The Chicago Bears are in something of a standoff with linebacker Roquan Smith, and while it’s tempting to point and laugh, Packers fans should take note. Nothing in the NFL happens in a vacuum, and there are lessons to be learned from every situation.

The Bears selected Smith with the eighth overall pick in 2018, and he’s appeared in 61 of 65 possible games since then. Along the way, he’s piled up a lot of tackles and a few off-field accolades, twice earning second-team All-Pro honors.

Digging a little deeper, I think it’s fair to characterize Smith’s career so far as good, but not great. Yes, the All-Pro recognition is excellent, but the box score stats aren’t as outstanding as Smith’s camp would have you believe. To that end, check out Smith’s counting stats compared to Blake Martinez’s during his Packers tenure, a good-but-not-great linebacker if there ever was one. 

And though your mileage may vary with their grades, Pro Football Focus has never been particularly kind to Smith. Among linebackers who played at least 500 snaps in 2021, he was their 44th best graded inside linebacker, and ranked 15th, 49th, and 39th in the three years prior to that.

But he wants to get paid, and we certainly can’t begrudge him that. And to an extent, I think I can understand why he’d like to be paid at this particular moment. The Bears are clearly rebuilding. They have a new general manager and a new head coach. They’re not tearing things down to the studs, but it’s close. But Smith, for his part, wants to be there. He grew up a Bears fan. He wanted to be drafted by Chicago. This is where he wants to be, and he wants to be paid, at least in part, for the trouble of sticking around during a rebuild during which the Bears aren’t going to be contenders even by the most generous stretch of Bears’ fans imaginations.

Smith’s agent status complicates matters

But this is where things get complicated. For starters, the Bears seem fairly lukewarm in their desire to keep Smith around. Normally, that would be a big enough issue on its own, but Smith works as his own agent. By itself, that has to change the team/player relationship. If the team wants to take a hardline stance on Smith’s value, there’s no middle man there to massage the message between the sides — Smith is getting the unvarnished version of the team’s opinion on him and his career to date, and there’s a good chance it stings a little.

Why? Well, in addition to the “good-but-not-great” descriptor we hung on him earlier, Smith plays a position that isn’t all that valuable in the grand scheme of the NFL in 2022. That’s not to say linebackers can’t help your defense. Packers fans all saw together what De’Vondre Campbell brought to the team in 2021. But relative to corners and edge rushers and defensive linemen, off-ball linebackers don’t change your defense all that much. The Bears, if they have any sort of analytically minded people in their revamped front office, surely know this. Telling your best player this to his face is a line you have to walk carefully.

But wait, there’s more! The Bears also have to realize that there’s some internal messaging going on here to the rest of the players on the roster.

Roster optimization is obviously a good thing, but I think there’s merit to the idea of paying somebody a little bit more than you probably should just because of who they are. Teams should take care of their own, if only because it shows other players on the team that you’re willing to do so.

If the Bears play hardball with Smith, a former high draft pick who has expressed a great desire to stay in Chicago, other players will take notice, and probably not for the better. “If they don’t pay Roquan, why would they pay me?” can’t be a super popular message to have going around your locker room.

Consider how the Packers handled things with Aaron Jones. Like Smith, Jones plays a position with declining value around the league. But he’s also a tremendous Green Bay success story, rising from little-used fifth-round draft pick to a Pro Bowl-caliber player, becoming a locker room leader along the way. The Packers didn’t have to get a deal done with Jones, but they did, and I think you can spin that internally in a way that benefits your team.

Why Packers fans should pay attention

All of that leads me to the real reason Packers fans should pay attention. More players than ever are serving as their own agents, and sooner or later the Packers are going to have a contract situation complicated by that reality.

In fact, one is bearing down on us as we speak. Rashan Gary, the Packers’ 2019 12th overall pick, works as his own agent and is likely going to get a contract extension in the very near future.

He’s currently in his fourth year, and he’ll play next season on his fifth-year option if things drag out that long. In the meantime, he’ll be negotiating directly with the Packers.

Fortunately for Gary and the Packers, there’s little chance of hurt feelings over his value to the team. Nobody debates the importance of edge rushers in the modern NFL, and Gary is among the very best at his position.

But if the Packers choose to slow-walk their negotiations with Gary, they run the risk of directly upsetting one of their very best players, potentially alienating him in the process. I think it’s more likely than not that the Packers approach their negotiations with Gary by doing some form of sliding a blank check across the table and asking him to write in what he thinks is fair, but it’s always worth taking note of every variable in a given situation.

After all, nothing in the NFL is unique, and if the Bears can bungle things with one of their own, it could happen in Green Bay, too.

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