| No. 77 Buffalo Bills | |
| Offensive tackle | |
| Personal information | |
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| Date of birth: May 3, 1984 | |
| Place of birth: Summerfield, Louisiana | |
| Height: 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m) | Weight: 307 lb (139 kg) |
| Career information | |
| College: Northwestern State | |
| NFL Draft: 2008 / Round: 7 / Pick: 219 | |
| Debuted in 2009 for the Buffalo Bills | |
| Career history | |
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| Roster status: Active | |
| Career highlights and awards | |
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| Career NFL statistics as of Week 13, 2011 | |
| Games played | 28 |
| Games started | 28 |
| Stats at NFL.com | |
Demetrius Carte Bell (born May 3, 1984 in Summerfield, Louisiana) is an American football offensive tackle for the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League. He is the son of former basketball star Karl Malone.
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Demetrius Bell was born in 1984 to 13-year-old Gloria Bell of Summerfield, Louisiana. Demetrius's father has been adjudicated to be Karl Malone, a former star player in the National Basketball Association and a fellow native of Summerfield.[1] Malone and Demetrius Bell have reportedly spoken on only one occasion.[2]
As a young teenager, Bell played more softball than he did Malone's sport of basketball.[3] He did not play organized football at all during that time.[4] Eventually, during high school, he took up basketball and played well enough to receive a scholarship to Northwestern State University, where he played in 88 games over the course of the 2003-04, 2004–05 and 2006-07 seasons.[2] Bell was one of only four NCAA athletes to play both basketball and football in Division I in 2007.[5] After the 2006-07 season, he decided to give up basketball to concentrate on his development in football.[6]
Bell's high school had not fielded a football team, so prior to his attending Northwestern State, he had never played organized football. In the fall of 2005, he red-shirted the basketball season and began playing for the school's football team. He was initially placed in the position of defensive end. The following year, injuries struck the team's offensive line, and he was moved to the left tackle position. He earned second-team All-Louisiana honors that season.[4]
Bell made a bigger name for himself in his senior season of 2007, having focused solely on football. Remaining on the offensive line, he was named an All-Louisiana and an All-Southland Conference first-teamer. He also became an Associated Press All-American.[4]
Bell graduated from Northwestern State in 2008 and was drafted by the Buffalo Bills in the seventh round of the 2008 NFL Draft.[2] The Bills were encouraged by his raw skills, but saw him as a longer-term project, given his inexperience in having played organized football for only three seasons at that point.[7][8] However, the team chose to place him on their active roster, rather than assigning him to their practice squad, where he could potentially have been signed away by another team.[9][10] Consistent with their view of him as a work in progress, Bell was not activated for play in any of the Bills' regular season games in 2008.[11]
In 2009, citing the quality of Bell's performance in the Bills' off-season and pre-season training camps that year, then-Bills head coach Dick Jauron installed Bell as the team's starting left tackle for the 2009 regular season.[12] After earning mixed reviews over the first half of the campaign, including an extremely high number of penalties against him, Bell's year came to a disappointing conclusion when he suffered what would prove to be a season-ending knee injury in a Week 10 game against the Tennessee Titans.
After the 2010 NFL Draft, Bills head coach Chan Gailey indicated an expectation that Bell, recovered from the injury, would resume his role as the team's starting left tackle entering the 2010 season.[13]
Karl Malone has never offered public confirmation that he is the father of Demetrius Bell. However, laboratory blood tests prepared for the Bell family's 1986 paternity lawsuit against Malone reportedly pointed to an over 99 percent probability that Bell's father was either Malone or a brother of Malone. Malone initially refused to respond to the lawsuit, but eventually reached an out-of-court settlement with the Bell family over the issue. The Bells received a single lump sum payment of a confidential amount, with no on-going child support for Demetrius. In speaking later about the settlement, Malone's attorney asserted that it had not included an official court determination of paternity, and noted that Malone "had a lot of brothers".[1]
Although Malone was 20 years old at the time that the 13-year old Gloria Bell was impregnated, she said that her family chose not to pursue criminal charges against Malone over the relationship. According to Bell, with Malone being a neighbor — Summerfield's population is only a few hundred — her family did not wish to see him jailed, especially since he would then be unable to provide any support for Demetrius at all.[1]
In 2008, The Buffalo News published a story about Demetrius Bell that included the claim that he didn't know who his father was until after he graduated from high school.[2] However, in a 1998 article in The Salt Lake Tribune, when Bell was 14 years old, his mother spoke of his shying away from anything to do with Malone because his feelings were hurt by Malone's refusal to acknowledge him.[3]
According to Bell, he has spoken to Malone on one occasion, when Bell was 18 years old. Bell reported that Malone told him that he would have to make his way on his own, as it was too late for the two men to have a father-son relationship.[2]
In 1989, Malone was also sued over the paternity of twins Daryl and Cheryl Ford, also of Summerfield, Louisiana. Similarly to the case with Bell, the Ford twins' case was ultimately settled out of court and without Malone offering confirmation that he was the twins' father.[1] In 1998, after knowledge of the two paternity suits became public, Malone did acknowledge his paternity of the Ford twins,[14] and he has since maintained an active relationship with them. Despite the on-going estrangement between Bell and Malone, Bell has reported that he is very close to the Ford twins, who acknowledge him as their brother.[15]
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