To say that the Chicago Bears and star linebacker Roquan Smith are not on the same page would be a massive understatement, especially after the player publicly announced Tuesday that he wants the team to trade him.
Smith has apparently grown frustrated over how the contract extension negotiation between him and the Bears has gone. Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network also enumerated some of the issues Roquan Smith had with the offer the Bears put on the table. Among which was the “backloaded offer, which wouldn’t make him [Smith] the highest paid in actual salary. Roquan Smith also took exception to the “proposed de-escalators that not a single player out of the 94 non-QB, $15M+ contracts has,” added Rapoport. Moreover, Smith believed that if he took the offer, it would have come to the detriment of the market value of NFL linebackers.
With Smith on the verge of getting traded, the Bears' defense is also put in a position where it could potentially get even thinner, particularly up front. They have already parted ways with another star linebacker in Khalil Mack, who was traded by Chicago to the Los Angeles Chargers for a couple of draft picks.
There should be no shortage of interested parties in Roquan Smith who must be already working the phones to see what they can offer to the Bears in exchange for the 25-year-old Georgia Bulldogs football product.
Taken by the Bears eighth overall in the 2018 NFL Draft, Smith has racked up a total of 14.0 sacks and 534 combined tackles across 61 games so far in his pro career.
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