OrangeShadow
11-12-2005, 05:14 PM
Part 1
Publication:ESP; Date:Nov 21, 2005; Section:Features; Page:50
MASTER
BUILDER
WANT TO GO FROM PRACTICE SQUAD NOBODY TO NFL RECORD BREAKER? BRONCOS WIDEOUT ROD SMITH HAS THE PERFECT PLAN
Rod Smith's life has the plot of a self-help book, and every chapter of every self-respecting self-help book begins with a pithy anecdote. The formula calls for an easy-to-digest parable summarizing the subject's quirky rise to fortune, while sharing universal truths to employ in the never-ending journey to a better you.
Smith loves to tell the tale of the missing shoe. A few years back, during an off-season round of golf, Smith lost a sneaker off the back of a cart he shared with former Broncos teammate Ed
McCaffrey. Since it was McCaffrey's course, Smith badgered his fellow receiver to either find the shoe or buy him a new pair. It became an ongoing gag, until finally Smith returned from an off-season workout to find a new pair of shoes in his locker. They were black, and they were from the esteemed shoemaker Voit, and they were size 15, two full sizes too big. McCaffrey, it seems, knew not only how to find his local Kmart, but also how to find the bargain bin.
There were laughs all around. A pair of shoes to a pro athlete is like water to a fisherman-always there, always free. But the next day, something happened that nobody expected. Smith showed up for his workout-that was expected; he's never
missed one in 12 years-and changed into his workout clothes: shorts, T-shirt, socks and size-15, $6 black Voits.
Laughs all around again, but Smith kept wearing them until it really wasn't much of a joke anymore. “These feel good,” he told his teammates. “These are the next big thing, you just watch.”
Smith speaks in inspired, accelerating bursts, as if he's worried time will run out before he finishes his thought. His words run a familiar courseanecdotes followed by lessons learned followed by
italicized conclusions. Rod Smith's Rules for Life. He sounds less like a preacher than an infomercial.
And what self-help lesson did he teach McCaffrey?
You can't hustle a hustler.
THERE'S A monster of a house rising from a dirt pile, on five acres along a busy thoroughfare in Denver's swank Cherry Hills neighborhood. The project is part of Rod Smith Development, which counts the 35-year-old wide receiver as its owner
and general contractor. He's no mere name on a sign, either. Smith gathers every bid, hires every subcontractor, writes every check. He's not above hopping on a small crane to keep the work moving.
As he stands in front of his handiwork on a warm, October afternoon, Smith can't help but think how he got here. The improbable rise to glory is as self-help as it gets, the off-tackle play of the Tony Robbins playbook. Since entering the NFL as a practice-squad player in 1994, Smith has caught more passes for more yards than any undrafted player in history. His first signing bonus was $5,000, and he hit every off-season workout that year in part because it paid him an extra $60 for two hours of work. Before the 2002 season, he signed a contract with an $11 million bonus. Yet he drives a six-year-old Mercedes and a two-year-old Navigator, and teammates still tease him about the Honda Passport he drove through his first Super Bowl season in 1997.
Smith grew up without a father in the projects of Texarkana, Ark., the middle of Lydia Smith's five children, dependent on a monthly welfare check. He looks up at the turretlike entry of his soon-to-be, 10,000-square-foot, Florida-resortstyle palace, and says, “There were six of us, and we lived on $6,000 a year.” He shakes his head, repeating the number. “I've made more than that standing here talking to you.”
Now he's walking through the basement, pointing out the future homes of the golf simulator, the poker room and the movie theater that comes with its own concession stand. He mentions that he still cuts his own hair, a practice started when he was growing up. He asks: “How much money do you think I've saved over my life because I don't spend $20 every two weeks getting my hair cut?”
Which brings up another lesson:
If you forget where you came from, you won't know where you are.
SMITH WALKS a little crooked, and his six-foot frame is slight, almost wispy. He is, undoubtedly, the most unlikely of the 24 men who have gained 10,000 NFL receiving yards. What do you know about him, after all? Despite his lengthy career and Hall of Fame credentials, probably not much. Playing on teams known for quarterbacks (John Elway, Jake Plummer), a coach (Mike Shanahan)
and 1,000-yard backs (anyone who lines up), Smith's role sounds incongruous: he dominates the background.
