As is normally the case with the Bengals, playing time is hard to come by for rookies.
Between the team preferring to slowly acclimate players to pro football and having depth at just about every position, guys like Derron Smith rarely see the field as rookies. With Reggie Nelson, George Iloka and Shawn Williams taking up nearly all of the snaps, there wasn't much room for anyone else to make an impact in the back end of Cincy's secondary in 2015, including Smith.
But now that Nelson is gone and Smith has been in the system for a year, he's poised for a jump in production.