Playing in the biggest regular season game of the NFL season was not on Za’Darius Smith’s radar at the start of the season, but he’s ready to embrace the opportunity Sunday night against his former team.

Smith, a midseason trade acquisition before the Week 10 trade deadline, will line up on the edge of the defensive line for the Detroit Lions in the Week 18 showdown against the Minnesota Vikings, one of his four former teams before Detroit.

The winner of the Lions-Vikings showdown will earn the NFC top seed and win the NFC North.

“I wasn’t thinking about this in October man,” Smith told the Free Press. “So it’s just a blessing to be in this situation, to be able to fight for a first-round bye and the No. 1 seed.”

Smith has spent five of his 10-year NFL career on three different NFC North teams, including now the Lions. Smith signed as a free agent to the Green Bay Packers in 2019 and was a two-time Pro Bowler in three seasons. Green Bay released him in the 2022 offseason, leading to his signing with the Vikings for one season, where he earned a third Pro Bowl nod.

The Lions could’ve clinched the No. 1 seed last week if the Packers had beat the Vikings plus a Detroit win over the San Francisco 49ers on Monday night. But the Vikings beat Green Bay 27-25 and set up the winner-take-all showdown. Smith said he was happy with the result to set up the monumental finale.

“I was talking about it last week if Green Bay would have beat them, we would’ve gotten the division,” Smith said. “But I was telling everybody, ‘man, I’d rather have the division on this game’. Week 18, at home, 8 p.m., night game — the whole world will be watching. … You’re gonna get a lot of fire out of me for this game.”

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The Vikings traded him to Cleveland in 2023 for a fifth-round pick where he had 10½ sacks in 25 games before being shipped to Detroit as extra reinforcements at this year’s deadline.

“There’s a couple of things that I still know about (Minnesota’s) guys on the offensive side of the ball,” Smith said. “Hopefully I’ll be able to use some of them keys for this game. But, you know, it’s all love man.”

He has played rotationally as one of the main pass rushers on Detroit’s defensive line ravaged by injury, including to key starters on the edge like Aidan Hutchinson. In seven games with Detroit, Smith has six starts with three sacks, two tackles for loss, eight quarterback hits and nine combined tackles.

His time on the field has varied from just under half of defensive stops in games like the win over the Green Bay Packers to around 80% of snaps a week before on Thanksgiving against the Chicago Bears.

Smith said the circumstances of playing against the Vikings are “basically the same” as playing against the Packers, but he still wants to beat his former team. The Packers cut Smith after he only appeared in one game in 2021, while the Vikings fulfilled his trade request by sending him to a new team in Cleveland.

“The cut and the trade is totally different,” Smith said. “A trade is something that I had asked for from the Vikings. So I feel like now to go back and play them, it’s a little revenge. To play the Packers, they cut me too, so it’s basically the same.”

The Lions will need the best from Smith against Minnesota as Sunday as they search for more impact from the pass rush. Detroit ranks in the bottom-five in sack rate (6.2%), which has plummeted during the season since Hutchinson went down. The Vikings offense has allowed 47 sacks this season for an 8.48% sack rate.

Earlier on Friday, coach Dan Campbell said he wasn’t sure how much Smith could use his past experience in Minnesota as fuel, but said that feeling exists in every player who lines up against a former team.

“I think you’re going to use some of those,” Campbell said. “That’s why some of these guest captains you have, they’re going to go out for the coin toss against an old opponent.

“Now, Za’Darius has been at Green Bay and he’s been at Minnesota. But I think it’s always special when you play one of your old teams, when you were there before you just — I don’t know, it just brings a little extra something to it. And so, we know that’s there, he knows that’s there.”