Headed Back to Buffalo, Bell Has Scores to Settle

Greg Bell, whose career nose-dived to such depths in 1987 that he was considered bulk-rate mail in the three-team Eric Dickerson trade package, will return to Buffalo Monday night to feed his former organization the latest league rushing statistics and some crow. In fact, roll out the barrels of crow.

This is as triumphant as returns get in the National Football League, and Bell isn’t one to let it pass without basking and blasting.

Bell, his game resurrected, will return not to praise the Bills but to bury them--as he claims they buried him.

Known to some in Buffalo as Tinker, because of his frequent injuries there, Bell takes the field for the Rams as the league’s No. 2 rusher, a star on the NFL’s only unbeaten team.

In football vengeance, this is Charles Bronson in “Death Wish II.”

Others forgive and forget. Not Bell.

“Maybe after the game, I’ll walk up to (owner) Ralph Wilson and say thanks,” Bell said. “I don’t care to talk to (General Manager) Bill Polian. He probably won’t see me after the game. If we play the way we expect to play, none of them are going to want to see me. That’s what I want. For them not to want to see me.”

So what went wrong here? Better pull up a stool.

By the time the complicated three-team Dickerson deal was completed on Halloween, 1987, Bell, a former Pro Bowl performer, was reduced to a throw-in to complete the package that sent Dickerson to Indianapolis and linebacker Cornelius Bennett to the Bills.

Bell was Buffalo’s first-round draft pick from Notre Dame in 1984. He rushed for 1,100 yards as a rookie and 883 yards in 1985, the year he led the Bills in rushing and receiving. But then came the slide, and it all started with a groin injury Bell suffered against Miami in 1986. He spent the last 10 weeks on injured reserve, sparking controversy.

Buffalo’s team physician, Richard Weiss, could find no injury, so Bell decided to seek a second opinion.

“That’s when it all started,” Bell said. “I got another opinion and it conflicted with what their team doctor said.”

Bell said the issue wasn’t resolved until he came to the Rams and was examined by Dr. Robert Kerlan, who confirmed Bell’s claims that the injury was more serious than first thought; that Bell indeed suffered an abdominal tear, not a pull.

“As soon as I got here, (Kerlan) said maybe they didn’t know what they were doing,” Bell said. “Exact words: ‘Maybe they haven’t seen enough of this.’ ”

Bell blames Weiss for misdiagnosis, which, Bell said, led to widespread speculation that he was a malingerer and a malcontent.

“The doctor in Buffalo is not one to take kindly to second opinions,” Bell said. “He’s got three lawsuits on his head right now, from Jerry Butler and other guys who have filed grievances against him. He’s the kind of doctor who does a knee surgery on a guy and doesn’t use the right antibiotic, and the guy gets a knee infection two days later.”

In Buffalo, Weiss said Thursday that Bell better be prepared to back up his statements.

“I didn’t operate on Jerry Butler, but that’s beside the point,” Weiss said. “I really don’t know what he’s talking about, but he should be careful with what he says in making statements like that, without any knowledge, because that could get him in serious trouble. But considering the source, I’ll take it with a pinch of salt. If he goes through life doing this kind of thing, someone’s going to call his bluff, and he’ll be in real trouble.”

Weiss maintains that the Bills’ medical staff couldn’t find anything seriously wrong with Bell’s groin after extensive testing, and that questions about his desire might have been warranted.

“His contribution to Buffalo was very little,” Weiss said. “The same at Notre Dame (Bell played in only 23 games in four years because of injuries). The feeling I got was that he didn’t want to play in the Buffalo area. All I ever saw was him walking around in his mink coat and driving a Ferrari. What Greg needed was perhaps to mature, to get a few more gray hairs, and maybe that’s what he’s done.”

For whatever reasons, Bell wasn’t a popular player among his Buffalo teammates.

“I knew of no one who liked Bell,” one Buffalo writer said.

Bell had other problems in Buffalo, specifically playing for three different coaches--Kay Stephenson, Hank Bullough and Marv Levy--in three years.

“Every year you’d get a new philosophy,” Bell said. “And every time, they wanted me to change my style, instead of working with my style that had been working.”

