Throughout time, there have been big questions that you have heard from the people over and over again. Who shot Mr. Burns? Where is the beef? Is Shaq a good actor? (Kazaam is awesome by the way.) For Detroit Lions fans, the question that sounds a lot like those is "When is Za'Darius Smith coming back?"
It seems as though this is a move that has been somewhat expected all summer long. Smith said on the red carpet at the BET Awards that he wants to be back in Detroit. Lions GM Brad Holmes said at the league meetings in April that the Lions have kept in contact with Smith and his agent. So, what is the holdup? On Wednesday, we got another update from Holmes during an interview with 97.1 The Ticket.
"Za'Darius did a lot of good things last year for us, and we said we're going to keep in contact with his agent. But, you know, everything's not just one-sided. Za'Darius has expectations. The team has expectations. So sometimes it takes a while for those things to get on the same page, especially a guy that's been in the league as long as he has, I'm sure that, you know, I'm not saying that he doesn't want to be in training camp, but you know, if he misses some time. So, there's obviously still interest there, and we've been keeping in touch."
The thought process for a while now has been that, like many veterans in the NFL, he might want to miss as much camp as possible before he signs with a team. Ndamukong Suh, who coincidentally was at Lions practice Wednesday, is a perfect example of that scenario. Holmes certainly hints at that in his interview.
That, of course, doesn't mean that when Smith is ready, the Lions are guaranteed to sign him. That also doesn't mean it's the only reason a deal hasn't been worked out yet. Holmes also points to both sides being apart on what their expectations of the deal are. So who knows? At this point, the Lions' defense is looking really good, and if Marcus Davenport is able to stay healthy, it's a game-changer for sure. We'll see what happens in the coming weeks.
