WATCH: New Cowboys Aldon Smith From 'Sleeping Under A Car' to 'In The Gym'
FRISCO - Aldon Smith's low point was a literal low. "Rock-bottom,'' for him, was "a really dark place'' in which he was "sleeping under a car.''
Aldon Smith’s high point? A reflection on that is on video, too, as we get to see the new Dallas Cowboys signee on a treadmill, looking every bit the "287-pound monster'' that journalist Jay Glazer is touting him to be after a lengthy and horrific battle with substance abuse that has now taken him to a hoped-for reinstatement in the NFL.
“I was in a really dark place,'' Smith tells Glazer in a FOX telecast. "I didn’t have a lot of value for how I thought about myself ... I was sleeping under a car on some nights. My sickness took me there. ... And I had a home to sleep in ...''
"But I was in such a dark place that I didn’t see myself deserving anything other than that.''
That was in 2018, and the "dark place'' Smith found himself in was so different from his NFL beginning, when as a first-round pick of the Niners in 20... he recorded 33.5 sacks in his first 32 games ... but then started to come unraveled with a series of frightening conflicts that got him in serious trouble with the law, and with the NFL.
The Cowboys, hoping he'll be reinstated, signed Smith last week to a one-year contract worth up to $4 million. They are confident that Smith, now 30, can benefit from the fact that his old Niners coach, Jim Tomsula, will be his D-line coach in Dallas, that his agent Ron Slavin's DFW base can help guide him, and that his eight months of sobriety, his Glazer-driven connection with the military vets who've touched his heart, and the work in the Unbreakable gym in L.A. - where Glazer says he's muscled up from 260 to 287 and is ripping bolted-down gym equipment off the walls - will reach a new high point.
"I wanted to surround myself with people who I felt that connection with,'' Smith said. "The pieces fit.”