Bell was also very close to Terry Bledsoe, former general manager of the Bills and now an executive with the Phoenix Cardinals. Bledsoe scouted and drafted Bell but was moved out in favor of Polian in 1985.

According to Bell, Polian was nothing more than an advance scout who made his way up the company ladder.

“He went from that to being conniving,” Bell said, “And he pretty much underminded his way into a general manager’s spot. That’s the way I looked at it. I know Terry Bledsoe, and I know everything that led to how Polian got the job.”

Bell said Polian spread the rumors about him around the league.

“That’s where the malingerer stuff comes from,” Bell said. “Of course, nobody ever says that Bill Polian lies. Why? Because he’s the general manager and he gets to tell the press what’s going on. To this day, have you ever read that I had an abdominal tear in a Buffalo release? It’s always, ‘He had a groin pull.’ He still says I’m hard to coach.”

Polian, however, said that the the war between player and general manager is a one-sided one.

“I want to correct an impression,” Polian said. “There are no hard feelings between Greg and I. I can understand that Greg had a better relationship with Terry than me, that’s perfectly OK. We just made a decision that was best for the team.”

Bledsoe wouldn’t comment, either on his firing in Buffalo or on Polian.

Polian said it was never his intention to discredit Bell or his character, and that the 1987 trade was strictly a business decision.

“Greg can believe what he chooses,” Polian said. “Why would we attempt to trade a player and attempt to malign him? That makes no sense. . . . He was an integral part of the trade. Our intention was to build a dominant defense, his production had fallen off, albeit because of injuries--that’s the breaks of the game. But he wasn’t a Pro Bowl player at the time.”

Last summer, when Bell was in the middle of a bitter contract dispute, the Rams gave him permission to negotiate his own trade with other teams.

Bell remains convinced that he could not make a deal because Polian poisoned the well.

“The same things came up,” he said. “ ‘Uh, we hear you don’t like playing hurt.’ ‘He’s a malingerer.’ ‘He may BS you a little bit.’ ‘He wants the money, but he may not want to sacrifice for it.’ That happened this year.

“Even (Ram) management tried it on us, and we told them to stick it. It’s a lie. Have you ever heard Coach (John) Robinson say I was hard to coach? “

Indeed, Bell seems to have undergone quite a transformation since his Buffalo years. Like everyone else, Robinson was skeptical when Bell arrived in 1987.

But are these a malingerer’s numbers? In his last 21 games as a Ram, Bell has gained 1,724 yards rushing and scored 23 touchdowns, averaging 4.4 yards a carry. His off-season workout ethic has been unparalleled and he has remained relatively injury-free.

So has he beaten the rap?

“That’s not even a story,” Robinson said. “It’s obvious that he has. One of the key things about him is that he doesn’t fumble the ball at all.”

This season, Bell has zero fumbles in 100 carries to go along with 512 yards, second only to the 530 by Chicago’s Neal Anderson. As a precaution, Bell sat out the second half of the Rams’ win over Atlanta last week after gaining 62 yards.

“I’m happy to go back as one of the NFL’s top backs,” Bell said. “That means a lot, because when I left, I felt I was one of the top running backs.”

But not even Levy, has escaped Bell’s wrath.

Bell said that Levy assured him before the 1987 season that the tailback was in good standing, and that the Bills had no plans to trade him. Bell, in turn, decided to make Buffalo his home and began construction on a new home.

“Then, wham-bam, I spend $400,000 on the house, and a month before it’s completed, I’m in L.A.,” Bell said. “Me and Marv had what seemed to be a real meeting. You can trust a man on his word, but when a man doesn’t live on his word, you don’t trust him no more. It’s just that simple.”

Levy had little comment on Bell.

“I saw some of Greg’s remarks,” he said. “I’d rather play than banter words back and forth.”

So the stage is set. The Rams are 5-0. The Bills are struggling and without star quarterback Jim Kelly. And Greg Bell is coming home to roast.

“I guarantee there won’t be all boos,” Bell said, anticipating his reception. “It’s like a slap in (Polian’s) face that he has to read in the paper, ‘Oh crap, the Rams are coming, they’re 5-0, Kelly’s down, also Shane Conlan.’ We plan to go in there and win. Monday night is time to live up to our name.”