Chicago Bears linebacker Roquan Smith is disrespected by the NFL again

Can you believe it? The NFL, or at least in this case one of its senior researchers, disrespected Roquan Smith yet again. This is getting old and I’m tired of seeing it. The Chicago Bears linebacker has been anything less than great since being drafted in 2018. Over the last two seasons, he has been beyond great. Yet, Roquan Smith has not made a Pro Bowl or been selected as a First-Team All-Pro in his career. To so-call soften the blow, Smith was at least a Second-Team All-Pro in 2020 and 2021. That was not good enough though. He deserved better.

On top of that, we have analytics sites like Pro Football Focus (PFF), giving Roquan Smith grades of 47.1 last season and 67.2 (the best grade of his career) in 2020. On the other hand, this same PFF site gave linebacker Fred Warner a grade of 75.2 last year and an elite grade of 88.6 in 2020. As someone who obviously watches more tape on Roquan Smith, I’m not going to say that Smith is easily the better of the two, but no one can argue that these two should be this far off in grading.

Chicago Bears linebacker, Roquan Smith keeps being disrespected

I’ll be the first to tell you that stats do not tell the full story. However, in this case, they do tell plenty. Since Roquan Smith played 17 games last year and Fred Warner only played 16, let’s look at the per-game numbers instead, shall we?