Markel Bell was once a zero-star recruit in rural Mississippi. Now he might be the 6-foot-9, 346-pound future of the Eagles’ tackle position.
Bell was a "passion player" for the Eagles who was selected in the third round on Friday.
Markel Bell’s first Division I football game was at Florida’s Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, which is more commonly known as “The Swamp” and houses one of the best atmospheres in college football.
After two years playing in junior college games that might not draw 1,000 fans, Bell ran through the visitors’ tunnel with his Miami teammates into the next step of his journey. The Hurricanes won handily, 41-17, but Bell, then just a 6-foot-9 junior and backup offensive tackle, did most of his work on the field goal unit.
After the game, Bell’s phone rang. It was his JUCO offensive line coach, Les George, with whom Bell had grown close over two seasons at Mississippi’s Holmes Community College. George helped Bell blossom from zero-star high school recruit to the top JUCO offensive lineman in the country in two years, and he’d watched Bell play in front of those smaller crowds. The coach just wanted to know what that first game, that first taste of a real college football stadium was like.
“‘I’m not going to stand back and watch,” George said Bell told him. “I’m going to play.’
“And I said, no, I don’t doubt that. I just wanted to hear what it was like running out on that field today.”
It was amazing, Bell said, but he wanted more.
There are several moments like that one that explain Bell’s rapid rise from an overlooked and overweight high school football player four years ago to the 68th pick in the NFL draft this past weekend. They explain the ethos of the newest Eagles tackle with the 87-plus-inch wingspan and could help contextualize why a third-round pick who Howie Roseman described as one of the Eagles’ “passion players” of the draft could go from pick No. 68 to a legitimate starting NFL tackle.
“He’s extremely driven,” George said. “You tell him he can’t do something, he’s going to do it.”
‘He’ll make you a better coach’
The drive from Goodman, Miss., where Holmes Community College is located, to Bell’s hometown of Cleveland is about 94 miles northwest across the Mississippi Delta. The roads are flanked by farms, churches, and an occasional barbecue joint.
“It is a lot of empty fields,” George said. “I joke all the time about when you go up there and recruit, if it’s a full moon you can probably look out in the field and see 60 to 70 miles out there. There’s nothing there.”
Perhaps that’s part of the reason Bell wasn’t a highly regarded recruit, even at his size. Players in rural Mississippi, George said, sometimes get overlooked. But junior college offers a chance to shine and get re-recruited.
George first laid eyes on Bell at a Cleveland Central spring practice during Bell’s junior year in high school.
“He was extremely raw,” George said. “He had all the measurables but was probably a little bit overweight and his feet were a little bit slow. He just couldn’t move very well.”
Bell attended some camps and eventually had scholarship offers to play at Alcorn State, Eastern Kentucky, and Mississippi Valley State, but George had a pitch and a path. He had developed a reputation for getting offensive linemen to the higher levels of Division I.
Bell, George said, “trusted the process and committed to it.” He chose JUCO over playing lower-level Division I football — one of those revelatory moments along the way — and it was evident right away how devoted he was to reaching the highest levels.
“Typically when you get guys out of high school and they come in the door, they’re not as driven or as focused,” George said. “They kind of have an idea of what they want to accomplish just based off of what they see on social media or see other people accomplish and they’ll kind of be all-in with it, but Markel was different than any other guy I’ve coached. Extremely focused, very humble. He was a guy that didn’t want to settle for mediocrity.
“He had a goal in mind, that was to play Power Four football, and he wanted to be the best offensive lineman to come out of junior college football. What he was looking for was, ‘What is needed for me to do that? What are the things I have to do every day to make that happen?’”
Bell stayed after meetings to watch extra film. When George, who is now the head coach at Southwest Mississippi Community College, dissected film with Bell, Bell often would ask to be coached harder.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” George said. “He’ll make you a better coach.”
Bell’s explanation: “There’s no secret sauce to it. I just work my tail off every day.”
‘Like a son’
Another one of those revealing moments came after Bell’s freshman year at Holmes. By then, George had seen enough to be convinced Bell was a major college football player who could have an NFL future. The extra film work and the growth on the field was matched by a player who ate right in the cafeteria and met with the strength coach for 6 a.m. yoga sessions.
Now, it was time to turn down six figures to bet on himself to end up where he really wanted to be. Bell could have been a one-and-done JUCO prospect. He had enticing financial offers from Auburn and Mississippi State that were no small deal for a guy raised in the Mississippi Delta by his mother and aunt.
George and Bell had grown close, and George encouraged him to take one of the offers. But Bell only wanted to play at one place: Miami.
George knew a couple people on the Miami staff and had been talking to them about Bell, but they hadn’t offered. So George hopped on a plane. He thought going there, talking to them in person, would mean more. Miami ended up offering Bell more money than Auburn and MSU had, albeit a year later, thanks in part to George’s advocacy.
The gesture was indicative of the relationship that formed.
“We spent a lot of time together,” George said. “We had a lot of talks. I shared a lot of my personal life. He shared a lot of his.”
Through that process, Bell became “like a son,” said George, the father of three girls.
“Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the players I coach are like sons to me,” he said. “But with Markel it was just a little different. I’m not going to say that’s what he was looking for, but I just think that’s what the relationship developed into and it kind of took off from there.
“He was a guy that had that unique quality about himself to where he was different. He was driven. He was going to be successful. He wanted to take care of his family and he wanted to show all the young people from his hometown that you can accomplish whatever you want.”
» READ MORE: Eagles roundtable: What are the team’s biggest questions coming out of the draft?
An ‘unusual’ Eagle
If Bell takes the field as an Eagle, he would become the tallest player in franchise history. It remains to be seen if he develops into the heir apparent to Lane Johnson at right tackle, but the left tackle, Jordan Mailata, is among a group of Eagles who have stood at 6-8.
“I may still be growing,” Bell said. “I just know I’m a big guy that loves to play football. That’s all that really matters to me.”
How does the size help?
“I overwhelm defenders, and I think that’s what got me drafted here,” Bell said.
Bell, a second-team academic All-American, played left tackle at Miami but has cross-trained on the right side. The Eagles, who had Bell in for a top-30 visit, were drawn to his “unusual size” and “unusual length,” Roseman said Friday night after they drafted him.
“This was a guy that’s hard to find,” Roseman said. “When you watch him in pass [protection] and you watch his ability, it’s hard to run through him, it’s hard to run around him, he’s got good feet for a big guy. You can see that. He’s a unique guy.”
The Eagles were happy Bell was in this draft class. They wondered what might happen to his draft stock if he returned to Miami for another season. Bell doesn’t turn 22 until July and has only one full season of starting experience at Division I.
The Eagles don’t need him to play right away. They might not need him to play for two or more seasons. The starting point, though, is an ascending tackle with overwhelming size who didn’t allow a sack in 1,034 offensive snaps during a season that finished with a loss in the national title game. Longtime offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland is no longer in the building, but Bell will learn and train behind Johnson and Mailata.
“I’m just blessed to be in the room with them,” Bell said. “I’m just excited to get in the room with them and soak up as much as I can.”
George still keeps a photo of Bell on his phone from the spring practice where he first saw him. A lot has transpired since then, but there George was, five years later, standing next to Bell when Roseman called. Bell reached to a table where 32 hats were assembled, plucked the Eagles hat from the pile, and put it on his head.
A small watch party turned its attention to the television and listened as Brian Westbrook announced the 68th pick in the draft.
Bell hugged his mother, Alesha Demetria, then reached for George.
“You’re special and unique,” George told him. “Don’t ever lose sight of that.”