In contrast to the preening divas of his position, he's an ascot-wearing patrician. “My opponents respect me not because I'm going to do some crazy-ass dance on them,” he says. “They respect me because I'm going to make a play that breaks their backs.”
He returned punts last year at age 34 and is the team's emergency QB. Says Shanahan, “I know if we run out of players and I need someone to run down and cover kickoffs, his hand would be the first one raised.”
Smith is a fanatical reader with three businessrelated bachelor's degrees from D2 Missouri Southern State and a near-obsessive desire to be viewed as more than a football player. “On
On the field or on the job site, Smith is a stickler for detail.
the plane, guys are watching Batman Begins,” Plummer says. “Rod is reading a finance book with a Hi-Liter in his hand.”
His peripatetic curiosity seems boundless. Seeking a lower-cost alternative to expensive stone walls to muffle traffic noise around his house, he found a product and liked it so much that he bought into the company. Teammates shook their heads when he drove the 115 miles south to Pueblo to view a piece of property on an off-day two years ago. He bought that, too.
Smith's desire to overcome the stigma of the
undrafted sometimes borders on the compulsive. Early in his practice-squad year, he asked thenhead coach Wade Phillips if he could go to road games. It's not customary for practice-squadders to travel, but Smith felt cheated. “This was my job, and I didn't want to be hanging out at clubs.”
He kept his own statistics that year. Practice statistics. He shrugs. “Those were my games. That's all I had.”
The next year he worked with receivers coach Mike Heimerdinger, who came in with the meticu
lous Shanahan when Phillips was fired. Smith became a threat on deep routes by learning to keep his shoulders closed while running down long balls, a practice that earned him an extra half-yard. The off-season conditioning made him stronger against the bumpand-run, and he employed his knowledge as a former quarterback, which he was recruited to play in college, to hone his route-running.
Here's the kind of information that escapes public notice but earns raves in the league: Smith understands timing, a quality that makes him one of the best at getting open when he is the second or third option on a play. “It's subtle,” Plummer says, “but if he's the third guy, he knows I have to make two pumps before I get to him. Some guys get open right away, then come back to the huddle
and say, I was open.' I say, Maybe, but not when I needed you to be.' ”
Publication:ESP; Date:Nov 21, 2005; Section:Features; Page:50
MASTER
BUILDER
WANT TO GO FROM PRACTICE SQUAD NOBODY TO NFL RECORD BREAKER? BRONCOS WIDEOUT ROD SMITH HAS THE PERFECT PLAN
Rod Smith's life has the plot of a self-help book, and every chapter of every self-respecting self-help book begins with a pithy anecdote. The formula calls for an easy-to-digest parable summarizing the subject's quirky rise to fortune, while sharing universal truths to employ in the never-ending journey to a better you.
Smith loves to tell the tale of the missing shoe. A few years back, during an off-season round of golf, Smith lost a sneaker off the back of a cart he shared with former Broncos teammate Ed
McCaffrey. Since it was McCaffrey's course, Smith badgered his fellow receiver to either find the shoe or buy him a new pair. It became an ongoing gag, until finally Smith returned from an off-season workout to find a new pair of shoes in his locker. They were black, and they were from the esteemed shoemaker Voit, and they were size 15, two full sizes too big. McCaffrey, it seems, knew not only how to find his local Kmart, but also how to find the bargain bin.
There were laughs all around. A pair of shoes to a pro athlete is like water to a fisherman-always there, always free. But the next day, something happened that nobody expected. Smith showed up for his workout-that was expected; he's never
missed one in 12 years-and changed into his workout clothes: shorts, T-shirt, socks and size-15, $6 black Voits.
Laughs all around again, but Smith kept wearing them until it really wasn't much of a joke anymore. “These feel good,” he told his teammates. “These are the next big thing, you just watch.”
Smith speaks in inspired, accelerating bursts, as if he's worried time will run out before he finishes his thought. His words run a familiar courseanecdotes followed by lessons learned followed by
italicized conclusions. Rod Smith's Rules for Life. He sounds less like a preacher than an infomercial.
And what self-help lesson did he teach McCaffrey?
You can't hustle a hustler.
