Za'Darius Smith Returns to NFL After Losing Three Family Members

Za'Darius Smith stepped away from professional football in October 2024 with no clear plan to return. The Philadelphia Eagles' defensive end had played eleven seasons across six different franchises, accumulated 70.5 career sacks and three Pro Bowl selections, and seemed ready to be done. Then, within months of that departure, his mother died. His grandmother followed. Then his father. The losses came in rapid succession, and Smith found himself in what he would later describe as a dark place—the kind of grief that swallows the days whole.

By the time the Atlanta Falcons came calling in 2025, Smith had begun to understand something about himself: football was not the thing he needed to escape. It was the thing that might save him. At 33 years old, with his career seemingly behind him, he signed on as his seventh NFL team. The Falcons needed pass-rush depth. Their edge rusher Jalon Walker had torn his ACL. James Pearce Jr. was serving an eight-game suspension. Smith, carrying the weight of three funerals and the kind of exhaustion that grief produces, was ready to work.

When he spoke to reporters on Wednesday, Smith was direct about what had happened and what it meant. "I was in a dark place," he said. The phrase hung there—not dramatic, not seeking sympathy, just true. He had visited with the Cleveland Browns before Atlanta's offer came through, but something about the Falcons felt right. His mother, he said, had always wanted him to play for them. Now he would honor that wish while she was gone.

Football, Smith explained, had become his sanctuary. Not in the abstract sense of escape, but in the concrete sense of purpose. "This is my happy place," he said. "Come back, play football. I was in a dark place, but, you know, coming out, running out on the field, the fans, not just the fans, man, the joy that I get from winning and just getting sacks." The specificity matters—it was not just the game itself, but the field, the crowd, the tangible reward of a sack, the shared victory. These things had weight when everything else felt hollow.

Smith's career statistics tell the story of a reliable, productive player: 343 total tackles, 70.5 sacks, 16 pass deflections, 10 forced fumbles, and two fumble recoveries since 2015. He was not a flashy name, not a generational talent, but a steady presence across more than a decade of professional football. Now, with his thirty-fourth birthday approaching at the start of the season, he had a new goal. "Now I'm trying to reach 100," he said of his sack total. "However I need to do that, I'm going to try."

It was a modest ambition on its surface—29.5 more sacks to reach a round number. But it was also something else: a reason to keep showing up, a target to aim at, a way to transform grief into work. Smith had lost three people he loved. He had stepped away from the only professional life he knew. And now, in Atlanta, he was stepping back into it—not because he had to, but because he had discovered that the field was where he could still feel like himself. "I'm happy to be in Atlanta," he said. For a man who had been in a dark place, that was not a small thing.