Bell's desire to play impresses teammates

The ankle is fine now, and Kendrell Bell proves it every day.

He practices hard, hits with passion, runs with great grace and speed and bangs into offensive tackle Marvel Smith, who is 52 pounds heavier, with unbelievable fury.

Don't look now -- here comes Bell riding his bicycle to dinner, pedaling as fast as the gears will allow him.

Seven months ago, he wasn't as fortunate. Minutes before the Steelers played the Cleveland Browns in a playoff game on Jan. 5, he trudged into the trainers' room at Heinz Field and allowed Dr. James Bradley to inject muscle-numbing medicine into his seriously sprained ankle. It worked.

In that game, Bell was more warrior than football player, producing nine tackles from sideline to sideline and batting down one pass before trainers had to drag his nearly limp body to the bench in the fourth quarter of a stirring Steelers victory.

Although he was risking further injury by fooling his body into thinking it was OK, Bell does not regret what he did.

"Not at all," he said. "I wanted to be out there and I thought if I had just a little bit of help, I'd be all right."

Nor, was he afraid of the consequences.

"I got over being scared a while back," he said. "I agreed on it because I thought it was the best thing, and it was."

That little story tells you all that you need to know about why Steelers coaches are finding as many ways as possible to keep Bell on the field for all three downs this season. He still has much to learn about pass coverage, and he often is stonewalled by the big tackles he meets one-on-one. Still, the team is determined to make this project work.

"He's a pretty dynamic pass rusher," defensive coordinator Tim Lewis said, noting the nine sacks that Bell recorded as a rookie, two-down player in 2001. "He's a good football player. He can flat-out run. He's strong, he's quick, he's instinctive."

Bell is the right rush end in the dime defense and an inside linebacker in the base and nickel packages. He prefers rushing from the inside where his speed often confuses linemen. He admits he needs work in the dime.

"I'm not totally confident," he said of rushing from the end. "It's a new position for me and I'm still trying to, basically, get better at the position. It's not a struggle for me right now, but it is a challenge."

Bell said he prefers rushing the passer from the middle of the alignment, where he meets heavier traffic but can use blockers against each other.

"I'm familiar with it. I've been playing inside backer for a lot longer than I've been playing outside," he said. "It's almost second nature for me to rush from the inside.

"I kind of anticipate the actions of some of the offensive linemen, instead of just one guy. A lot of times, when they're close together, they don't want to move and you get them to move their feet a certain way and they don't know how to react."

But Bell said he has an advantage rushing from the outside, too.

"I hope I'm quicker. I'm 70 pounds lighter (than them)," he said.

Bell was inserted at rush end last year, but he suffered a high-ankle sprain in the second preseason game and was forced to give up the position to Clark Haggans. If he remains healthy, Bell should keep the position.

Bell has a lot to learn, but he also has much to offer. Quarterback Charlie Batch and running back Jerome Bettis, who have ignored injuries throughout their careers, are inspired by Bell's determination to play with pain.

"You know he's out there giving it his all and when you see that, as players, that picks your game up a lot," Batch said. "We all knew how much he was hurting. It was no secret. Everybody knew.

"This wasn't the healthy Kendrell we were used to seeing. That was something that nagged him all year. A lot of things that (reporters) didn't see, we saw down on the practice field and in the locker room on a regular basis."

Batch has taken injections to get on the field, too, especially in the 2000 season when he had rib and knee injuries with the Detroit Lions.

"You are really putting your career on the line," he said. "You don't know how much damage it was doing and how much it was going to hurt in the offseason."

Batch noted that Bell was unable to play beyond the first quarter of the next game in Tennessee.

"The following week, we lost him because he couldn't play and that's something that you have. He wasn't looking forward to next week. It was, 'I'm not worried. Next week won't happen if we don't win today's game.' He left it all out there and guys respect that."

Batch remembers beating the New England Patriots, 34-9, on Thanksgiving Day, with the help of an injection.

"I kept playing and kept playing and it kind of hurt me the rest of the year," he said.

"The problem is, you don't know how much pain you are actually in ... because you are shot up and you're injected to where you really don't know.

"That night when it starts to wear off, you say, 'Wow. How did I even play in the game feeling the way I am now?'

Bettis, who missed a playoff game two years ago because an injection numbed his entire leg, admitted it's a dangerous decision that players make. No more dangerous than playing the game in the first place, he said.

"This game is dangerous," he said. "This game is risky. Why the hell would you want to play this game, if you are not going to take a risk?"