Sielski: With Eagles, Smith out to show he's the same speedster he's always been
All right, Super Preppie, drop your pants. I'd like a word outside. Take off those khakis and that Banana Republic V-neck sweater, throw on some mesh shorts and a pair of light, low-cut Adidas, and let's get after this. Yeah, it's snowing. So what? You, t
All right, Super Preppie, drop your pants. I'd like a word outside. Take off those khakis and that Banana Republic V-neck sweater, throw on some mesh shorts and a pair of light, low-cut Adidas, and let's get after this. Yeah, it's snowing. So what? You, too, TV Guy. Loosen that tie, lose the blazer, and join us in the NovaCare Center parking lot. I'll stay in this sleek gray suit and these dress shoes, thank you very much. Even give you a 10-yard head start. Same with you, Middle-Aged Sports Scribe. You don't even have to change. That untucked Target button-down flapping over your belly is only going to billow in my wake anyway.
Torrey Smith couldn't very well have said that, could he? On Friday, the Eagles introduced him and Alshon Jeffery - the two wide receivers the team had signed to make things easier on Carson Wentz - and it took four questions, maybe five, for someone to ask Smith: Are you as fast as you once were?
Smith had run the 40-yard dash at the 2011 combine in 4.41 seconds. He'd had a terrific season in 2013 with the Baltimore Ravens: 65 receptions, 1,128 yards. He'd caught 11 touchdown passes the following season. He had made his mark in the NFL through his speed, through his ability to "take the top off a defense" (in the football parlance of our times). But his reception total has fallen every year since '13, and over two seasons with the San Francisco 49ers - including one under Chip Kelly - he caught just 53 passes. And he turned 28 in January, which isn't old in the NFL but isn't exactly young, either. And at that Friday news conference, there, in so many words, was the question that all elite athletes resent even if they don't admit it: So, you still got it?
"Absolutely," Smith said. "You want to race? We can go do it."
He was completely affable about the whole thing, really. But make no mistake: There was defiance in Smith's voice when he offered that tongue-in-cheek challenge. Smith and the Eagles agreed to a three-year contract that could earn him up to $15 million but in practical terms is just a one-year deal, because the Eagles hold a club option on each of the final two seasons. He will have to show them in 2017 that he's worth bringing back in 2018 and 2019.
He was willing to take that chance with the Eagles because of the presences of a few particular people. Wentz, for one. "You can see he still has that 'it' factor, and obviously he's still young," Smith said. "He's not perfect, but I know he has the potential to get it done."
Smith also has familiarity with and trust in two of the Eagles' top player-personnel executives, Joe Douglas and Andy Weidl, who were with the Baltimore Ravens in 2011, when the team drafted Smith in the second round. Douglas and Weidl had scouted Smith, knew his work ethic and strengths and weaknesses, and persuaded vice president Howie Roseman that Smith was a fit here. And if, in coaxing more production out of a receiver who had floundered under Kelly, Roseman derives the added satisfaction of getting one over on his old nemesis . . . well, Roseman couldn't very well say that Friday, could he?
In Smith's mind, though, Kelly wasn't the problem in San Francisco. The roster's talent, or overall lack of it, was.
"I loved Chip," he said. "Chip was a great guy. Learned a lot from him. I know that might make some folks here mad, but I have nothing bad to say about Chip Kelly. I thought there were things he did that worked very well. I just always think . . . it's a players' game, and sometimes, as players, when we execute, that call seems like the greatest play in the world. And when we don't, everything's terrible. . . .
"I don't think it's a matter of re-proving myself," Smith added. "Even when we were struggling, I knew I had the respect of the defense, based on certain coverages and based on that I always had the number-one corner on me. That was understood. I knew I had the respect there."
What he didn't have was a quarterback who could throw the ball down the field with any accuracy or sense of timing. Either Blaine Gabbert or Colin Kaepernick started each of the 49ers' 32 games over Smith's time with the team, and neither of them, in all likelihood, would have been a starter for any of the league's other 31 franchises. They targeted Smith just 103 times over those two seasons, and it doesn't go too far to say that on many occasions, when a particular play called for Smith to run a go route or a deep post, he might as well have just taken a knee.
"I can't speak about his personal experience in San Francisco, and I don't want to throw any other team under the bus from a performance standpoint," Douglas said, in effect doing what he did not want to do. "Obviously his targets fell down. I think his down-the-field targets fell down and production fell down, as well. So that was probably the main thing I saw."
He could have seen all those things just by looking at Smith's stat line. But the only way to know for certain whether Torrey Smith can run like he used to is to see him up close.
"I'll just tell you this," he said. "I haven't lost a step, and I can still play."
So, Sports Scribe. Are you finished stretching yet or what?