Arrowhead Report's Tucker Franklin, Conner Christopherson and Jordan Foote discuss if the addition of running back Le'Veon Bell will disrupt the Kansas City Chiefs locker room chemistry.
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00:00Bob's question is, Le'Veon clearly has some huge potential upsides, and with his relatively
00:05cheap contract, there's not much financial risk involved. We talked about Le'Veon's contract on
00:11yesterday's podcast. You can go back. Connor talked about his contract. The question is,
00:16but what about the risk to the clubhouse chemistry? Is there a concern he could be
00:20a distraction and a cancer in what has appeared to be a pretty positive and unified locker room?
00:27Personally, I don't prefer to talk about guy's character. We have seen Le'Veon Bell hold out,
00:35and I think that that kind of was a tarnish on his character, on his character record,
00:39I should say. But I really don't think that Le'Veon Bell will be a huge disruption to that.
00:44We saw him be really excited on Twitter and on social media about joining this team. And now,
00:50obviously, him taking away snaps from Clyde Abertoller could naturally cause friction,
00:55just because he's another guy that they have to feed. But it seems like Le'Veon's coming here to
01:00win. He's coming here to reclaim himself and really get himself back on the right track. So
01:05I don't necessarily anticipate there to be a problem, even if you think that there is a big
01:11risk in that. Yeah, I mean, Chris Jones is his friend and he's in the locker room and they have
01:19a bunch of good locker room guys on the Chiefs and Tyron Matthew, Frank Clark, Chris Jones.
01:26And Clyde Abertoller has already reached out to Le'Veon and talked to him, I believe is what he
01:30said. And I'm sure Le'Veon is coming in knowing that he'll split snaps, maybe even get less snaps
01:36than Clyde, because they did draft him for a reason. He seems mainly about winning. And I don't
01:41really get the concerns about Le'Veon's character, honestly. He's not in the same group as Antonio
01:47Brown. Le'Veon's character issues was he sat out a year and he might have told his teammates he was
01:54playing, but then he didn't. But that was like the worst thing he did potentially. And then we have a
01:59bunch of reports from the Jets, but we don't know if those are completely true or not. And of course,
02:06it's Adam Gase. Who wouldn't have friction with Adam Gase? So I'm not really concerned about his
02:11character at all. And you know what the best cure for a bad character is winning. And I think the
02:17Chiefs are going to do a lot of winning. So I think that's also doubles down on that and makes it pretty
02:22easy for Bell to fit into the locker room. Yeah. And to piggyback off what Connor said, I'm going
02:28to knock on wood here. I'm sure people can hear that on the podcast. I think the Chiefs locker
02:34room might be unbreakable and I'm glad I knocked on wood, but like it's not even like Le'Veon's a
02:41bad character. He's just the guy who did something that did it trailblaze for other, paved the way
02:47for other running backs to hold out maybe. Was it a questionable move? Sure. But I mean, I don't
02:52really blame him for holding out and trying to get the money that he got. Whether it backfired or not,
02:57that's neither here nor there because he did end up on the Jets after all. But I'm not really worried
03:03about his character whatsoever. And I mean, you can't put too much stock into what a player tweets,
03:10but he seemed really excited during the game. I think that it's going to be just fine. And he
03:16knows that it was kind of that assumed thing that when he came in, he's either going to split or get
03:21a few fewer carries than than Clyde. Totally agree. And I think that those are all good points.
03:28I don't think his holdout was that bad. I mean, yeah, he he sat out a whole season, but
03:33they're just trying to get his money. And I'm never going to knock a guy for trying to get paid.
03:36He has 30 million from the Jets for sitting out. So he did. I mean, he really is. His holdout
03:42worked as much as people don't want to talk about it. His holdout did work. Yeah. I'm curious,
03:47definitely, because there's some reports of conflicting reports about what the Steelers
03:51offered him before. I'm curious what the actual offers were. We'll probably never know.
03:56But he's still got 30 million from the Jets and he might get another contract next year. So
04:01I think he definitely didn't lose out in the end. Yeah, he's pretty well off no matter what.