Mike Wallace on Le’Veon Bell: They make you the villain when you want what you earned
Posted by Michael David Smith on September 21, 2018, 8:32 AM EDT
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Former Steelers wide receiver
Mike Wallace can sympathize with
Le'Veon Bell, who has lost support in Pittsburgh while he continues to stay away from the team in a contract dispute.
Wallace wrote on Twitter that Bell is taking criticism merely for asking for his fair-market value.
“It’s crazy how they will
make you out to be the villain when you want what you’ve earned,” Wallace wrote.
Wallace never played with Bell, but he did experience a similar situation in Pittsburgh. Wallace held out through the entire preseason in 2012, his last season with the Steelers. The next year he signed as a free agent with the Dolphins and was criticized in some quarters as greedy.
When several fans begged to differ with Wallace, he said in follow-up tweets that fans can’t understand the risk-reward calculations that NFL players make with their careers.
“You would never understand unless you were in it,” Wallace wrote. “Me personally I’ve seen this game chew people up and leave them with nothing so when u have that small window to maximize u have to do it.”
Wallace made about $4.5 million in his four years with the Steelers and has made more than $50 million since leaving.
