Aldon Smith: vulnerability, trust have been keys to sobriety and this Seahawks chance
It’s rare — and needed — for an NFL player to disclose his vulnerabilities.
It’s rarer that an NFL player is still in the league after the three chances Aldon Smith’s had, and the punishment he’s served.
Smith is in his first days of a fourth chance in his career. The 31-year-old former All-Pro defensive end with the San Francisco 49ers looks sleek in his new number 99. He’s flying around the Seahawks’ training camp more like he’s 21.
Last week during a position drill, instead of slamming into and shedding a one-man, metal-based blocking sled Smith picked it up, off of the grass. It appeared he was about to throw it like a trash can before he stopped and realized the machine was about to go airborne. He just dropped it back to the turf.
Defensive assistant coach Aaron Curry broke the awed silence of teammates, fans and bystanders.
“I lift weights, too,” Curry told Smith.
Smith is proving to be in supreme shape, adding speed to his obvious strength.
He’s trying to do a lot of proving this month.
He is trying to prove in this training camp to be worthy not only of a place in the Seahawks’ pass rush, but of Pete Carroll’s and an entire franchise’s trust.
After four years out of the league on suspensions—then an arrest two days after he signed with Seattle in April, for alleged battery of a man in a coffee shop outside New Orleans—trust is what Smith is counting on to stay in the league.
He’s been fined $4.7 millon during his NFL career that began with 14 sacks and making the league’s all-rookie team in 2011 with the 49ers. In 2018 he pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor charges in a deal with San Francisco prosecutors. That was from a domestic violence case. Smith pleaded no contest to violating a court order and false imprisonment. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail and three years of probation.
Smith was allowed to serve the sentence at an inpatient alcohol and drug treatment center, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
He didn’t play from the end of his 2015 season with the Oakland Raiders, through that rehab center stay, to last season, his lone year with Dallas. He had five sacks in 16 games while overweight in Dallas. This winter, the defense-needy Cowboys gave up on him, too.
What did Smith learn about himself in his four years out of football?
“A lot. Maybe too much for this interview,” he said Saturday, beginning 10 minutes of refreshing, perhaps rehabilitative candor.
“I learned a lot. Football is an opportunity that a lot of people don’t get. When you get opportunities in life, you should make the best of them. There is a lot of people who wish they could play this game.
“I’m glad I just got the chance to do the things I needed to do to get mentally right and be in a position that when I came back, I could be focused and get ready what I need to get ready to play.”
Inside knowledge
After the Cowboys released him, Carroll became intrigued.
Signing Smith was a quintessential Carroll/Seahawks move. He fits a pattern: a checkered past that caused other NFL teams to give up on a uniquely talented guy.
From Mike Williams and LenDale White early in his Seahawks tenure to Brandon Marshall, Josh Gordon and Antonio Brown, Carroll has rarely passed up a chance to pursue top talent and athleticism for Seattle, regardless—and sometimes because of—a player’s past. The 69-year-old motivator, mentor and friend to his players has never met one he hasn’t believed he could help by force of personality, leadership and compassion.
For Smith, Carroll had inside, institutional knowledge.
Carroll’s trusted defensive coordinator, Ken Norton Jr., was Smith’s coordinator with the Raiders in 2015. Seahawks assistant special teams coach Tracy Smith was also on that Raiders staff when Aldon Smith played for Oakland. Seattle’s offensive line coach Mike Solari had that job with the 49ers during Aldon Smith’s first four, starring seasons with the 49ers—including when Smith had 19 1/2 sacks and made All-Pro in 2012.
That was before alcohol, domestic violence and other incidents derailed not just Smith’s career, but his life.
Carroll relied on Norton’s, Tracy Smith’s and Solari’s opinions of Smith.
That’s how the Seahawks came to invite Smith for a free-agent visit this spring, when the rest of the league seemingly had no interest in keeping his career going.
Asked what he needed to hear from Smith in order to be comfortable adding him to the Seahawks, Carroll said: “It’s a good question, because I wanted to feel him and feel where he’s coming from.
“We talked to him a number of times before we made a decision. We did a lot of homework, a lot of research on him and him as a person. A number of our coaches have been with Aldon in other places, which really helped us. They’ve seen him work on a day-to-day basis. That was really important. Kenny was really important in this decision.”
Carroll sought to learn Smith’s support team, his counselors, the people to whom Smith must confide in, test with, trust to keep his career going per terms of his reinstatement from suspension by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell last year.
“I have a tremendous support staff,” Smith said.
“For me, it was just making myself vulnerable and being willing to trust and lean on the people,” he said. “I’ve always had people that were there, but I’ve always tried to carry everything on my shoulders.
“Letting people help me and accepting that help was a major game changer.”
But was it a life changer?
It’s a cold question. Yet, a fair one.
Another incident
A warrant for Smith’s arrest in St. Bernard Parish in Louisiana went out April 18. He turned himself in two days later. He was booked and released on $25,000 bond.
The St. Bernard Parish district attorney alleges Smith assaulted a man outside the French Press Coffee Shop in suburban Chalmette.
“On the evening of April 17, 2021 at the French Press Coffee House in Chalmette, Louisiana, Mr. Smith caused severe injuries to a male victim causing injuries that warranted a state court Judge to sign an arrest warrant,” a St. Bernard Parish district attorney’s office news release stated.
The news release stated anyone convicted in the parish on a charge of second degree battery could be fined up to $2,000 “or imprisoned, with or without hard labor for not more than eight years, or both.”
