We've all been waiting to see what the heck is going on with this whole Za'Darius Smith and Detroit Lions thing. Every conceivable method of learning new information about this has pointed towards the idea that the Lions are making this trade.
Multiple NFL insiders have reported there's conversations, sources told PFT's Mike Florio that the deal was expected to be done on Sunday or Monday of this week. Smith himself talked about how cool it would be to play for Detroit.
"Hate that injury happened to him, a guy that was on his way to get Defensive Player of the Year possibly,” Smith said about Aidan Hutchinson. “That’s a big loss for them. But if I was to go to Detroit, I would like it, because I get to play Green Bay twice a year and the Vikings twice a year. So, yeah, that’ll be big.”
So with all that added up, this felt like a no brainer right? Well then what is this all about?
Smith would delete that tweet about 20 minutes later. Nobody knows what it means, but it feels bad right? It almost feels like he was told he's staying with the Browns instead of going to the Lions or maybe he got traded elsewhere and he's not happy about it.
Maybe there's an off chance that he was told he'd stay in Cleveland and then got the rug pulled out from under him and now he has to move. That would be annoying even if he wanted to go.
We'll find out soon enough. The trade deadline is at 4:00PM E.T. today.
Update: Everyone calm down. The deal is done and Smith is now a Lion.
Update:
We now have an update on the whole "SMH" tweet from Smith. The new Lions edge rusher spoke to local media on Friday and here's what he had to say about the matter.
"It was just taking too long. But obviously after they got it done I deleted it. I'm sorry for the fans that were thinking otherwise. Yeah man, happy to be here."
So there you go, Smith was just ready to go and the trade was taking too long to happen.
