Fred Smoot played his own version of “Dancing with the Stars.” The Washington cornerback staggered towards the Dallas sideline on Sunday after taking a knee to his helmet, “the lights” twinkling around him pointing the wrong way.
“The three brain cells in my head, I lost one for a minute,” Smoot joked Wednesday. “It’s lights. If you get hard hit, the person who lays the hit gets dizzy too. They’ll see a little stars, too. But you get a hard head and adapt to it. I’ve seen [the lights] many times.”
Football players love talking about the biggest hits delivered and received. You’re not a baller until counting stars that double as badges of honor. Get up and keep playing. Don’t rub it. Don’t show the pain. You’ll laugh about it later.
Like the time Redskins quarterback Jason Campbell was knocked so silly he wandered behind right guard Randy Thomas for the snap.
“Randy turned around and said, ‘What are you doing?’” Campbell said. “You get those big, strong fast guys … come full speed. It’s getting to the point now where it’s like a mini car crash. It’s like running into stone walls week in, week out.”
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolled for kick returner Rock Cartwright last season against the New York Giants.
“My brain vibrated like a bell when it shakes. It took me 10 minutes to get back to myself,” he said. “I wish I could see what happens to the inside of your body when hit like that.”
It probably would look fuzzy just like the outside when players see things in slow motion, blurred and just flat-out weird. It’s like those old Bugs Bunny cartoons where Elmer Fudd tries grabbing the stars circling his head.
“Sometimes you get dizzy for a little bit when your head hits the turf hard,” Campbell said. “You try to refocus and get back in there.”
Coach Jim Zorn joked Smoot woke up in Ashburn, where the team trains, after lying on the Cowboys turf for a long moment.
“I didn’t know for a minute,” Smoot said. “The big thing is to get the focus back. Then it’s how long before you go back in.”
Smoot is 5-foot-11, 185 pounds. Not the most imposing figure, he’s often challenged by fans over handling game’s violence.
“I tell anybody trade jobs with me for a week and see how you like it,” Smoot said. “People think we just show up and play football on Sundays and knock each other’s brains out, but it’s more than that.”
But could the Average Joe, saying “quit being a sissy,” take such hits?
“It depends on where you get that Average Joe from,” Smoot said. “You get that average Joe from Southeast [Washington], he can play a little bit.”
And those columnists in the press box?
“He can’t do it,” Smoot said. “He’ll lay there and wait on the stretcher to get him.”
Ouch.
Rick Snider has covered local sports since 1978. Contact him at [email protected].
