{"id":29776,"date":"2025-08-06T15:33:59","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T15:33:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/breakingnews.azontree.com\/?p=29776"},"modified":"2025-08-06T15:33:59","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T15:33:59","slug":"news-lions-still-have-interest-in-zadarius-smith-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/breakingnews.azontree.com\/?p=29776","title":{"rendered":"NEWS: Lions still have interest in Za&#8217;Darius Smith return"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Veteran edge rusher Za\u2019Darius Smith said in June that he\u2019d like to return to the Lions for the 2025 season, but he remains a free agent a couple of weeks into training camp.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/ny\/api\/res\/1.2\/wq2yDqOaa1DGAB0EievQYA--\/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTY0MDtoPTQyNztjZj13ZWJw\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/detroit_free_press_usa_today_sports_articles_655\/9e13a4a613668c1e153ba2430303099a\" alt=\"Detroit Lions 'couldn't afford' to keep Za'Darius Smith, open to a return -  Yahoo Sports\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The door to coming back to Detroit is not closed, however. General Manager Brad Holmes said on 97.1 The Ticket on Wednesday that they have remained in touch with Smith and that they\u2019re amenable to running it back with a player they acquired in a trade last season.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/GettyImages-2185284364-1.jpg?quality=65&amp;strip=all&amp;w=780\" alt=\"Lions Insider Shares Update on Plans to Bring Back Pro Bowl Edge Rusher\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u201cZa\u2019Darius did a lot of good things last year for us and we said we\u2019re going to keep in contact with his agent, but everything\u2019s not just one-sided,\u201d Holmes said. \u201cZa\u2019Darius has expectations, the team has expectations, so sometimes it takes a while for those things to get on the same page. Especially a guy that\u2019s been in the league as long as he has, I\u2019m not saying that he doesn\u2019t want to be in training camp, but if he misses some time, there\u2019s obviously still interest there and we\u2019ve been keeping in touch.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Smith had four sacks in eight games for the Lions after coming over from Cleveland. Given Holmes\u2019s comments, it seems like any return will wait until the start of the season is a little closer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Veteran edge rusher Za&#8217;Darius Smith said in June that he&#8217;d like to return to the Lions for the 2025 season, but he remains a free agent a couple of weeks into training camp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-detroit-lions"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>NEWS: Lions still have interest in Za&#039;Darius Smith return - Breaking News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/breakingnews.azontree.com\/?p=29776\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NEWS: Lions still have interest in Za&#039;Darius Smith return - 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