Za'Darius Smith brought what the Detroit Lions needed when was acquired at last year's trade deadline, with four sacks and 36 pressures over eight regular season games. But the ridiculous structure of the contract he signed with the Cleveland Browns begged for a restructure, and opened the door to Smith being cut.
And that's what the Lions did before free agency started, releasing Smith to clear $5.7 million in cap space with no dead money left behind. It's very possible a contract restructuring, with $8.99 million in bonuses due to him on the third day of the league year and four void years, was simply too hard to do in a way that worked for both sides.
In theory, and despite his goodbye post on social media, the Lions could bring Smith back on a more palatable new contract. But if that was going to happen, it seems like it would have already?
The Lions did re-sign an edge rusher--Marcus Davenport. Sure it was sight largely unseen, as the former first-round pick by the Saints only played in two games for them last season after a triceps injury in Week 3 sidelined him for the remainder of the campaign.
Davenport has also played just six games over the last two seasons, after missing all but four games with the Minnesota Vikings in 2023. He has had trouble staying on the field throughout his career, but the Lions took basically no risk to run it back with him.
Analyst absolutely nails it with criticism of Lions' edge rusher choice
On a surface level, choosing an oft-injured player over one who is durable and generally productive feels like the wrong choice. That of course leaves out layers of contract negotiation/financial matters that we don't always know the totality of.
Moe Moton of Bleacher Report has Smith on his list of seven cap casualties from 2025 NFL Free Agency that teams will regret. The broader rationale is solid, pointing to the idea the Lions have the cap space to have re-signed Smith. That idea does come without knowing if there were any talks about a contract restructure for Smith, and if so how those talks went.
But Moton nailed it with the first line of his assessment of Smith as a regrettable cap casualty.
"The Detroit Lions re-signed the wrong edge-rusher. They retained oft-injured Marcus Davenport and released Za'Darius Smith."
If Davenport stays healthy next season, the Lions may look smart for choosing him over Smith. But as Michael Jordan once famously said, "if 'if' was a fifth, we'd all be drunk" and the "if" regarding Davenport's health is a hypothetical he has yet to prove.
The mechanics of making it more contractually palatable to keep Smith probably weren't simple. But cutting him looks even more lame when taken in tandem with the yawn-inducing move to re-sign Davenport.
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