I think we're better-suited than most to limit Bell's damage. We're not going to stop him, frankly nobody can, but I think our personnel and scheme are pretty much designed to to keep someone like him in check. To account in order, his two biggest assets are:
1) patience as a runner. He'll wait until a hole opens up, and in pretty much any one-gap defensive front a hole will open up sooner or later. The solution here is to maintain gap integrity. Hold up at the LOS, don't give him any easy holes, and rely on the LBs to make plays. Between Branch, Valentine, and Brown, we have the bulk up front to pull that off, and it's part of a defensive philosophy that's been copre to Belichick-coached teams dating back 15+ years. If any team can execute this gameplan, it really should be us.
This also requires you to have at least one LB that can reliably diagnose the play, take on an offensive lineman, and not get utterly dominated. We have that in Hightower, and Chung being as good as he is in run support is big here too. McCourty being as rangy as he is also indirectly helps a lot here, since it should allow Chung to play closer to the LOS than a lot of teams can allow for their SS against Pittsburgh's passing attack.
2) ability to flex out as a receiver. Very few teams have a LB who's both physical enough to not be overmatched in the running game and athletic enough to credibly cover him in space. We have that LB in Hightower, and to a lesser extent McClellin should be at least fairly credible here if called upon.
A huge part of Bell's effectiveness is that most teams have LB rotations with various guys who can fill one role or the other, but not both, so you just wait for the defensive to declare what it intends to stop and do the other thing. As long as Hightower plays a full game, they should find themselves unable to do that, at least to the extent that they're used to. You're never attacking a weakness with him, because frankly he doesn't have any.
Also, as someone who's watched a lot of Bell over the past couple years (he's one of my favorite players to watch, it's kind of a guilty pleasure), if he does have anything resembling a weakness in his game it's that he doesn't have blazing speed. He has fantastic acceleration, but he tops out pretty quickly, and it limits the damage he's able to do on any individual play. If he does beat you off the LOS and is running with some empty space in front of him, you're probably looking at a 25-30 yard gain rather than the 60 yard touchdown that some of the other elites will get you. I think that bodes well for us, because if they aren't consistently beating us on a snap-to-snap basis due to mismatches, and the occasional miscues aren't completely swinging the game, then I think you have the recipe for an overall credible defensive performance - the kind that leads to a win as long as your offense and ST don't play uncharacteristically bad games.
