After trade demand, Bears take Roquan Smith off PUP list

One day after he demanded a trade with a 343-word statement that accused his bosses of negotiating in bad faith, Roquan Smith was taken off the Bears’ physically unable-to-perform list.

SHARE After trade demand, Bears take Roquan Smith off PUP list
Bears linebacker Roquan Smith plays against the Ravens last year.

Bears linebacker Roquan Smith plays against the Ravens last year.

Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

One day after he demanded a trade with a 343-word statement that accused his bosses of negotiating in bad faith, Roquan Smith was taken off the Bears’ physically unable to perform list.

The Bears had put him on PUP to begin training camp. Head coach Matt Eberflus claimed that Smith had an injury they discovered when he checked into camp — but refused to specify what it was.

Now the Bears are making no such team. They’re telling the league that Smith is able to practice — and that if he doesn’t, it’s because of a choice he made.

The league does not mandate teams to fine players who, like Smith, is a “hold-in” and attending meetings at Halas Hall.

He watched practice Wednesday, the same way he had all year.

It’s unlikely that Smith returns to practice Thursday.

Smith’s statement Tuesday escalated a situation that had simmered since April, when Smith — who said at the time he wanted to stay with the Bears — began talking about a contract extension with the first-year general manager. Smith does not have an agent and, according to his statement Tuesday, took low contract offers personally. In a letter he released Tuesday morning, just hours before “Family Fest” at Soldier Field, Smith said Bears GM Ryan Poles had “refused to negotiate in good faith” and the new regime’s “focus had been on trying to take advantage of me.”

Smith is entering the fifth and final year of his rookie deal and wants a deal similar to — if not higher than — the roughly 5-year, $100 million contacts given the Colts’ Shaquille Leonard and the 49ers’ Fred Warner last year.

Smith, though, doesn’t have significant leverage. The Bears can make him play this season and then give him the franchise tag in 2023, but both sides would be more comfortable with a contract extension.

“Right now my intentions are to sign Roquan to this team,” Poles said Tuesday. “And we’re going to take it day-by-day. At the end of the day we’ve got to do what’s best for this organization. But my intentions are to make sure Roquan Smith’s on this team.”

The Latest
The man was shot in the left eye area in the 5700 block of South Christiana Avenue on the city’s Southwest Side.
Most women who seek abortions are women of color, especially Black women. Restricting access to mifepristone, as a case now before the Supreme Court seeks to do, would worsen racial health disparities.
The Bears have spent months studying the draft. They’ll spend the next one plotting what could happen.
Woman is getting anxious about how often she has to host her husband’s hunting buddy and his wife, who don’t contribute at all to mealtimes.
He launched a campaign against a proposed neo-Nazis march at a time the suburb was home to many Holocaust survivors. His rabbi at Skokie Central Congregation urged Jews to ignore the Nazis. “I jumped up and said, ‘No, Rabbi. We will not stay home and close the windows.’ ”