Travis
Bell.
Travis
Bell.
Kennesaw St.
"A five-year FCS starter with a leverage anchor, heavy hands and no length, Bell was drafted as a developmental nose whose floor was a practice squad and whose ceiling depended on strength winning the reps his arms could not."Pre-draft read
Bell is a low-cut, 310-pound interior defender who lined up as a shade nose and 3-technique in Kennesaw State's four-man front. He wins first with pad level: he gets under a center's chest on contact, which lets him stall a double team and hold the line rather than getting washed off the ball.
The second trait is hand violence. He owns a well-timed club-and-rip that he used to shoot a gap on obvious passing downs, and his weight-room strength shows up as functional pop on first contact. He is a run-first player whose pass rush is a bull-and-collapse plan, not a bend-and-corner plan. The signature is short-area burst at his weight — the get-off that turned into 24.5 career tackles for loss against FCS blocking.
A four-man front that asks the nose to two-gap on early downs and get off the field on third, where his leverage and strength matter more than his lack of reach.
Year 1: practice-squad developmental nose who dresses on run-heavy game plans. Ceiling: a rotational two-down 1-tech taking 15-20 snaps a game.
An odd-front two-gap defense that wants a 6-foot-4 nose with 34-inch arms to control both A gaps against zone-read teams.
His pro-day strength is the whole bet; without it he has no functional trait to hang a role on.
7th round Pick Travis Bell Preseason Debut: All Snaps
Every defensive snap from Bell's first NFL preseason action, the clearest available look at his get-off and anchor against pro blocking.
Parliament Profile: Travis Bell's Journey
Kennesaw State's own feature on Bell, with game footage from his run as the program's first NFL draft pick.
Bears Draft DT Travis Bell and S Kendall Williamson || Reaction + Breakdown
Draft-night breakdown of the pick with college tape, covering the leverage-and-strength case Chicago made at 218.
A five-year Kennesaw State starter, Bell is a compact nose tackle whose value is anchoring against the run and squeezing a pocket from the inside. He is not a length prospect and he is not a bendy rusher; he is a leverage player who plays with a low base, heavy hands and a motor that stayed hot on every snap of an FCS defense that leaned on him to hold two gaps.
The production is real for the level. He started as a true freshman in 2018 and never left the lineup, finishing with 124 tackles, 24.5 tackles for loss and 11.0 sacks across 54 games. His best year came in 2019, when he posted 30 stops, 9.0 tackles for loss and 5.0 sacks for a defense that ranked third nationally in FCS total defense. He added second-team All-Big South honors in 2021 and closed with 34 tackles as a senior. Without a Combine invitation, he made his case at his pro day: 30 bench reps and a 5.03 forty at 310 pounds.
The flags were competition and the body. He faced FCS interior linemen every week and measured a shade over six feet with short arms, a build that gets reached and stacked by NFL centers. Boards had him as an undrafted priority free agent with a developmental grade, and Chicago spent one of the last picks in the seventh round on him after a top-30 visit, betting on makeup and pro-day strength.
- 01
Leverage anchor
Plays under the pads of centers and guards, holds ground against down blocks and can stall a double team long enough for the linebackers behind him to run clean.
- 02
Hand strength
Thirty bench reps at his pro day translate to real pop on contact; he jolts a blocker on first punch instead of catching and absorbing the block.
- 03
Get-off at weight
A 1.71-second ten-yard split at 310 pounds gave him the burst to shoot a gap on passing downs and beat a slow-footed guard off the snap.
- 04
Production over five years
Started as a true freshman and finished with 24.5 tackles for loss and 11.0 sacks in 54 games, a body of work that never went backwards.
- 05
Motor and makeup
Never came off the field for a defense that needed him to two-gap, and drew a rare top-30 visit from Chicago on the strength of his character work.
- 01
Level of competition
Every rep of his tape came against FCS interior linemen; the club-and-rip that freed him in the Big South was not tested against Power Five bodies.
- 02
Length
Measured a shade over six feet with 32 5/8-inch arms, which lets NFL centers get into his frame first and stack him before he can extend and shed.
- 03
Pass-rush plan
A bull rusher with one counter; he does not have the hip flexibility or the secondary move to win once his first push is absorbed.
- 04
Two-down projection
Without the length or the rush arsenal, he profiles as a rotational nose in base looks, and that role is the first one cut on a 53-man roster.
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Kennesaw State | 13 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 2019 | Kennesaw State | 14 | 30 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 2020 | Kennesaw State | 4 | 11 | 0.5 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2021 | Kennesaw State | 12 | 25 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | Kennesaw State | 11 | 34 | 1.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Career | — | 54 | 124 | 11 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
Season lines taken from Kennesaw State's official cumulative statistics pages (ksuowls.com). cfbstats.com does not cover FCS programs, so it carries no Kennesaw State data. The 2020 season was postponed and played in spring 2021. Season totals sum exactly to the career line: 54 games, 124 tackles, 24.5 tackles for loss, 11.0 sacks.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Honors
- Second-team All-Big South Conference (2021)
- First player in Kennesaw State football history selected in the NFL Draft (2023)
- Five-year starter: 124 tackles, 24.5 tackles for loss and 11.0 sacks in 54 games
A short, thick small-school tackle who found a rotational base-down role rather than a starting job, which is the realistic ceiling this profile was drafted for.
A small-school interior anchor who turned raw strength into a decade-long starting nose job — the outcome if Bell's leverage had translated against NFL centers.
A late-round interior body who bounced between practice squads without carving out a defensive role, the outcome the length concerns pointed toward.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
A practice-squad journeyman whose leverage-and-strength profile kept getting claimed but never earned a defensive role; his lasting mark is being Kennesaw State's first NFL draft pick.
Bell has never held an NFL roster spot for long. Chicago waived him in the 2023 final cuts and re-signed him to the practice squad; Atlanta signed him off that practice squad on November 1, 2023 and released him seven weeks later, and Cincinnati claimed him off waivers on December 20. That stretch produced the only regular-season football on his ledger — two career tackles. The Bengals cut him in the 2024 final reductions, Chicago brought him back to the practice squad in September 2024 and released him three weeks later, and Minnesota carried him on its practice squad from November 2024 into a reserve/futures deal before waiving him in August 2025. He resurfaced in the UFL, where Louisville selected him in the January 2026 draft and won the United Bowl with him. Cleveland signed him in August 2026 and waived him with an injury designation on August 30.
The evaluation held up almost exactly. Everyone saw a strong, low-cut FCS nose with a good motor and no length, and the league treated him accordingly: valuable enough to keep claiming, never valuable enough to keep. His floor was the practice squad and his ceiling never opened, because the anchor skill he was drafted for is the easiest one for teams to replace with a bigger body. At pick 218 that is close to the expected result, and he still gave Kennesaw State the first NFL draft selection in program history.