Getty Aldon Smith with 49ers
The Dallas Cowboys aren’t getting an ordinary, albeit “blessed,” player in Aldon Smith. They’re getting an “absolute freak of nature” who rocked up to a “monstrous weight” in preparation for his hopeful NFL reinstatement.
FOX Sports insider and devout MMA practitioner Jay Glazer has personally trained Smith amid his four-year league suspension, and he’s crowing over the results. Glazer contends the former All-Pro pass-rusher is “solid as can be” with “very low body fat.”
“He has trained his butt off. His conditioning is great. I think he played at 260. We got him to 287. He is just freaking monstrous,” Glazer wrote in his latest mailbag for The Athletic. “We do this hand-fighting drill, me and the guys. We had him on these resistance cords connected to the wall on a machine called the Raptor. I’ve had a ton of guys on it — big huge guys, monsters. Smith ripped it off the wall, doing hand-fighting and exploding off the line. No one has ever done that. He is an absolute freak of nature. I don’t know who to compare him to because he’s 287 with a V. It’s ridiculous. I’m excited to get him back there.”
Smith last played in 2015 and was listed at 265 pounds. A 20-pound jump, vaulting him near 300, appears risky on the surface for a 30-year-old who hasn’t sniffed the gridiron in a half-decade. But if there’s anyone who can handle the additional mass, it’s Smith, who at 6-foot-4 effortlessly converts speed to power — and power to speed — when chasing down quarterbacks.
He’s cut from a rare cloth, a God-gifted athlete whose long-haunting substance-abuse issues are now in the rearview. Conquering those demons allowed Smith to focus his energy on football, and his determination to rejoin the sport he once dominated hasn’t wavered.
“We’re going on nine months now and he has not missed a single session. Not one in nine months!” noted Glazer, who helps run Merging Vets & Players, a Los Angeles-based program designed to bring together combat veterans and professional athletes. “He’s shown accountability to the whole group. He really bonded with the veterans. He’s talked about his sobriety. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to open up to 80 to 100 total strangers in a group setting, but a lot of our vets are battling sobriety issues, too, and Smith has been extremely vulnerable and open about it. Vulnerability is real strength, not the muscles on the outside.”
That Smith is ahead of the curve is especially important given the current landscape of the NFL, which has been shuttered by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Cowboys were scheduled to start their offseason workout program Monday.
However, there’s a stark difference between conditioning and game readiness. Until he’s a regular at The Star, there will be an acclimation period to shake off the rust from prolonged inactivity. And it won’t happen overnight, assuming his indefinite ban is eventually lifted.
That said, Smith has incentive — monetary incentive — to reach peak potential. Built into his one-year, $4 million contract (which really is a $2 million deal with a $910,000 base salary) are sack escalators: $500,000 for eight, $1 million for 10, $1.5 million for 12, and $2 million for 14. He’ll also earn $40,625 each time he’s on the active gameday roster, or $650,000 in total.
For his career, Smith’s accumulated 47.5 sacks across 59 games, spread between the then-Oakland Raiders and San Francisco 49ers. His best year came in 2012 when the former first-round pick tallied 19.5 sacks, an exceptional encore after a 14-sack rookie debut.
Title aside, he should contribute immediately. Hand in the dirt, Smith will aid a stacked (if underachieving) defensive line that features DeMarcus Lawrence and free-agent prizes Gerald McCoy and Dontari Poe. Standing up, he’ll supplement an uber-talented linebacker corps highlighted by Jaylon Smith, Leighton Vander Esch, and Sean Lee.
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