Chicago Bears linebacker Roquan Smith is disrespected by the NFL again

Only one Chicago Bears player was mentioned in a recent NFL-best article

In a recent article at NFL.com, senior researcher, Anthony Holzman-Escareno looked throughout the NFL and decided to build what he believed to be the best NFL team money can buy under the 2022 NFL salary cap. The cap part here is important, and I’ll admit that I wasn’t too upset not seeing Roquan Smith’s name listed on the final roster. What bothered me is that he wasn’t even considered.

Now, there were some rules at play here. The final roster had to come in under the 208.2 million salary cap. Roster spots for players on rookie contracts were capped at 24 with no more than four players drafted from each of rounds 1 through 3 and 12 from rounds 4 through 7. One caveat here that applies to Roquan Smith is that players on a fifth-year option do not count as a player on a rookie contract and therefore, Smith would be considered the same way as Fred Warner who signed a five-year extension.

Now for who made the cut at linebacker.

The starting linebackers selected were Micah Parsons (DAL) and Demario Davis (NO). I won’t argue with that seeing that Parsons is also a beast and his salary cap is under $4 million for 2022. Demario Davis has the highest cap hit of the group at just under $6 million in 2022. For context, Roquan Smith’s cap hit for 2022 is $9.7 million. Money obviously came into play, right? Wrong.

Again, should Smith have been mentioned in the “Others Considered” section, I wouldn’t be pointing out how once again Roquan Smith was disrespected. In that section, both Darius Leonard and Fred Warner were mentioned. In fact, in the “Toughest Decision” section, both were mentioned again as the two best linebackers of 2021, and putting one of them on the roster would have solidified the group. Well, money isn’t at play in this case seeing Warner has a 2022 cap hit of $8.1 million and Leonard has a cap hit of $11.1 million.

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I ask it again, why not include Roquan Smith here when names such as De’Vondre Campbell, Leighton Vander Esch, Denzel Perryman and Anthony Walker, Jr. are listed? The disrespect needs to stop. I hope that Smith is given the credit he deserves after what I expect to be another dominant season this year. At least one person, an unnamed NFL coordinator, understands Smith’s value. I won’t hold my breath waiting on the others to wake up though.