Smith on Smith: A fan's (and distant relative's?) ode to the Hitman
Guest columnist Josh Smith writes about one of his favorite players before possibly his last game
Guest Columnist Note: Joshua R. Smith, a longtime Vikings fan, is the sports editor at The Frederick News-Post in Maryland. For more of his work, visit his Substack: Life of a Smith.
By Josh Smith
On Christmas Day, as the Minnesota Vikings wrapped up the win and Harrison Smith was collecting his flowers, it was like I was celebrating with family.
Big-time sports have a tendency to fill followers with illogical ideations of connectedness. We contrive imaginary one-sided bonds with random people employed by teams that are glued to our identities.
It makes zero sense. It feels feeble-minded. But we can’t help it.
I’m guilty. Whenever one of his patented splashes has occurred over the past 14 years, I’d hear a broadcaster announce this splendid gentleman as the culprit, I’d see the letters spell it out on his back and I’d feel a rush of pride courses through my blood.
SMITH!
I don’t just root for the Vikings’ veteran safety. Unbeknownst to him, I have also claimed him as a brother.
Check my byline. I am a Smith, too. One of about 2.5 million in the country. It’s something else that’s glued to my identity that I have no control over. Much like my sports fandom.
You probably personally know a Smith or 12. On my little street alone, there are three sets of us. Might be more, but who talks to their neighbors? Regardless, we have the United States’ most common surname, a fact I’ve come to embrace.
I love to meet new Smiths. I pull for Smiths. I get pumped when my Vikings draft or sign Smiths. While playing “Madden” in 1994, I replaced starting defensive end Roy Barker with a backup because his name was Fernando Smith. Robert Smith holds a special place in my heart. Onterrio Smith was carving a spot there, too, until he ushered a prosthetic product into the national consciousness that whizzed all over our good name. I stood staunchly on the Irv Smith Jr. bandwagon no matter how badly that wagon conked out.
So, you can imagine how I’ve felt watching Harrison Smith steadily become one of the franchise’s most dependable, loyal, all-time greats — doing so in a way that is both in line with and at odds with his (our) ordinary surname.
Meaning, he has been both easy to overlook and difficult to ignore.
I like to put myself in that same Smith Subdivision.
What was it I said about illogical ideations of connectedness?
Quintessentially Smith
Whatever.
Harrison, a playmaking, omnipresent safety, might be the most professionally versatile Smith alive, perhaps barely edging Phyllida Crowley Smith, an English ballerina, theatre actress and choreographer.
I learned of her on a Wikipedia “notable” Smiths list — a list, mind you, that also includes Irv Smith Jr. but inconceivably excludes that playmaking, omnipresent Vikings safety.
This is a crime. Because Harrison isn’t just notable — he is quintessentially Smith.
What do I mean?
Well, Smith is a name derived from the word smite, which, when boiled down, essentially means to strike or hit.
Harrison is the Hitman. He strikes fear in opposition as an icy assassin of offensive play design. A calculated agent of defensive disguise and disruption.
I mean, he’s gotta be related to me. Why? I also serve the Vikings as a cool and calculated Smith — because I make sure to superstitiously freeze in the same seated position when things are going well for them as I watch on game days.
Harrison is like the ultimate smiter, someone who attacks suddenly or injuriously. His movements get into the head of opponents, coercing reactions he turns into his advantage.
He possesses plenty of gifts in his 6-foot-2, 211-pound body, but his superiority is derived from his brain. Watching him play over the years, you can almost see his football intellect, as if it’s a physical trait.
He’s up at the line of scrimmage, threatening to burst into the backfield. NO! He’s dropping to the deep middle to break up a pass. He’s everywhere all at once in Minnesota’s defense.
Like Smiths in the real world.
Even though we’re everywhere, I have always felt a special way about being a Smith. It’s instilled by family. There’s a tale my late grandfather relayed regarding the commonness and pride associated with our name. The tale has a debatable basis, and I don’t think it has ever been published in the long history of Smiths but, what the hell, I might as well tell it here:
Once upon a time, Pop said, everyone in the whole world had the last name Smith. But if you made a mistake, you were forced to change it.
Now, I’m not so sure Onterrio is still a Smith. But Phyllida, Harrison and me? We’re survivors.
Case closed
Speaking of survival, there were times in September and October when it seemed like Harrison’s legacy wouldn’t survive intact during this season he had agreed to play after calling coach Kevin O’Connell to say, “Hey bossman, I think I got one more in me.”
An undisclosed health issue kept Smith out of camp practice, then limited his snaps once games began. Glimpses of his usual greatness were few and far between.
There was valid talk that he made a mistake coming back as the season fell apart.
Eventually, though, he regained full health. Eventually, his dual ability as a calming influence and creator of chaos helped the defense find its groove, put the Jared Goffs of the world in a blender and salvage a respectable record from the clutches of a trio of calamitous quarterbacks.
