Last year, the Chicago Bears traded star linebacker Roquan Smith to the Baltimore Ravens. And a year later, saying that Smith is glad that the trade happened would be an extreme understatement.
During an interview this week, Roquan Smith got brutally honest about what the trade meant for him, saying that he is happy to know that he is playing with a team where his “career is not going down the drain.”
“Man, it’s pretty crazy thinking back to when I was initially traded,” Smith told Abert Breer of SI.com. “It was bittersweet for me, just knowing Chicago and rightfully so. But if I would’ve stayed there, honestly, [I] wouldn’t have been able to compete for a title anytime soon. And then when I came over here, it took me a while, like a couple of weeks, to really realize how stacked this team was, as well as how many good people there are on this team, and how they just bring in truly good people. And when I just think about it from the perspective of having the opportunity to compete for one year in and year out with the talent we have.
“Man, it makes me so happy, just knowing my career is not going down the drain, in the sense of playing somewhere where I’m not truly competing for a title.”
Obviously, the implication here is that Smith believes his career would have been wasted in a sense if he remained in Chicago. But now that he’s with the Ravens and has a legitimate chance to contend for titles, he’s quite pleased.
