When is Le’Veon Bell coming back?

Despite previous reports, Bell did not end his holdout during the Steelers’ Week 7 bye.

Le’Veon Bell’s return may or may not be on the horizon. The running back was expected to report to the Pittsburgh Steelers during their Week 7 bye, but that is no longer the case.

Now, it looks like Bell could report to the team right after the trade deadline on Oct. 30:

By not returning until next Tuesday, Bell could not be traded — something the Steelers would be unlikely to do, though they would listen to offers, according to Adam Schefter.

It’s not a huge surprise that Bell’s return has been delayed. After their come-from-behind win over the Bengals in Week 6, the Steelers said they had no heard from Bell.

Bell has been in a months-long standoff with the reigning AFC North champions. He sat out through training camp and the entirety of the preseason in protest of his current contract.

Early in the season, they looked anything but a playoff contender during his absence. The Steelers started just 1-2-1, but since then, they’re starting to look like their old selves and have won two in a row.

Bell’s replacement, James Conner, has come on strong the last couple weeks, putting up nearly identical rushing stats in the Steelers’ last two wins. He had 21 carries for 110 yards and two touchdowns against the Falcons, and 19 carries for 111 yards and two touchdowns against the Bengals — something Bell took notice of:

That was a nice bounce-back for the second-year player, who had an impressive Week 1 showing, but just 97 rushing yards the following three weeks combined.

Bell has until Week 10 to report to the team and sign his franchise tender. Otherwise, he won’t be a free agent after this season. The most likely scenario is that Bell returns after Week 8 to play the last nine regular season games of 2018 in Pittsburgh.

Will the return of Bell be a smooth reunion?

Bell’s holdout drew the ire of his teammates and coaches when Week 1 practices got underway and the running back still hadn’t shown up. The team’s offensive linemen were especially perturbed by the situation, upset that Bell hadn’t communicated with them:

General manager Kevin Colbert was less pointed, but he still released a statement to say that he was “disappointed” Bell hadn’t shown up.

Not everyone was with Bell, though. Antonio Brown showed his support for his teammate on Twitter:

“No one wins when the family feuds,” Brown said, via ESPN. “At the end of the day, we’re family.”

Bell has also received support from other players in the league who recognize that the running back fighting for a better contract is a good situation in the long run for players hoping to get a larger slice of the pie. When Earl Thomas’ public feud with the Seahawks ended with a broken leg in Week 4, Bell posted on Instagram that he’ll “continue to be the ‘bad guy’ for ALL of us.”

Both Bell and Thomas are redefining the way players leverage their skills for money and it could be a monumental moment if the running back gets what he’s aiming for when the 2019 offseason comes.

“It sucks having to sit out football,” Bell told ESPN. “I want to play. I want to win games and the playoffs.

”But I’ve gotta take this stand. Knowing my worth and knowing I can tear a ligament or get surgery at any time, I knew I couldn’t play 16 games with 400 or more touches.”

Bell probably won’t have much drama after his return, whenever that is.

“I’ve got a lot of good relationships with players on the team,” Bell told ESPN. “They probably think I backdoored them. But I think they understand the decision. At the end of the day, they said what they said in the media. I’m not really too upset about it. It was a little disappointing, but I understand their side. When I talk to them, I hope they get that side of it.”

The bigger question is going to be whether or not he’s ready to contribute immediately.

“When he gets here, the level of overall conditioning and readiness, those are equations that we’ll weigh,” Tomlin said of Bell at the beginning of September.

By not coming back during the bye, that costs Bell some time to get reinvolved with the team. Plus, with Conner’s recent performances, the Steelers might not need Bell as much as they did a month ago.

After their win over the Bengals, Ben Roethlisberger even joked about Bell coming back:

Bell is too talented to stay on the bench for long, if at all, though. He helps the team win, and winning forgives all.

How did Bell and the Steelers get to this point?

Bell was set to hit free agency in 2017 after playing out all four years of his rookie contract, but the Steelers have shown little interest in committing long-term salary to their top tailback. At least not with the numbers that Bell is looking to get.

Pittsburgh retained Bell via the franchise tag last spring, signing him to a one-year, $12.12 million deal that kept him in black and gold through the season — a deal that came months after the club locked fellow offensive standout Antonio Brown into a four-year, $68 million deal.

Bell wasn’t happy with his new short-term deal. He sat out the majority of training camp and the preseason, refusing to sign his franchise tender until Sept. 1. That gave him nine days to prepare for the team’s season opener in Cleveland — a game where he was held to just 32 yards on 10 carries.

While he’d eventually find his footing in an All-Pro campaign, his performance wasn’t enough to convince the Steelers to pony up for Bell’s asking price. Pittsburgh once again tagged him; this time for $14.54 million. And once again, Bell held out — this time while threatening to sit out as long as Week 9 in order to avoid injury in advance of finally hitting the free agent market in 2019.

For every game Bell sits out — which is set to finish at a total of six games — it costs him a game check worth $853,000 each.

But he’s set to be back and play under the tag for the second straight year. Then he’ll likely hit free agency in the spring.

Where do the Steelers go from here?

Pittsburgh has been insulating itself for Bell’s departure over the past 18 months, selecting Conner in the third round of last year’s draft.

Tomlin has praised Conner’s progress, saying he had gone “from a rookie that missed time due to soft-tissue injuries and lack of general readiness to a guy that’s done the things that we’ve outlined.”

Bell got exactly 10 times the carries Conner did last fall (320 to 32), but the then-rookie performed well in limited action, averaging 4.5 yards per carry.

Conner has shown he can be the team’s workhorse of the future, but he still has growing to do. Bell will be a welcomed addition to a Steelers team that finds itself right back atop the AFC North.