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When Smith will join the team is hard to say.
After the New York Jets reached a contract agreement Monday with quarterback Sam Darnold, Smith became the lone unsigned pick from the 2018 draft class.
”We will continue to keep trying to do our best to make this thing happen,” Bears coach Matt Nagy said after Saturday’s practice. ”At the same time, what we need to do is we need to focus on who’s here right now, right? That’s the realism of it all.”
Cash is not the problem – at least in terms of how much Smith is to be paid. That amount is slotted for the eighth pick of the draft.
The stumbling block is whether the Bears should be allowed to take back guaranteed bonus money in the future from Smith if he is ever suspended for disciplinary reasons, including a violation of the league’s new rule preventing players from leading with their helmets.
”Well, for both sides, it’s more of a language deal, a language-type deal,” Nagy said.
Asked specifically if the issue is the helmet rule, Nagy said: ”That’s part of the issue with it. As far as the details, I’m not going to get into all that right now. That wouldn’t be fair to either party, but there’s some of that to it.”
The new rule stipulates a player will be penalized for lowering his head to initiate and make contact with his helmet. The player will be ejected and could be subject to suspension if he is determined to have lowered his helmet to ”establish a linear body posture.”
The Bears had a somewhat similar situation last year with Trevathan when he was suspended for an illegal hit on Packers wide receiver Davante Adams.
In that instance, Chicago management never sought to reclaim any bonus money given to Trevathan.
”They were on my side about the hit against Green Bay Patrick Roy Jersey ,” Trevathan said.
As a result, Trevathan remained optimistic his new teammate will soon be in camp.
”So I’m sure they’ll work it out,” Trevathan said. ”It’s just details within a contract. We want him here.”
Trevathan said he has been in contact with Smith during the holdout.
”I’ve been talking to him, just making sure as a person he was all right, he’s not fading away from the game that he loves,” Trevathan said. ”I just make sure that he’s all right. I’ve been through some stuff.
”I’m pretty sure he wants to take care of himself and he wants to get back in. I’m sure he’s missing just as much as we are.”
Smith was fully involved in off-season work with the Bears, so Trevathan doubts his teammate will have any trouble catching up after the holdout ends.
Chicago has an extra preseason game this season, so Smith’s holdout has come at a time when the Bears normally wouldn’t have been in training camp. They open preseason Thursday night in Canton, Ohio, against the Baltimore Ravens in the Hall of Fame Game.
The Bears have traditionally been among the first teams to get all their draft picks signed. In one 10-year stretch, they were the first team to sign all their picks nine times.
They haven’t had a holdout of note since Cedric Benson missed 36 days in 2005.
Nick Kwiatkoski and John Timu have taken most of the snaps at inside linebacker during training camp with the first team. Trevathan is practicing on a limited basis until he’s 100 percent healthy.
Kwiatkoski has earned Nagy’s respect in scrimmages. A third-year player, Kwiatkoski had been a reserve but played extensively each of his first two years because of injuries and suspensions to Trevathan and former Bear Jerrell Freeman.
”I love his mentality,” Nagy said of Kwiatkoski. ”He didn’t blink when we drafted Roquan. He stepped right on in there and put the horse blinders on and went after it.”
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The Tampa Bay Lightning stormed back in the Eastern Conference final against the Washington Capitals, thanks in part to a thriving power play and suddenly reliable penalty-killing unit.
To regain control of the best-of-seven matchup that continues Saturday night Semyon Varlamov Jersey , the Caps need a lift from their special teams, too.
”The series is tied 2-2,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. ”It doesn’t matter how you got there.”
Tampa Bay, which has taken two straight in a series in which the home team has yet to win, believes it hasn’t played its best.
Washington was dominant in winning twice on the road, then sputtered – particularly on the Alex Ovechkin-led power play – while dropping the next two games at home.
”I think we look at it realistically,” Capitals coach Barry Trotz said. ”I mean, I said to everybody in September, even yesterday, and they’re saying the same thing: Sign me up. Best-of-three, got a chance to maybe go to the Stanley Cup Final, sign me up.
”I don’t think anybody thought the series would go four straight or anything like that. There’s two really high-quality teams that are going to go nose-to-nose,” Trotz added. ”There’s twists and turns in the road sometimes. … It’s just another layer of adversity. This group has taken on any adversity that has been thrown its way all year.”
Since yielding three power-play goals in the first two games of the series, two of them in the closing seconds of a period Justin Faulk Jersey , the Lightning have gone 7-for-7 killing penalties over the past two games.
Not bad for a team that had one of the most potent power plays (third, 23.9 percent) in the NHL during the regular season, while also ranking among the league’s worst at killing penalties (28th, 76.1 percent).
Lightning captain Steven Stamkos has a power-play goal in each of the first four games of the conference final.
Six of his seven goals this postseason have come in man-advantage situations, including his franchise-best 11th career playoff power-play goal (snapping a tie with Martin St. Louis) in Game 4 on Thursday night.
”Desperation. Realizing how important it is, especially in this series against the group that they have,” Stamkos said of the improved play on the penalty kill.
”It starts with the goaltending, and then it starts with guys willing to sacrifice. I think it’s been a challenge,” Stamkos added. ”When the power play is going well like we are, the PK wants to step up and be just as good, and vice versa when it’s the other way. … It’s been a lot of fun to watch.”
Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 36 of 38 shots in Game 4. He has bounced back nicely since allowing 10 goals over five periods in the first two games.
Center Nicklas Backstrom, who returned to Washington’s lineup Thursday night after missing four games with a hand injury, thinks the Capitals need to create more traffic in front of the Lightning goaltender.
”He’s actually too good of a goalie if you’re going to shoot from outside with no traffic, so maybe we can get some more traffic and find these rebounds like we did the first couple of games John Hayden Jersey ,” Backstrom said.
”We have pretty good chances. We just don’t execute,” Ovechkin said after the Washington power play was shut out for the second straight game. ”We tried. … We had so (many) shots, and we just didn’t score one more goal.”
But just as Tampa Bay embraced the challenge of battling its way back into the series after losing Games 1 and 2, the Capitals are excited about the opportunity ahead, beginning Saturday night.
Not only is Washington is 7-1 on the road this postseason, but the Caps went on eliminate Columbus in the first round and Pittsburgh in the conference semifinal in six games after those series were each tied at 2.
”I think we’ve played three out of the four games pretty well,” Trotz said. ”I’m not disappointed at all.”
The Lightning are confident, too.
”Clearly home-ice advantage has been a disadvantage in this series,” Cooper said. ”Now, in saying that, I’d rather have Game 5 at home. I believe we’ll be a different team here than we showed up in Game 1 and 2.”
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