Le’Veon Bell is a Jet, but he’s not done taking shots at his former quarterback in Pittsburgh, Ben Roethlisberger — much like another former teammate, Antonio Brown.
While Bell, who signed a four-year, $52.5 million deal with the Jets after he held out all of last season on the franchise tag, called Roethlisberger “a great quarterback,’’ he wasn’t as high on him as a teammate.
Bell blamed Roethlisberger for many of the problems the Steelers have had in recent seasons in an interview with Sports Illustrated.
“The organization wants to win,’’ Bell said of the Steelers. “[Head coach Mike] Tomlin wants to win. Ben wants to win. But Ben wants to win his way, and that’s tough to play with.”
Bell added that most of Roethlisberger’s resume highlights are from early in his career.
“Ben won a Super Bowl, but he won when he was younger,’’ Bell said. “Now he’s at this stage where he tries to control everything and [the team] let him get there.’’
Bell believes Roethlisberger’s role with the organization allowed him to play favorites — to the detriment of the team, which has seen the departure of two of the best offensive players in the league this offseason, with Bell signing with the Jets and Brown, the star wide receiver, traded to Oakland after a falling out with Roethlisberger.
“So if I’m mad at a player and I’m not throwing him the ball — if I’m not throwing [Brown] the ball and I’m giving JuJu [Smith-Schuster] all the shine or Jesse [James] or Vance [McDonald] or whoever it is and you know consciously you’re making your other receiver mad but you don’t care, it’s hard to win that way,” Bell said.
Not surprisingly, Bell said Roethlisberger’s presence was “a factor” in his decision to leave the Steelers.