SportsLine has learned that Smith, an Athens, Ga., native and one of the most popular players in recent team history, has reached a contract accord with the Carolina Panthers.

The five-year contract is worth just more than $20 million and includes a signing bonus of between $4 million and $5 million, two sources confirmed for SportsLine. The Panthers outbid the Green Bay Packers. The Falcons, who monitored the negotiations, were not a factor at the end.

Smith, 30, was arguably the top defensive end available among unrestricted free agents. While he would have ranked in the top group anyway, his stock was further enhanced when most of the free-agent ends who teams might have considered superior to him were designated as "franchise" players by their current teams.

The second-leading sacker in franchise history, Smith was drafted by the Falcons in the second round of the 1992 lottery. The former Tennessee standout spent the first two seasons of his career bouncing back and forth between linebacker and defensive end, but finally flourished when allowed to concentrate on the latter position. Viewed primarily as an undersized and one-dimensional player who could only rush the quarterback, he worked hard to make himself an equally effective force against the run.

Few players in the league perform with Smith's trademark intensity, and the teams interested in him as a free agent all allowed that they wanted him to bring that type of attitude to their club. In his early years, Smith unfairly was tagged as a dirty player and cheap-shot artist, but opponents came to realize he simply plays hard on every snap.

Chuck Smith, widely regarded as a 'motor' player, should be no stranger to Carolina fans.(Allsport)

There are some ironies to Smith's departure for Carolina. He will now face the Falcons, whom he regarded from the time he was a child as his hometown team, twice yearly in the NFC West and will be forced to play against Atlanta left tackle Bob Whitfield, one of his closest friends. Also he was long regarded, because of a hit against former Panthers quarterback Kerry Collins, as a sort of outlaw by Carolina fans.

In his eight seasons in Atlanta, he played in 123 regular-season games with 86 starts. He totaled 517 tackles, including more than 70 tackles in each of the last five seasons, and 58 1/2 sacks. He notched double-digit sacks in 1994, '97 and '99, with a high of 12 in 1997. The four starters on the Carolina defensive line in 1999 totaled just six sacks. Carolina also signed former St. Louis Rams backup defensive end Jay Williams on Wednesday.

Ironically, the current Atlanta regime never regarded Smith as highly as past ones did and Atlanta didn't even make a substantive attempt to re-sign him. The Falcons have already paid out more than $20 million in signing bonuses the past two weeks -- including $7.5 million to cornerback Ashley Ambrose and $4.5 million to wide receiver Shawn Jefferson last Friday -- and apparently already decided before free agency began that retaining Smith was not a high priority.