Breaking Down the Le'Veon Bell Show in the Buffalo Snow

This year three running backs have dominated the NFL. David Johnson, who we wrote about last week, is the pre-eminent receiving running back in the NFL. Ezekiel Elliott, who we wrote about a couple weeks ago, is the workhorse between the tackles, helped by the best offensive line in the business. And then there's Le'Veon Bell, the only player within an arm's reach of Johnson in receiving yardage.

Bell missed the first three games of the season as punishment for violating the NFL's drug policy, but since returning, he's led the NFL in scrimmage yards per game, with 161.6. Sunday afternoon, he whipped up a storm of Rex Ryan furor by out-gaining the entire Buffalo Bills team, 311 to 275, swinging every fantasy football playoff game in the process.

In case you missed it, here's how that looked on the field:

On the first drive of the game, Bell took a little dumpoff from Ben Roethlisberger, and ran through the little alley the Steelers had devised for him. Not content with that yardage, Bell decided that Buffalo tacklers were unfit at their jobs and ran around them for about 25 more yards.

Now let's look at Le'Veon Bell versus a safety in the open field. The only reason this wasn't a touchdown is because Nickell Robey-Coleman fights through a sad wideout block and Bell happens to be heading towards him.

This next play pretty much highlights everything you could ask of a running back. The line is stacked, so the defense is tight to it. The crease that Bell is asked to fit through is pretty small—he does it easily. The linebacker is closing in, and Bell swerves to the right to avoid an arm tackle, then it takes two secondary players to actually bring him down.

The truth is that while Bell had some long runs in this game, he didn't have one of those giant huge touchdown runs that just padded his stats. He and the Pittsburgh offensive line were bludgeoning the Buffalo front seven from the start. And Buffalo's secondary, as you can see above, was pretty much powerless to stop him in the open field.

But on plays like this toss sweep, you can see what separates Bell from the rest of the backs. You can see that at one point on this sweep, the play looks dead. There are a lot of backs who would stop moving with two linemen in front of them, or try to cut it inside and take the short gain. Bell just keeps his feet churning to the sideline. And when he gets to daylight, he leaps right over the defender in his way.

There aren't many special backs left in the NFL, but Bell is one of them.