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From virtual unknown to household name, Ronnie Bell has proved his doubters wrong time and time again.
The now-junior receiver didn’t get a warm welcome when he committed to Michigan back in Dec. 2017 as he was an unheard of three-star recruit from Missouri. He got a little time his freshman year, but really started to emerge in 2019, leading the team in catches, outshining some of the more heralded wide receiver recruits that Michigan has landed in quite some time.
Now, he’s looking to build on that, becoming more than just a household name. Given that he’s a perfect fit for Josh Gattis’ ‘speed in space’ offense as a dynamic dual-sport athlete (Bell was formerly a basketball pledge to Missouri State), he has athletic ability in spades. So with a couple of years under his belt, he knows what he needs to improve to take his game to the next level.
“Probably one of the biggest things when I look back at the season this past year – contested catches – I want to make every catch,” Bell told Jon Jansen on the In the Trenches podcast. “I want that to be first and foremost something that I do as a receiver. And then another thing would be diving into more film and being able to dissect a defense pre-snap. Even more at a higher level than before. Little things like that.
“The big thing would be the film and dissecting a defense because I feel like I could always grow in that area.”
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But what’s driving him? What’s allowed him to go from a little-known recruit in the Missouri Valley to the Wolverines’ leading receiver?
A lot of it has to do with being told he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t play football, let alone at a place like Michigan — the only FBS-level school that offered him in his preferred sport.
“I just feel like it’s a chip that I’ve developed on my shoulder the last – I don’t know how many (years),” Bell said. “I really started, honestly, in high school. My senior year, coming out of high school, all I wanted to do was play football. The fact that I wasn’t recruited and was told by coaches that I wasn’t a football player, I feel like I developed such a chip – that’s how I’ve been ever since I can remember. I’m always gonna be that way because of that scenario. I feel like that’s where that chip and that always going hard came from. It’s hard to not have a chip and not want so bad whenever you feel like you’re not wanted. I feel like that’s what happened to me my senior year and it fired me up for a whole ‘nother thing, a whole ‘nother level – proving people wrong and just going hard.”
Now Bell is entering his third year in the program and second season with Gattis leading the offense.
Whereas he didn’t feel like there was a steep learning curve, he sees room for improvement, particularly on the knowledge front. He’s looking for an edge, and that comes in the form of learning opposing defenses the way a quarterback does. Bell insists that if he and his offensive teammates can get that type of know how, the offense would be virtually unstoppable.
“I feel like I’m just as comfortable if not more comfortable,” Bell said. “I’m very comfortable. But I was comfortable last year, I felt.
“That’s the next step, I feel like, for me – I want to be able to look at it from a quarterback (perspective). To be able to know everything about the defense the way a quarterback does. That’s a big goal of mine to know everything like that, like a quarterback. Because, once you do that, especially as a whole team, if everybody’s on that, it’s just as detailed understanding the offense from the defense’s perspective (like) the quarterback – if everybody is on that level, I feel like our offense can keep moving forward and go so much. Because everybody would be on the same page.”