THERE'S A monster of a house rising from a dirt pile, on five acres along a busy thoroughfare in Denver's swank Cherry Hills neighborhood. The project is part of Rod Smith Development, which counts the 35-year-old wide receiver as its owner
and general contractor. He's no mere name on a sign, either. Smith gathers every bid, hires every subcontractor, writes every check. He's not above hopping on a small crane to keep the work moving.
As he stands in front of his handiwork on a warm, October afternoon, Smith can't help but think how he got here. The improbable rise to glory is as self-help as it gets, the off-tackle play of the Tony Robbins playbook. Since entering the NFL as a practice-squad player in 1994, Smith has caught more passes for more yards than any undrafted player in history. His first signing bonus was $5,000, and he hit every off-season workout that year in part because it paid him an extra $60 for two hours of work. Before the 2002 season, he signed a contract with an $11 million bonus. Yet he drives a six-year-old Mercedes and a two-year-old Navigator, and teammates still tease him about the Honda Passport he drove through his first Super Bowl season in 1997.
Smith grew up without a father in the projects of Texarkana, Ark., the middle of Lydia Smith's five children, dependent on a monthly welfare check. He looks up at the turretlike entry of his soon-to-be, 10,000-square-foot, Florida-resortstyle palace, and says, “There were six of us, and we lived on $6,000 a year.” He shakes his head, repeating the number. “I've made more than that standing here talking to you.”
Now he's walking through the basement, pointing out the future homes of the golf simulator, the poker room and the movie theater that comes with its own concession stand. He mentions that he still cuts his own hair, a practice started when he was growing up. He asks: “How much money do you think I've saved over my life because I don't spend $20 every two weeks getting my hair cut?”
Which brings up another lesson:
If you forget where you came from, you won't know where you are.
SMITH WALKS a little crooked, and his six-foot frame is slight, almost wispy. He is, undoubtedly, the most unlikely of the 24 men who have gained 10,000 NFL receiving yards. What do you know about him, after all? Despite his lengthy career and Hall of Fame credentials, probably not much. Playing on teams known for quarterbacks (John Elway, Jake Plummer), a coach (Mike Shanahan)
and 1,000-yard backs (anyone who lines up), Smith's role sounds incongruous: he dominates the background.
In contrast to the preening divas of his position, he's an ascot-wearing patrician. “My opponents respect me not because I'm going to do some crazy-ass dance on them,” he says. “They respect me because I'm going to make a play that breaks their backs.”
He returned punts last year at age 34 and is the team's emergency QB. Says Shanahan, “I know if we run out of players and I need someone to run down and cover kickoffs, his hand would be the first one raised.”
Smith is a fanatical reader with three businessrelated bachelor's degrees from D2 Missouri Southern State and a near-obsessive desire to be viewed as more than a football player. “On
On the field or on the job site, Smith is a stickler for detail.
the plane, guys are watching Batman Begins,” Plummer says. “Rod is reading a finance book with a Hi-Liter in his hand.”
His peripatetic curiosity seems boundless. Seeking a lower-cost alternative to expensive stone walls to muffle traffic noise around his house, he found a product and liked it so much that he bought into the company. Teammates shook their heads when he drove the 115 miles south to Pueblo to view a piece of property on an off-day two years ago. He bought that, too.
Smith's desire to overcome the stigma of the
undrafted sometimes borders on the compulsive. Early in his practice-squad year, he asked thenhead coach Wade Phillips if he could go to road games. It's not customary for practice-squadders to travel, but Smith felt cheated. “This was my job, and I didn't want to be hanging out at clubs.”
He kept his own statistics that year. Practice statistics. He shrugs. “Those were my games. That's all I had.”
The next year he worked with receivers coach Mike Heimerdinger, who came in with the meticu
lous Shanahan when Phillips was fired. Smith became a threat on deep routes by learning to keep his shoulders closed while running down long balls, a practice that earned him an extra half-yard. The off-season conditioning made him stronger against the bumpand-run, and he employed his knowledge as a former quarterback, which he was recruited to play in college, to hone his route-running.
Here's the kind of information that escapes public notice but earns raves in the league: Smith understands timing, a quality that makes him one of the best at getting open when he is the second or third option on a play. “It's subtle,” Plummer says, “but if he's the third guy, he knows I have to make two pumps before I get to him. Some guys get open right away, then come back to the huddle
and say, I was open.' I say, Maybe, but not when I needed you to be.' ”