I realize that the organization's not thrilled with him, but I didn't know things were this bad between Steve Smith and the Panthers. The following slightly shocking revelation comes from Hashmarks:

There have been rumblings out of Panthers camp that club officials are fed up with Smith's actions (not just the latest incident) and are at least considering the idea of dealing him to another team.

The idea of trading one of the best receivers in football seems far-fetched, but Smith has become a divisive force on the team. One Panthers source said that several defensive backs were walking around after the recent incident saying that if management didn't discipline Smith, they would.

First, let's take it easy there, tough guy. If a Panthers defensive back was going to "discipline" Smith, he'd have to catch him first. Considering that the Panthers gave up a 62.8% completion rate last year, I don't know if they're in a position to claim that they're going to catch and discipline anybody.

Back to the topic at hand, though. I have no idea what other of Smith's "actions" the Panthers find objectionable. I know he's a guy who likes to talk, and obviously, he's got a bit of a temper, but I didn't know that this was an ongoing problem. As far as I knew, Smith was a good, albeit talkative, soldier.

And since I don't know these things, maybe I'm not the right guy to be giving advice to the Panthers, but my philosophy is this: Teams are better off with great players than they are without them, and Steve Smith is a great player. If he rates a 10 on the scale of importance to the Panthers offense, Jake Delhomme's a 7.5, and everyone else is about a 2.

So if the decision was mine to make, Smith would have to be one seriously messed up attitude before I'd consider parting ways with him. If he ran around training camp every day like Alex from A Clockwork Orange, I'd consider trading him. Anything short of that, though, and he'd probably be safe.