Updated, Monday, 11:18 a.m. ET
The Jets haven't stopped ringing up new hires at their safety position. Confirming reports late last week, they have confirmed today that they have signed safety Yeremiah Bell, who spent his first eight NFL seasons with the Dolphins.
Bell (6'0", 205) is joining a position that the Jets clearly wanted to fortify for the 2012 season. Veteran holdover Eric Smith has already been joined by unrestricted free agent LaRon Landry and by draft picks Josh Bush and Antonio Allen. Tracy Wilson and DeAngelo Smith are also on the roster with safety experience.
Bell, the Dolphins' sixth-round pick (213th overall) out of Eastern Kentucky in the 2003 draft, has been a durable, productive starter in the 'Fins' deep middle the past four seasons. After losing virtually all of '07 to a ruptured Achilles tendon, he played in all 64 of Miami's games from 2008-11 (during which time his head coach was Tony Sparano, now the Jets' offensive coordinator), and had 100-plus tackles in each of those years, averaging 110.5 a season over that span.
He joins a team some of whose players he's become quite familiar at tackling. In the past seven games in the rivalry, the Dolphins are 5-2, with Bell starting six of them and supplying 51 tackles in those games, including a 10-tackle outing in the 2008 season opener against QB Brett Favre in his Jets debut.
For his career Bell has played in 110 games with 75 starts and racked up 536 tackles, 11 sacks, six interceptions, 43 pass defenses, nine forced fumbles and seven fumble recoveries.
