No longer a rookie, Roquan ready for takeoff

A year ago, when linebacker Roquan Smith talked to the media after his first practice as a Bear, he read a statement thanking police in Georgia for recovering stolen items from his car.

This time, he talked football from the start.

“It feels great just to be out here,” Smith said at last week’s OTA practices. “Our livelihood. [Being] out here — smell the green grass and going after each other a bit. That’s always great.”

This is already a new season for Smith. Last year he was a talented rookie — the eighth overall pick in the draft — getting acclimated to the NFL amid high expectations and learning a new defense that most of his teammates knew by heart. Then a contract holdout led to Smith missing most of training camp and the entire preseason.

After playing only eight snaps in the opener against the Packers — a pretty good accomplishment considering how much time he missed — Smith caught up quickly. He led the Bears with 121 tackles, with eight tackles for loss, five sacks and five pass breakups. He was named a Pro Bowl alternate.

Smith should have the wind at his back as he builds on that momentum in 2019. He has a year of NFL experience to lean on. He’s an established starter. He’s familiar with his teammates. And he figures to be ready to go from Day 1 of training camp. And while he’s learning the tweaks of the defense under new coordinator Chuck Pagano, so is everybody else.

“It’s definitely different,” said Smith, who turned 22 on April 8. “I feel like things have slowed down for me. But it’s all ball at the end of the day. I’m more comfortable.”

As a rookie last year, Smith deferred to veteran Danny Trevathan as the leader of their inside-linebacking tandem. But Smith’s development as a playmaker and player to watch on every down became more and more apparent as the season progressed.

It figures that at some point this season, Smith will emerge as a star and leader.

“I definitely think I can make a larger impact [this] year,” Smith said. “You can always get better. I feel like I can make more of an impact on every play.”

Already, Smith’s ability to pick up the nuances of Pagano’s defensive changes has made an impression.

“He’s one of the brightest, smartest guys I’ve been around for just a second-year player,’’ Pagano said. ‘‘He’s phenomenal. He’s very quiet. He doesn’t say much. He’d be a great poker player because you can never read what’s going on inside his head, and he doesn’t show a lot of emotion. But he’s absorbing everything. The guy doesn’t make mistakes. On the field, he does a lot of things you can’t coach.”

Smith came to the Bears as a likely plug-and-play draft pick.

“He was one of the best college linebackers I had ever seen,” said Mark DeLeone, the Bears’ first-year inside linebackers coach, who evaluated Smith at Georgia as the Chiefs’ inside linebackers coach last year.

Once he got in a rhythm, Smith was as good as advertised. But even as he excelled, it was easy to see how much more productive he could be with experience. Smith does so many things well, he doesn’t have a glaring weakness. But he can do everything at a much-higher level and react even more instinctively now that he has seen NFL offenses operate.

“I’m more so improving everything, not just one thing I’m focusing on,” Smith said.

“[Smith is] special,” DeLeone said. “You would hope that with any rookie there would be progress the more he played — which is what happened with him here because he got here late. You see a guy who’s natural. Some guys just kind of look like linebackers once you’re out there. He looks like a linebacker.”