Smith posted 33.5 sacks in his first 32 NFL games. No one has matched that pace since.
The San Francisco 49ers announced Saturday evening that former defensive end Aldon Smith had died. He was 36. No cause of death was given. The team described the passing as sudden and tragic, and the statement carried the weight of an organization mourning someone who had given it some of its most memorable football.
Smith was drafted seventh overall by San Francisco in 2011 out of the University of Missouri. Within two seasons he had rewritten what a pass rusher could look like in the modern NFL. By the time everything came undone, the sport had already lost something it would not easily replace.
What he did on a football field
Smith recorded 14 sacks in his rookie season, the second-most by any rookie in NFL history. The following year he posted 19.5 sacks, a franchise record for San Francisco that still stands. Over his first 32 regular-season games he had accumulated 33.5 sacks, a rate no one in the modern era had managed before him.
That 49ers defense was built around several elite players, including Hall of Famer Patrick Willis, but Smith was the most disruptive piece. The unit ranked second in the NFL in points allowed during the 2012 season and carried San Francisco to Super Bowl XLVII, where the team fell to the Baltimore Ravens. Smith earned First Team All-Pro honors that year and appeared bound for a career that would eventually land him in Canton.
Over four seasons with the 49ers, he played in 50 games and finished with 44 sacks, 152 tackles, five forced fumbles, one interception, and five passes defended. Those numbers reflect only part of what he was capable of.
When things started to fall apart
The off-field problems began accumulating before his second season was even finished. A weapons charge stemming from an incident at a house party where he was stabbed came in 2012. A DUI arrest followed in 2013, leading to a stint in rehab and a nine-game suspension that carried into 2014. Another arrest at Los Angeles International Airport came that same year.
The 49ers released him before the 2015 season following a third DUI, which also involved an alleged hit-and-run. He signed with the Oakland Raiders, played a full season, and then disappeared from the NFL entirely for four years as an indefinite suspension took effect and his off-field incidents continued. He later pleaded guilty to domestic violence charges during that period. He acknowledged in interviews that there were stretches where he slept in his car.
Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys gave him one more chance in 2020. He posted five sacks in 11 games and showed enough to suggest that something real still remained. The Seattle Seahawks signed him before the 2021 season and then released him following a battery arrest in August. He announced his retirement from the NFL in 2023.
What the league said when he was gone
Both the 49ers and the Raiders released statements Saturday. San Francisco spoke of his rookie season as one of the finest the NFL had ever seen and remembered the way he filled a room. The Raiders acknowledged the nine games he played in silver and black and called him a respected teammate.
Smith was 36 years old. No cause of death has been provided. The league that briefly had him at his peak, lost him to circumstance, and then watched him try to find his way back was left Saturday with a version of this story that has no clean ending.
He was one of the most gifted pass rushers the sport has ever produced. That much is not complicated. The rest of it is.