As last year's trade deadline approached, with Aidan Hutchinson out, it's not an understatement to say the Detroit Lions were desperately in the market for an edge rusher. Za'Darius Smith pretty quickly surfaced as a fit, and on deadline day he was acquired from the Cleveland Browns.
Dating back to the start of last offseason, there has been a lot of bandwidth and digital ink spent on the Lions and the edge rusher position. Waiving Smith and re-signing Marcus Davenport immediately landed as not enough.
As could have been foreseen, Davenport got hurt again and he missed the last five games going into the bye week due to a chest injury.