The Detroit Lions are about to play in the biggest game of the season with a chance to take home the NFC North crown and the first seed in the NFC.
For Lions’ edge rusher Za’Darius Smith, this is a very big game for two different reasons. The first is that he gets the chance to go up against his old team the Minnesota Vikings.
Smith signed a three-year $42 million contract with the Vikings in 2022 and gave them a solid 9.5 sacks in the first nine games. Then Smith suffered a knee injury and that’s apparently where things started to go wrong between him and the franchise.
The two sides had a bad breakup, and getting a chance to play the Vikings was one of the reasons Smith wanted to be traded to the Lions at the trade deadline. Now he’s going to get the chance to play them on Sunday night.
He’ll also have some extra motivation to have a big game in this one because of an incentive in his contract. Smith can make an extra $250 thousand if he gets two sacks in this game. That will bring him to 10 sacks on the season and trigger that incentive.
Smith hasn’t had a sack since the Lions Week 14 win over the Packers, but he’s been close. He’s been getting a decent amount of pressures since that game with 11 in the last three.
We’ll see how Smith plays on Sunday night and if he comes out a little richer and with some revenge.