Cleveland Browns: 3 reasons to get excited about David Bell
By John Suchan
Reason No. 2: A great college career
When you start glancing at Bell’s numbers while at Purdue, the first thing you might notice is all the catches he made and how rare it was to see him drop a pass. The Browns certainly have had issues in recent years with guys being able to hold onto the rock. He also had record 17 games in his three years at Purdue of going over 100 yards per game.
He had two huge games just this past season where he went for 217 yards against Michigan State, and he added 240 yards in a big win at Iowa.
In all, he grabbed 232 catches for 2,946 yards in his time in West Lafayette, Indiana. That career started with a bang as he was named Big Ten Freshman of the Year after he caught 86 passes and went over 1,000 yards. He had six 100-yard games as a freshman.
When you watch highlights of Bell in college, you notice a wide receiver who knew how to get open by creating space because of his excellent route running. You also saw a player that had superb balance and body control when going up to catch passes or taking a hit from an opponent trying to tackle him.
Some are saying Bell reminds them of a player we just had here, in Jarvis Landry, as my colleague Casey Kinnimon shared in his recent article for DPD.
The knock on Bell recently and part of the reason he slipped to No. 99 was he didn’t run fast enough at the NFL Combine. Bell isn’t the fastest receiver out there but just put the tape on and you’ll know why David Bell will be a good player in the NFL for a very long time.