The incident at the coffee shop about seven miles east of downtown New Orleans allegedly occurred two days after the Seahawks signed Smith as a free agent. It’s a non-guaranteed, one-year contract with a league-minimum base salary of $910,000. The Seahawks can cut him at any time, at no cost to them.
St. Bernard Parish District Attorney Perry Nicosia told ESPN’s Mike Triplett that Smith allegedly choked his male accuser unconscious.
NBC Sports and Pro Football Talk reported Smith and other family members went to the coffee shop to talk to the husband of Smith’s pregnant sister after an alleged altercation between the two. NBC reported Smith contends he did not touch his accuser.
Asked Saturday about the alleged incident and his case, Smith said: “I can’t comment on that right now.”
Smith arraignment hearing in Louisiana is scheduled for Aug. 24. That is between Seattle’s second and its final preseason games, the final chances for Smith to prove he deserves one of 53 spots on the team this season.
From what Carroll’s seen—and heard—so far, so good.
“We’ve looked for him to be consistent and stay connected to the word, which he has done that,” Carroll said.
“You’ve got to feel it, feel that we’re communicating well. He’s talking clearly to us. His intentions show up, so we have all of the reason to continue to back him.”
An impressive debut
Carroll backed him last month when Smith requested to miss the Seahawks’ mandatory minicamp. Smith had yet to practice with his new team. He’d been arrested before his first Seattle workout.
Yet Carroll granted Smith’s request to get into better shape working out more in the Seattle area in June instead of participating in those three minicamp practices.
Smith believes many if not most coaches would not have done that. He would know. He’s had four different head coaches in his seven years with four NFL teams.
“It was just letting me know that the people here had my back and that they were willing to work with me,” Smith said. “It just made me feel that much more comfortable with the decision that was made.
“Happy to be a part of a team like this.”
So far, he’s practicing like it.
Smith is trying to win a place in Seattle’s rotation of many veteran defensive ends. He’s among Carlos Dunlap, Kerry Hyder, Benson Mayowa, Robert Nkemdiche (another reclamation project), L.J. Collier, Rasheem Green and Alton Robinson.
The Seahawks have considered whether Smith could perhaps be a hybrid inside pass rusher, an end then third-down speed tackle that Michael Bennett was so successfully for Carroll’s defense years ago.
But so far in camp he’s looked best outside at end, blowing past offensive tackles off the edge.
“I feel like I can play anywhere,” he said. “The game is different when you are playing inside. Everything happens much quicker. But like I said, I feel like I can play anywhere.
“I think I’m more naturally an edge, and that’s where I’m most productive at.”
Saturday in no-pads, 11-on-11 scrimmaging that is supposed to favor the offense, Smith looked like he shouldn’t just make the Seahawks’ team—but that he should be starting.
The defensive end broke into the backfield almost with the snap on the first play of a 2-minute drill. He would have sacked Russell Wilson had it been a game. Smith angrily punched at the air after coaches and the officials for the day allowed Wilson to continue the play and get off a harried, incomplete pass.
On the first play of a middle-of-the-field scrimmage, Smith again would have sacked Wilson after beating fill-in left tackle Jamarco Jones off the ball. Smith again reacted angrily that coaches or the officials didn’t blow the play dead. Wilson continued the play by throwing the ball away again.
Smith says he’s down in the 260-270-pound range.
“I was kind of fat last year,” with Dallas, Smith said.
He laughed.
“I’m just excited to get the opportunity to get to play right now and be a part of a great organization,” he said. “What they’ve had here, I just want to be a part of it, and I intend to make the effort to make plays.”
Staying sober
Most 31-year-old veterans hate these grinding training-camp practices.
Most 31-year-old veterans weren’t suspended and an inpatient in a rehab center while out of the league for four years.
“It was a blessing,” he said of Goodell reinstating him and Dallas signing him last year. “I was gone for a long time.
“During that time, a lot of thoughts cross your mind. You don’t know if you’re going to play this game, if you want to play this game, how you feel.
“I’m a human. I deal with emotions. And I think having the people around me who are positive and telling me positive things, then, me believing that positive stuff got me in that place where I knew I could play the game, I knew I was ready to play the game.
“I was blessed with the opportunity to get back and play the game. I’m grateful for that.”
His daily fight isn’t beating offensive linemen off the edge, getting to the quarterback, or the math of roster spots and cut-downs from 91 players to 53 that must come a month.
It’s staying sober.
How does he wage that fight each day?
“Just with the tremendous amount of support I have around me,” he said. “Being honest with those people and leaning on them in the tough times, and really just learning how to enjoy the good times. That’s the tough thing. When you’re used to going through a lot of adversity, you get comfortable with adversity, and you don’t know how to enjoy good things when they happen.
“Learning how to enjoy, learning how to trust people, and just being open.”
Carroll says he has made his and the Seahawks’ expectations of Smith “very clear” to him.
Despite Smith’s pending arraignment, despite possible NFL punishment from his latest arrest, through the red flags of a career once lost, something says Carroll expects Smith to be rushing off the edge for Seattle in its opening game Sept. 12 at Indianapolis.
“I want him to succeed at this in the worst way, and I want him to come through and show that he can do what he needs to do,” Carroll said. “We’re going to give him every opportunity.
“The level of communication is very clear, and he’s been very open with us. He’s told us when things were harder than others. He’s been upfront in that regard, and that helped us to understand, believe, and trust he’s working at it. It isn’t easy, and it’s a lifelong commitment he has to make. We really sense that the more we can support him, the more obviously we can be there for him, the stronger it makes him.
“That’s really what our intent is here.”
This story was originally published August 1, 2021 at 1:55 PM.
