Defensive Back Returns on Futures Contract

Maurice Smith spent two brief stints on the practice squad early in the regular season.

Maurice Smith came and went – and came and went – in fairly short order during the 2020 season.

Now, he has come back.

The Tennessee Titans signed the 25-year-old defensive back to a futures contract Monday. That makes him the 19th different player – the first defensive back – the team has added for 2021 since the playoff loss to Baltimore last month. All but four of them spent time with the Titans in 2020.

Smith was added to the practice squad on Sept. 17, days after the Week 1 victory at Denver, released four days later and then re-signed to the practice squad. He was brought back on Sept. 29 and released again on Oct. 20, two days after the team improved to 5-0 and at the conclusion of Tennessee’s COVID-19 outbreak.

In all, he was on the practice squad for three games (Week 2 against Jacksonville, Weeks 5 and 6 against Buffalo and Houston, respectively) but never was a part of the active roster.

He failed to catch on with another team after Tennessee cut him the second time. That made 2020 the first time in his NFL career that he did not see any regular-season action.

Undrafted in 2017 after three seasons at Alabama (2013-15) and one at Georgia as a graduate transfer (2016), he has 15 games of NFL experience. He broke in with Miami, played six games as a rookie and seven more the following year. In 2019, he appeared in two contests with Washington, including his first career start (Dec. 29, 2019) in which he was sidelined by a concussion after eight plays.

Futures contracts do not go into effect until the start of the new league year in March.