Sounds like Starks had a set back after practicing Thurs. If Bell doesn’t fumble and can learn the offense, Bell could be pretty productive in our new "gun and gun some more" offense in a few weeks. Especially for a scrap heap guy.
As a backup over the last 4 years, Bell has missed 4 games and started 15 with yards from scrimmage of just under 900, 1200, 1200, 600, respectively.
He signed a 3 year deal with Lions before 2014 season for $9.3M with 3M guaranteed. The Lions asked him to take a paycut in Feb, he said no, so they cut him. He visited Bills in March and remained unsigned through preseason.
Like Knile, Bell is a fumbler; but unlike Davis, he has at least been productive as a RB. His real strength is as a receiver; he’s a solid route runner. Also Bell is a really good pass blocker. Per PFF in ‘12 and ‘13, over half of his running yards [640 of 1,064] were after contact, so he at least had some beastmode in him.
The biggest concern is fumbles [12 in 546 rushes/161 catches]. It’s interesting that every one of his fumbles came in hand-offs, zero came pass catching. Pretty decent sample sizes for both running and catching, so there could be a causal reason behind it. I'm guessing that when he's beast-moding/doing the Ripkowski shuffle he doesn't focus as well holding onto the ball and it can get ripped out. But, when he's running through secondary contact is usually not made in scrums. He does have his share of drops: in 218 targets, he has 14 drops.
On Sept 20 after Abdullah went down the Lions worked Bell out; didn’t sign him and later that week he signed with Bears. He might be on a bit of a revenge tour given the timing.
He was on Bears’ roster for 4 weeks and active each game; surely if he was a flatulent loser he wouldn’t have lasted 4 weeks, which shows he stayed in shape and has something left. One thing is with no preseason work, practicing only 4 weeks and only getting a handful of snaps, Bell has fresh legs. With Bears he was active each week and had 6 offensive snaps and 25 ST snaps. On those 6 snaps he had 3 carries 6 yrds.
Week 4 he had 6 offensive snaps 0 ST snaps [v. Lions]
Week 5: 0 offensive snaps, 8 ST snaps
Week 6: 0 offensive snaps, 9 ST snaps
Week 7: 0 offensive snaps, 8 ST snaps [v. GB]
So 1265 got a firsthand look at Bell on those 8 ST snaps.