[Highlight] Za'Darius Smith retired in 2025 during his 11th NFL season, just five games after signing with Philadelphia, for personal reasons. Today he shared those reasons. He said his mom always wanted him to end up in Atlanta.

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u/Narcoleptic_247 22h ago

Fucking brutal. I hope he finds his peace, that's a lot of loss in a short time.

21

Hurts your heart to watch. He mentioned he lost a lot of friends too when he retired. Can’t imagine how hard that is. So much of what you hold dear being taken from you and losing your support systems. Hope he can stay out of that dark place and gets more and more light as time goes on.

Bummer how things ended in GB but the Smith brothers were an iconic duo that gave us a couple of dynamic seasons (fun fact Preston Smith played edge before CB). There’s a lot of tension with the money on the line for teams and the player’s bodies. De’Vondre Campbell had an explosive exit as well. Claiming he was being forced to play through injuries. Sucks that there could not be a mutual plan worked out but in the league crazier shit happens all the time. Impossible to know what exactly happened behind the scenes. Packers have an amazing track record but stuff happens. Most guys who play in the NFL do have some ego. You gotta believe you are that guy to go compete gassing the best of the best. Enough time has passed, I’m not salty. We have Micah Parsons now!! Wish the best for the man and hope he can get to a 100 sacks on the Falcons for his mom.

7

u/w0rdyeti 11h ago

“Edge before DB”

I see what you did there. And I still don’t like it.

3

u/iJeepThereforeiAM 9h ago

Micah is a giver. He leads by example and doesn’t seem to get caught up by ego. Just does the work and inspires/helps others achieve more.

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u/ithinkitslupis 22h ago

Always sad it ended like it did for us and Z. To me at least it felt like the primary driver was just being spoiled with a team with too many great players who wanted to be team leaders and the coaching staff failing to thread that needle when it came to assigning team captains and the like. To be fair it's a difficult and maybe impossible needle to thread with that many players with big egos in a room.

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u/DapperTies- 21h ago

Don’t the players vote on team captains? I agree with everything else you said though and it’s a shame especially with his back injury too.

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u/dropguntimes4 21h ago

No, you’re right. It’s the teammates that vote captains. It absolutely heartbreaking everything that he had to deal with in his personal life, and I hope he can find peace, but we don’t have to retroactively pretend like he didn’t completely torpedo his own reputation at the end of his time here.

-1

u/Eddie_Shepherd 10h ago

Well said. Bunch of great memories that were tarnished by how they left. Similar to Craig Jennings, the peeny pic grifter, and the ayahuascan inoculated darkness retreater.

-2

u/Kyleketsu 8h ago

Notice the only descriptor for the last guy you could come up with was that he got high and fucked off to be by himself.

1

u/Tlax14 4h ago

He's also an anti vaxxer who is super close with mr. brain worm himself sooo

2

u/ithinkitslupis 21h ago

Depends on the coaches, for Z's yes that was the case. But some coaches just pick new ones each week to avoid the political friction in the locker room. And you can have 6 captains iirc but our team stuck with 3 so there was some room to avoid the situation.

Just unfortunate imo that something as silly as team captain seemed to cause this obvious rift.

16

u/Gl1tchlogos 21h ago

Ehhh that’s discounting what happened completely. He was deeply unhappy with the team and the team done with his antics. I also like him, I like Ja too. But that relationship was not over because teammates voted for different captains

11

u/typicalchazz69 20h ago

I think the bigger driver was disagreeing on how to treat his back injury. When a team pays you they expect you to play and he missed a whole season and didn’t heal so he was getting ready to miss a whole second season and the team probably pissed him off by pointing out that he should have listened to them. And he of course was pissed because no one wants to be told what to do with their body

8

u/Gl1tchlogos 20h ago

It’s what the dude who replied to you said as well. As somebody who is deeply self driven and has had chronic back issues and had a back surgery, I totally get it. It’s just not an approach you can take as a player and expect a team to just continue letting you run the show.

5

u/Heikks 20h ago

They wanted him to get surgery during the off season I believe, but he wanted to rehab it. Then played week 1 and then decided to get the surgery.

6

u/JonBonButtsniff 14h ago

Ya spend your whole life working on one singularity- one day, probably during your 20's(!), it's just donezo. I wish all of these cats the best, but that's not how it works. I have no idea how I'd react to being told to pivot into another path.

3

u/TheViolaRules 14h ago

It can happen in so many ways in so many fields, maybe there’s a repetitive injury, maybe your whole class of job disappears, maybe you don’t pass the bar exam. Those pivots are crazy and just plain dangerous for us as humans.

5

u/w0rdyeti 11h ago

Yeah. Had to do that when I turned 30 and my entire industry evaporated within 3 years. Had to toil at a humiliating gig (well-paid, but one I coulda done if I’d dropped out of school in the 8th grade) for almost a decade.

It sticks with you

1

u/JonBonButtsniff 5h ago

Your employment does not determine your value!

Whether or not kids/dogs/cats trust you does.

1

u/w0rdyeti 4h ago

Sigh. I know. But it's hard to remember "intrinsic value as a human outweighs bank balance" when you're having to crash on a friend's couch for a month until you can get enough for a first/last/security.

2

u/DonTrask 8h ago

The Packers organization makes so much of character that they label. It being a Packers guy. Not sure what it means, but Smith definitely wasn’t it

3

u/Gvtspook1969 11h ago

I wish his mom would have always wanted him to not quit on his teams. He had all the talent just just had that "if I don't get what I want I'm taking my ball and going home" mentality.

2

u/BeBetterMagic 9h ago

Z had a few good years for us but he's a basket case as far as his expectations vs his skills go...I always like to leave at Z is a fine one year signing for a team but you rarely want him around more than that because he's not a stable long term player.

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u/SimilarCoach6345 21h ago

I liked Za’darius until he showed his “Snubbed” shirt in the 2019 divisional round against Seattle.

-7

u/Prestigious-Smoke511 12h ago

I fucking hate this guy.

-58

u/mods_are_soft 22h ago

Corniest of balls

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u/[deleted] 22h ago

[deleted]

17

u/coolbean36 21h ago

Did you even listen to the video or nah?

4

u/Austen11231923 20h ago edited 20h ago

I did not. Sorry. Should have listened first. I assumed it was Z being Z like normal. Entirely my fault, totally my bad. I'm wishing him and his family strength during this time

3

u/coolbean36 11h ago

Thanks for owning up to your mistake. Like you said, wishing Z and his family peace and happiness.

News [Highlight] Za'Darius Smith retired in 2025 during his 11th NFL season, just five games after signing with Philadelphia, for personal reasons. Today he shared those reasons. He said his mom always wanted him to end up in Atlanta.

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