Cardinals Have Another "Rags to Riches" Story

While many players in the NFL made their way from the High School gridiron to the Collegiate gridiron immediately, there is one player on the Cardinals roster who had an interesting story between gridirons.

Dan Bickley, of Arizona Central Sports, was able to get Bell's story, with the input of one of Kentuckys greatest coaches.

Yeremiah Bell was fresh out of high school when he began working at a Kentucky Steel Mill. Each sheet he lifted was 100 lb's, and only earned eight dollars a hour. Perhaps this is why he's incredibly large...

So how did Bell get into playing football? It all comes down the Eastern Kentucky great, Roy Kidd.

"Every Sunday, I watched ‘The Roy Kidd Show.’ He was the football coach at Eastern Kentucky, and I couldn’t get enough of it. It was like he was my coach. It was like he was talking to me. And one day it all clicked: You’re supposed to be in college. You’re supposed to be playing football."

Bell went to Kidd one day telling him that he worked at a factory, but it was not what he wanted to do for the rest of his life... He wanted to play football.

Kidd gave Bell his chance, despite having his 90 man roster already... This chance came in the form of a try-out when classes began that fall.

Bell made an immediate impression on Kidd running a 4.5 in the 40 yard dash.

I remember the first time I saw him run, Kidd said. I looked at my stopwatch and it said 4.5. I said, Who the hell is that? One of my coaches said, ‘That’s Bell. He hasn’t played in two years. He lives in Winchester, about 20 miles from here.’ I said, ‘If he can run that fast, he can come out.’ But he got discouraged, and he went home."

Bell was not liked much when he started out. He ran everything 100% all the time. His intention was to impress his coaches and make friends later. He eventually made the friends as he put together a career to remember at Eastern Kentucky.

Bell's senior season came to an end before it began when he blew his knee playing basketball... However this didn't keep him from being drafted by the Dolphins 2003.

We Cardinal fans were upset with the loss of Adrian Wilson and Kerry Rhodes, but with those losses we still brought in a guy with talent, and is incredibly humble, remembering his roots, and will be a valuable asset for Coach Arians and the coaching staff to help groom their troubled young stars on defense.

"He was such a natural leader," Kidd said. "He did everything at full speed. And he just got better and better."