Za'Darius Smith Returns to NFL With Falcons After Losing Mom, Dad and Grandmother

Za'Darius Smith walked away from the Philadelphia Eagles in the middle of the 2025 season after his mother's doctor told him she did not have much longer to live. Ten months later, the 33-year-old defensive end is back in the NFL, signing a one-year contract with the Atlanta Falcons worth $6 million, with incentives that could push it to $8 million.

Smith informed the Eagles of his mother's condition before stepping away, appearing in just five games and recording 1.5 sacks for Philadelphia during the 2025 season, according to the New York Post. His retirement was prompted by his mother's serious illness, and the Eagles did not stand in his way when he decided family was the only thing left to him. In the months that followed, Smith lost his mother, his grandmother, and his father, an accumulation of grief he has described as putting him in a dark place.

A Homecoming Rooted in Family

Signing with Atlanta fulfilled something of a personal promise for Smith, whose late mother always wanted him to play for the Falcons because Atlanta sits roughly two and a half hours from the family's home in Montgomery, Alabama, as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Smith played high school football in Greenville, Alabama, before starting his college career at East Mississippi Community College and later Kentucky. Before landing in Atlanta, he held talks with the Cleveland Browns and completed a workout there, but Cleveland projected him into a rotational role and offered less money than the Falcons ultimately did, according to the same report. Browns general manager Andrew Berry had originally reached out to Smith simply to check on him during his time away from the game.

Smith reunites in Atlanta with head coach Kevin Stefanski, who coached him in Cleveland during the 2023 and 2024 seasons after acquiring him in a trade from the Minnesota Vikings, the Falcons noted in announcing the signing. That existing relationship is expected to smooth his return to an NFL locker room after nearly a year away. Smith has said that football is his happy place, and that playing again helped pull him out of the darkest stretch following his family's losses.

Falcons Needed Edge Help Fast

Atlanta's urgency to add a veteran pass-rusher stemmed from a pair of setbacks that hit its defensive front in August. Second-year outside linebacker Jalon Walker, who recorded 5.5 sacks and 27 quarterback pressures as a rookie in 2025, tore his ACL during an August training camp practice and will miss the season, the team confirmed. Days later, the NFL suspended pass-rusher James Pearce Jr. for eight games following a February arrest in Florida tied to a domestic dispute with ex-girlfriend Rickea Jackson, who plays for the Chicago Sky, according to 11Alive. Pearce agreed to a six-month pretrial intervention program to resolve felony charges stemming from the incident.

Together, the losses of Walker and Pearce Jr., both first-round picks by Atlanta in the 2025 NFL Draft, wiped out nearly 30 percent of the production behind the Falcons' franchise-record 57 sacks from a season ago, per the Associated Press. That statistical hole is what sent Atlanta searching for proven edge depth, and Smith's arrival is meant to fill it until Pearce returns from suspension midseason.

A Résumé Built Over 11 Seasons

Smith enters his 11th NFL season with 70.5 career sacks, 87 tackles for loss, 176 quarterback hits, and 10 forced fumbles across 145 regular-season games, per figures released by the Falcons. He recorded nine sacks and 17 quarterback hits across 17 games in 2024 while playing for the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions that year. A fourth-round pick by the Baltimore Ravens in the 2015 NFL Draft, Smith spent four years in Baltimore before three seasons with the Green Bay Packers, followed by stints with the Vikings, Lions, Browns, and Eagles.

He is a three-time Pro Bowl selection, earning the honor in 2019 and 2020 with Green Bay and again in 2022 with Minnesota, according to Pro-Football-Reference. Whether Smith, at 33 and ten months removed from football, can hold up to full-time snap counts remains to be seen, and how Stefanski reshuffles the pass-rush rotation once Pearce returns midseason is still an open question for Atlanta's coaching staff. For now, the Falcons have their veteran presence, and Smith has the homecoming his mother always wanted for him.