two backs and those have their own backup issues. Lets not forget Blount isnt a special player while Bell is.
What makes Bell special? His 3.5 ypc last year?The top 3 RBs in PIT accumulated 341, 317, and 369 carries the past 3 seasons. Let's put the average at 342 and then let's be optimistic and bump that up by say 5% to 360. Then let's say that the top 2 RBs get 90% of that work - that's 324 carries between Bell and Blount.
If Blount gets even 7 carries per game, that's 112 carries, leaving 212 for Bell. Even if Bell is 10% more productive on the ground than last year, that's just over 800 yds rushing - and that's being optimistic.
So yeah, it does make a difference. Blount is a guy with a career 4.7 ypc and in his worst year was still 0.2 ypc better than Bell's ypc last year - and that's for a RB who does almost nothing to make the D respect a threat from him in the passing game. He's hit 5.0 ypc twice in his career, both with over 150 carries.
You think PIT won't use Blount to run the football part time if he proves to be more effective on the ground than the plodding Bell?