After playing college football for Northwestern State, he was selected by the Buffalo Bills in the seventh round of the 2008 NFL draft.
Bell, who spelled his first name "Demetrius" until 2012 when he discovered it was actually spelled "Demetress",[1] was born in 1984 to 13-year-old Gloria Bell of Summerfield, Louisiana, and Karl Malone, then a 20-year-old college basketball player and future National Basketball Association (NBA) star, and a fellow native of Summerfield.
[9] 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.
[15] 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.
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 Demetress.
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 Demetress at all.
[2] In 2008, The Buffalo News published a story about Bell that included the claim that he did not know who his father was until after he graduated from high school.
"[3] Bell has reported that he is very close to Daryl and Cheryl Ford, older twins of Malone that were also the subjects of a paternity suit.