Za’Darius Smith so far has been Jadeveon Clowney for the Browns without the pouting lower lip and sour attitude.
Clowney, you might recall, registered nine sacks on a one-year deal in 2021 and then signed another one-year contract in 2022 to bookend Myles Garrett at end on the defensive line. With one game to play in the 2022 season, Clowney revealed he refused to play on first and second down in a Week 7 game against the Ravens.
Clowney explained getting only two sacks last season by saying the defensive schemes last year favored Garrett because the Browns are “trying to get somebody into the Hall of Fame when all that matters is winning” — weird since Garrett is double-teamed on almost every pass rush.
Smith has shown none of that in his brief time with the Browns, although it should be noted he became unhappy with the Vikings one year after signing a three-year contract with Minnesota in March 2022. The Browns traded a fifth-round draft pick in 2024 and a fifth-round pick in 2025 to the Vikings on May 16 for Smith plus a sixth-round pick in 2025 and a seventh-round pick in 2025.
“Za’Darius has been awesome, just having him in the building,” head coach Kevin Stefanski said after an OTA practice May 24. “He’s a ball of energy. He’s great around our players, our young players. He practices hard. He does a great job out here. When he’s in the building, in the weight room and the meeting rooms, on the field, he brings some juice to what we’re doing.”
Smith signed a four-year contract with the Packers in 2019 after four seasons with the Ravens. He had 13.5 sacks in 2019 and 12.5 in 2020. A back injury limited him to one game in 2021. The Packers released him with one year left on his contract.
Smith parlayed the 26 sacks in 2019 and 2020 into a three-year $42 million contract with the Vikings. He made the investment look like a good one with 8.5 sacks through his first seven games last year, but a knee injury suffered in a Week 10 game with the Bills limited him to a half sack the rest of the way.
Despite signing the contract with Minnesota, Smith less than a year later wanted a do-over. The Vikings wouldn’t satisfy him, so the Browns got him for a bargain price.
“(My contract) wasn’t set up right,” Smith said after practice May 24. “Going through Green Bay my last year, I had the (back) injury and a lot of teams started to say this and that about Z, but it wasn’t about that. I’m always a team guy. You can call any player from any facility that I’ve been in and ask them about who Z really is. But a lot of people make stories up and it just didn’t work out.”
Smith does have a reputation of being a team guy, but he is also a Za’Darius Smith guy. He played with the knee injury last year when perhaps he should not have because of the way his contract was worded after playing only one game for Green Bay in 2021 because of the back injury.
“I had a chance to rest,” he said. “I couldn’t rest last year, because every game I think I was making like $200,000 just to dress out. So you would dress out, too, right?”
Smith totaled 27 tackles in eight games before the knee injury and 15 in seven games afterward. Five of them were made in one game (vs. the Colts on Dec. 17).
Smith’s hang up last year wasn’t that he wanted more money than the original contract called for; he didn’t like the way it was structured.
“It was the guaranteed part,” Smith said. “Only the first year was guaranteed. So I mean now I’m basically in the same situation, but it’s OK now because I can get a chance to go into free agency next year.”
Smith, 30, signed a one-year, $11.25 million with the Browns after the trade.
The teams Smith has played for made the playoffs each of the last five years. The Vikings were NFC North champions in 2022. He says the Browns can do the same in Cleveland in 2023.
“That’s where it starts,” Smith said. “I feel like if you set goals, you have to start from there. If you don’t win the division, it’s really not a possibility of going to the Super Bowl. I’m not just going to say it like that, but that’s something that we need to focus on. A lot of guys don’t focus on that. They just talk about the Super Bowl, but the main goal is to win the division first.”
The Browns haven’t been division champions since they won the AFC Central in 1989.
• The Browns have surprised us before — trading six draft picks for Deshaun Watson, for example — but I don’t see them signing free agent wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins, even though Hopkins would easily move in as the No. 2 wide receiver behind Amari Cooper or supplant Cooper as No. 1.
The Arizona Cardinals released Hopkins on May 26. He caught 64 passes for 717 yards and three touchdowns with them last year. He played three seasons with Watson in Houston (2017-19) and caught 315 passes for 4,115 yards and 31 touchdowns.
The Chiefs, Bills, Cowboys, 49ers, Chargers and Lions are tantalizing destination possibilities for Hopkins.
I didn’t know that
… until I read my Snapple bottle cap.
Ancient Romans thought strawberries could cure bad breath and constant fainting. … Squids can have eyes the size of a volleyball. … At the deepest point of the ocean, the water pressure is the equivalent of 50 jumbo jets piled on top of you, … Birds can sleep with one eye open. … Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise. … Hens do not need a rooster to lay an egg.
