Buccaneers' Devin White Could Learn From Le'Veon Bell's Regrets
Money is a strange motivator and right now the Tampa Bay Buccaneers currently have an apparently unhappy linebacker on their roster due to it.
It's not that Buccaneers linebacker Devin White hasn't already made a lot of it, and stands to make $11.7 million more this year.
And we don't want to paint this to be that White is just greedy, but the problem we perceive him to have is that he's not making really good money for an extended period of time - or enough in a short amount of time.
Unfortunately, we've seen time and time again in the NFL the pursuit of more money can lead to hurt feelings and ruined legacies.
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Take former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Le'Veon Bell, for example.
"Yeah, it was a little petty, the little guarantee stuff," Bell recently said on the Steel Here podcast about his contract beef that resulted in his leaving the franchise in 2019. "I'm thinking like, damn, could I have really just ate it? Yeah, I probably could've. Probably could've really ate it."
Bell was a monster for the Steelers from 2013 to 2017, and in that stretch, he landed in three Pro Bowls and made First-Team All-Pro twice.
At the end of his rookie deal, Bell wanted a new deal - and a big one - but the Steelers weren't willing or able to go as high as he thought they should, so the team franchise tagged him.
Bell responded by playing his franchise tag season and having arguably his best season as a pro, earning his second first-team selection that year.
Then he sought out the deal he wanted again and again Pittsburgh franchise tagged him. So he sat out the 2018 season and never got his deal.
Well, not the one he wanted.
And because of it, he left Pittsburgh and signed a deal with the New York Jets for - from the math Bell offered in the interview - $1 million less over the same stretch when comparing guarantees to potential earnings had he stayed.
Sure, some of the Steelers' money would have been tied to incentives but with them, Bell was the best in the NFL.
With the Jets, Bell had the lowest total offensive output he had since his third year in the league when he played just six games.
The next year, he was out of New York and on his way to the Kansas City Chiefs where he got two carries in a Wild Card Round win over the Cleveland Browns, was inactive in the AFC Championship Game against the Buffalo Bills, and didn't register a snap in the Super Bowl loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
In 2022, Bell started the season with the Baltimore Ravens before joining the Bucs for six games, getting playtime in three, was inactive in the team's Wild Card win over the Philadelphia Eagles and was waived prior to the Divisional Round loss to the Los Angeles Rams.
All because he didn't like the guarantees in a five-year $70 million deal that Pittsburgh offered.
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That deal likely would have paid Bell $33 million over the first two years of the contract on top of a $10 million signing bonus.
Instead, beginning with his deal with the Jets, Bell earned just under $30 million during the remainder of his NFL career according to Spotrac.
A number he could have eclipsed easily, with years potentially left in his NFL life, had he re-signed with Pittsburgh.
Not only did Bell sacrifice money, but he also left behind a negative end to his legacy in Pittsburgh.
There's a saying that 'the grass is always greener on the other side', but there's another that says, 'hindsight is 20/20'.
"We kept going back and forth," Bell says. "It literally was the guarantee. They weren't budging off of it and I wasn't budging off of it. I didn't want to leave Pittsburgh. At the end of the day, that's where I was at. That's where I got drafted at. Especially after going to different teams and seeing how it is, when a team has their guy, you're their guy. I was Pittsburgh's guy."
White has had a rabid following since he joined the Buccaneers roster, and has been discussed as having the potential to be one of the franchise's all-time greats.
The fan base, as it were, was ready to embrace him as 'their guy.'
Negative energy, letting up on plays, and a publicly demonstrated contract dispute has worn the shine down, but it's not too late for White to realize what Bell learned the hard way.
That sometimes it's not better on the other side and that your legacy won't likely be tied to the contract you do sign, but it can certainly be tied to the one you don't.
Find David Harrison on Twitter @DHarrison82
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