Under investigation for a bomb threat and facing felony charges for weapons and crashing his car, Aldon Smith is in trouble.
And the San Francisco 49ers linebacker may be sidelined all year in order to deal with it, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
The newspaper's storied sports columnist Tim Kawakami says that "multiple" "decision-makers" at the team have lost their patience with the talented but troubled Smith.
Smith is facing felony weapons charges and was also arrested for DUI, in separate incidents, before Sunday's bomb threat imbroglio at LAX.
Before that, the team was behind Smith, Kawakami said. Now? "It's a very, very different tone now," he wrote. "Starkly different."
The 49ers may be waiting for the NFL to mete out punishment before taking action, the newspaper reported.
Smith is due in court on April 29. The 49ers can pick him up for the 2015 season for $9.75 million in 2015. They are "very unlikely to do that," Kawakami writes, but they're also not figuring to let him go before 2014 begins. That would mean at least $3 million paid out to Smith.
Local
In a twist, cornerback Chris Culliver was to board the same Southwest Airlines flight that Smith nearly derailed with his threats of a bomb.
