Buccaneers and Le’Veon Bell: Perfect fit or mistake?

Bell to the Buccaneers feels like a move that someone makes when they’re playing Madden. While the Bucs have made many of these moves so far this season, the luck may run out soon.

On the surface, the opportunities in Tampa Bay may look great, but there are other teams in better positions that could offer Bell more money. The Bucs have almost no salary cap space left and would have to cut players like McCoy to make room, which seems unlikely even with his current performance.

If Bell is still after a well-paying contract, Tampa Bay is not the place to find it.

Furthermore, the Buccaneers still have a solid stable of options when healthy. As mentioned, Jones is playing great, Fournette is not far off from a return, and Vaughn does have some upside. If the Bucs could get some consistency from their backfield, the outlook for the run game is extremely high.

Bringing in Le’Veon could muddy the waters too much to decide on long-term deals for some of the other backs. There is no way for Tampa Bay to keep all of this talent for longer than a year, and Bell would only complicate the problem further.

The final issue to worry about with Bell is his production, although that is not entirely his fault. Other than time spent with injuries, Bell is coming off of the worst year of his career efficiency-wise, and the Bucs struggle with that enough as it is. If the Bucs decide to make this happen, they need to make sure that they are getting the Steelers version of Bell and not the Jets knockoff.