The Seventy-Million Dollar Man: Becoming the Third Highest Paid D-Lineman and Second Highest Paid Will Smith

Quick. Name BOTH starting defensive ends for your favorite team. Easy right?

Well, now try to name BOTH starting defensive ends playing for a divisional rival. Or last year’s Super Bowl winner. Anyone?

Not quite as easy unless you first took a side-trip to ESPN.com (thesaintsguyisinnowayaffiliatedwithespn.com). While one can easily name the starting quarterback for nearly each of the 32 teams, their natural, book-end foils are not quite so recognizable. People think all quarterbacks could go to law school, finish in two semesters and somehow get a medical license in the process. It’s an understandable stereotype; everybody wants the quarterback to be a genius.

On the flip side, defensive linemen are often seen as rabid cavemen bent on destroying the pretty boy in a similar way something that costs 79 cents at Taco Bell works on your colon. It’s get in the backfield and cause as much as damage as possible, right?

While that’s a pipe dream (/end colon jokes), defensive linemen have more than that to be concerned with. That’s even more so with defensive ends given that they have five or six things to worry about as soon as the ball is snapped (Did he hand the ball off? Is that the tight end in the flat? Are they doubling my DT? Is Lost DVRing this week?), and after the play has started, they must adjust accordingly.

(Side note: As much praise as I’m singing to the ends, I want you to know I’m not taking anything away from the tackles. Defensive ends and tacklers are similar in nature, yet strikingly different. Take a starting pitcher and the setup man. Both pitchers, yet both have to be wired differently. There’s a reason you don’t see the starting pitcher on the mound with his team down 5-2 in the top of the seventh inning, and it’s not just because his arm is about to fall off. It takes one kind of person to be a starter and another to be a middle reliever. Which is why I love what the Yankees are doing to Joba Chamberlain’s career even more. Anyway, the point of this column is to give myself reassurance in spending $70m on anything. So for the sake of today’s column, defensive ends are Tracy Morgan “Uncle Jemima’s Pure Mashed Liquor” and everybody else is Tracy Morgan “Dominican Lou.”)

True fans of football appreciate what a good defensive line with skilled ends can do for a team (*cough*New York Giants*cough). And true, the Saints took this a little too seriously over the past few years (since 2000, the Saints have drafted FOUR defensive linemen in the first round or with their first pick in the draft), but it’s still not a bad idea. Linemen make a world of difference, and yet they aren’t given the credit they deserve.

So enter the likes of Charles Grant and Will Smith (see, even The Saints Guy can name the starting DE’s on his team). These are two tremendously talented guys who are still fairly young. It takes monster contracts to keep players like that in today’s NFL, so naturally, it was Will Smith’s turn. And (for cryin’ out loud I’ve said this in this three blogs) he’s STILL not contracted to the sum new Falcons' QB Matt Ryan is, and he hasn’t seen the professional field.

Let’s review the 2004 NFL Draft. For two years the Saints took a defensive lineman in the first round or with their first pick. Grant had been taken 33rd overall (the first pick in the second round, but the Saints first pick overall) in 2002 while, a year later, Johnathan “Golden Choral” Sullivan was drafted sixth overall after the Saints traded up with two first round picks. Dig a little deeper you say? Well, what could we have had had Haslett and Co. not traded those two picks away for Stay Puff? New Orleans had both the 17th and 18th picks that were dealt to the Cardinals. Available at or around those picks? Troy Polamalu, Calvin Pace, possibly a trade up for Marcus Trufant. Heck, even Larry Johnson and Willis McGahee would have been available. So you can imagine the disgust Saints fans have in drafting linemen at that point.

Back to 2004. This was the draft where the Saints ended up with the 18th overall pick after an 8-8 record. The damage Aaron Brooks had been doing would only be upended by Hurricane Katrina two seasons later. Saints fans were growing stagnant hearing rumors of an unhappy owner threatening to move. And with their first pick in the 2004 NFL Draft, the New Orleans Saints selected Will Smith, a defensive end out of Ohio State University.

I’ll never forget where I was that day. Chaz was grilling out at his and Liberace’s house and we, of course, were glued to the TV. Liberace was elated that the Broncos had selected D.J. Williams from Miami the pick before, and we had to watch as Will Smith’s name was called.

It was almost the final nail in my Black & Gold coffin. I don’t even remember who I wanted that day to be honest; but I do remember screaming in my head not a d-lineman; not a d-lineman over and over again right before Tagliabue read the pick. And after Smith was official, I wouldn’t have cared if they had called Mr. Irrelevant from the season before Ryan Hoag, the wideout from Gustavus Adolphus (I had to copy and paste that; I didn’t make it up); I just wanted anybody else besides a d-lineman.

Fast forward a little. In between the draft and the season not a whole lot else happened. Except for the fact word starting getting out about Will Smith in mini-camps and whatnot. Chaz all but makes the drive during preseason to Saints’ Camp in Jackson MS if he can, and he was high on this kid and started convincing me, too. And Smith’s 2004 rookie stats don't lie, either: 16 games played, 4 starts, 7.5 sacks.

Saints fans knew they had something special, and he hasn’t let down. In four seasons, he’s accumulated 33.5 sacks; nearly nine a season. Not too shabby. And going back to the contracts issue, you all but have to lock these guys up to big money if you want to keep them.

Take this example: you know how you and a friend see a preview for a movie you both want to see and you agree to go with each other? And you know how crappy you feel when you find out that friend went with one of his friends to the same movie?

That’s kind of how I’d feel if we had lost Will Smith to another team because of contract issues. He’s a great player, and an important key to our defense. Can you say with confidence that we're a contender without him? It was a little scary to hear he was holding out because he didn’t like his monetary situation, and I started having flashbacks to the Saints front office of old. Would we pay him? Is he going to sit out? Did the Sedrick Ellis D-Line Solidification happen for nothing?

That’s obviously not the case any more. Smith signed for the money he clearly deserves. The Saints got it out of the way quickly and can now move forward.

And, yes, it may seem like a lot of money. But just remember that when he’s dismembering Matt Ryan’s $72m corpse on the field come this fall. You can take that contract to the bank.