At age 36, he was back to being the same, old Harrison Smith.
There are few like him in NFL annals. He might not be as distinguishable as Troy Polamalu or as intimidating as Brian Dawkins or as game-breaking as Ed Reed.
But how many other players fluidly combine similar attributes of all three of those bronze-busted men, especially in this era of offensive innovation?
And how many have at least 39 interceptions and 21.5 career sacks?
Just one: Ronde Barber, another Hall of Famer.
To boot: How many other players have a set, weekly coffee date with his head coach? How many are granted freedom within a defensive coordinator’s scheme to roam wherever he pleases, act on instincts and conduct so much confusion in the critical final moments leading up to the snap?
There are arguments for and against Harrison Smith’s Hall of Fame credentials based on the select few pure safeties who have been inducted (around 12) and the high bar they’ve set. Right now, he seems like a borderline candidate for a waiting room that is overflowing.
But … really?
Hopefully, anyone with a vote tuned in recently as Smith — at an advanced age and stage of NFL play — has been deployed by Brian Flores to toy with and knock off-kilter two premier modern-day offenses in a pair of nationally televised Vikings wins.
On Christmas Day, he was at his cold-blooded best, effectively killing the Lions’ season with a display that ended with him breaking character and blowing kisses to an adoring audience.
Come on. Case closed.
That performance was the kind of thing he’s done for so long and at such a level that it might be taken for granted, or at least gets sloughed off as impertinent because he hasn’t been doing it for a regular contender.
And, dammit, you can’t convince me that’s not some kind of subconscious Smith discrimination.
Perfect fit
Call me nonconformist or frugal, but a juncture of adulthood arrived years ago where it just felt cringy to purchase and don clothing so inherently and definitively tied to other individual men.
Especially ones I know so little of except for their athletic prowess and exploits. Particularly ones who now also happen to be significantly my junior, who truly aren’t anything more in my eyes than action figures scurrying on a field of play. Even if those figures’ actions are directly influential to teams that irrationally influence my state of mind.
So I swore off sports jerseys.
It was some point in the aughts. Around my 30th birthday. In my closet at that time hung a purple trio symbolizing, roundabout, three epochs of my favorite football team.
Cris Carter to Randy Moss to Adrian Peterson.
Add up their jersey numbers (80+84+28) and you get a figure (192) roughly representing the quantity of times, over several decades, that Carter, Moss, Peterson and their band of behemoths has let down, disappointed or smashed my hopes into Smithereens.
I seldom pulled on any of those gigantic jerseys anyway, for no other reason than they make this pencil-neck look like a complete dork.
Near the end of this period in question, the final jersey was adopted by my educator wife. It became her wardrobe for Team Sportswear Fridays at her elementary school, joining a multitude of kids in advertising their devotions.
Until, that is, we learned Peterson liked to beat his children with switches.
With magic happening in 2017, though, I got swept up. I couldn’t resist one of those Fanatics sales on Facebook. After all, the wife did need a new Friday jersey. And even if Harrison moved on from Minnesota, at least the name on the back was a match.
At such a mature phase of sports-fan adulthood, we look for more in our jersey reflections than just spectacular feats and explosive TDs. It becomes more about virtues we might strive to emulate. Trustworthiness. Leadership. Reliability. Certitude. Calmness. Wile.
So our new SMITH 22s were a perfect fit. Not that I break mine out more than once a year or so. I don’t need help looking like a dork — even while I’m alone, frozen on my couch in front of the Vikings game.
I might closet his jersey for awhile and return to it only for a special occasion.
It feels like the end for Harrison Smith’s career. I almost hope it is. He should let that Netflix gem stand as his coda. Because it was a blessed encapsulation of the player he has been. He’s given us enough. And, in 2026, it’s not like JJ McCarthy or Jacoby Brissett will give him the one thing his portfolio is missing.
But who knows what’s next. Maybe this Packers scrimmage is it for Harrison. Maybe he’ll surprise us and tell KOC he’s got yet another season in him. After Flores leaves for Dallas, maybe Harrison will take over for him and become the NFL’s first player/coordinator.
Would you put it past him?
No matter what, I’m certain that one day I will plan to make a pilgrimage to Canton, Ohio. And when I go, it will be to watch Harrison Smith don a gold jacket.
As for my attire, I’ll proudly wear the last jersey I’ll ever buy. The one with my last name. The one representing the common name of one of the most uncommon Vikings we’ve ever had the pleasure of watching.
And I’ll celebrate once again with family.
I could go on Ancestry.com and research bloodlines to see where/if we’re related. But, given the surplus of Smiths, that would take longer than it’s taken the Vikings to win a Super Bowl.
Whatever. I’ll admit it: In the wide world of us survivors, I’m probably not related to Harrison.
But to a Smith fan like me, it’s all relative.