Superstar or superhero, DeVonta Smith is no stranger to the big stage (2024)

Follow Chiefs vs Eagles live at the Super Bowl.

Maybe DeVonta Smith is a superhero. How else to explain a rail-thin, 170 pounds-on-a-good-day wide receiver fearlessly winning time and again over the middle of the field? Or the uncanny spatial awareness that allows him to contort his body in just the right way to get both feet down inbounds along the sideline?

Maybe the answer is that Smith simply patterns himself after a superhero. “A huge Batman fan,” Smith takes that cosplay to another level. His legs are adorned with tattoos of Batman, Bane and The Joker. No one on the team cares more about the quality of his suits. And when he was asked this week about how he’s spending his downtime during the Super Bowl craze, he said he just stays in his room and sleeps. No TV, no phone, no mountain views.

“I’m in complete darkness,” he said. “Complete darkness.”

Probably, the truth is less mysterious. The 24-year-old Smith is a private person with a small inner circle who is “real cautious of who I’m around.” There’s the player we see, who backed up a season in which he set the franchise record for rookie receiving yards with a second year in which he set the franchise record for wide receiver receptions. There’s the teammate the other Eagles see, who shows up at 5:30 a.m. to work through his circuit of tennis ball drills and then dominates bowling night with his fellow wide receivers. Then there’s the person whose desire and commitment to be great carried him from Amite City, La., to beanpole NFL superstar.

DeVonta Smith finished with most catches by an Eagles WR in a season in team history (95)

Second most overall behind Zach Ertz pic.twitter.com/lrB7uuyAh8

— John Clark (@JClarkNBCS) January 9, 2023

Against the Chiefs in the Super Bowl on Sunday, the Eagles will be counting on all three versions of Smith. There’s no one they can trust more in a big spot.

“I’m built for games like this,” Smith said. “I’ve been playing in games like this my whole life. For me, it’s just another game.”

A year ago, Smith was on-site in Los Angeles in the lead-up to the Super Bowl between the Rams and Bengals when he got a call from his quarterback. Jalen Hurts wanted Smith to know there was only one goal in mind that set the stage for their offseason ahead.

“Seeing Ja’Marr (Chase) and Joe (Burrow),” Smith recalled, “the things they did to get to the Super Bowl, it was like, we see what they do. We can do the same thing.

“One hundred percent I was with him. … I knew it was possible.”

It took one season to clear that hurdle. Now, Smith is preparing for another title game. Ho-hum. In college at Alabama, he played in three, not counting SEC championships and national semifinals. In the first, he caught the game-winning touchdown pass as a freshman. In the last, he set a record with 12 catches for 215 yards and three touchdowns despite hurting his right index finger so badly he still can’t close his fist all the way.

“Little league, middle school, high school I played in two state championships,” Smith said this week. “I been here plenty of times.”

Smith is quiet and confident, but there’s nothing quiet about his confidence. He’ll bark when the time is right, like when he demanded the ball in the middle of a stagnant offensive performance against the Colts in Week 11. Smith then caught three passes for 43 yards in a four-play span and stared at the sideline.

“He’s looking at me like, ‘I told you!'” recalled wide receivers coach Aaron Moorehead. “And I’m like, ‘Hey, I got it.'”

At halftime of the Eagles’ Week 16 game at Dallas, Smith had two catches for 10 yards. In no uncertain terms, he made it clear again that he would carry the offense if called on. In the second half, he had one of his most memorable performances of the season, catching six passes for 103 yards, including a leaping grab over the middle of the field and a physics-defying leaning grab along the sideline.

When you ask Smith’s teammates and coaches about what makes him special as a player, a few themes emerge. For one, there’s the fluidity and efficiency of his movement as a route runner.

“You go and watch the film and he doesn’t look fast,” said wide receiver Britain Covey. “Then you watch the (defensive back) guarding him and he’s like (pumping his arms to run fast) and he’s like (3 yards behind him). And you’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, he’s moving.'”

Smith’s skeletal build is an old topic by now, but it often leads to cornerbacks underestimating his strength.

“You try to muscle him around, (but) he’s got good body control,” said James Bradberry. “You try to use your body against him down the field, but he has great balance. And then at the line of scrimmage, he’s so crafty. He uses your strength as kind of momentum against you.”

The most common praise for Smith, though, relates to his innate ability to know exactly where to be.

“His knowledge of what’s going on around him,” Moorehead said. “That’s the thing that, to me, is so good — is he can run routes and excel and he’s gotten better at running routes, but he has such a good spatial awareness to understanding who’s around him, why they’re around him. That helps a quarterback, that helps the other guys on offense, and the combination of it is unbelievable.”

The easy way to see that play out is near the sideline, where Smith is one of the best in the league at rearranging his body to put himself in position to make a legal catch. The subtler, more impactful way his spatial awareness helps the offense is in his ability to read defensive coverages mid-snap and toy with his defender’s leverage. His background as a cornerback — including during spring ball at Alabama — helps, as does his time as a high-level prep basketball player.

Smith’s place in the offense is different than it was a season ago. The offseason acquisition of A.J. Brown changed the shape and pecking order of things. In Week 1, Brown caught 10 passes for 155 yards. Smith caught none. Smith’s opinion of himself never wavered. He’s no Robin.

Instead, the team found new ways to utilize his ability to manipulate space. One of the offense’s not-so-secret weapons is moving Smith to the slot, where Moorehead described his ability to win as similar to Zach Ertz’s when the tight end was in Philadelphia. In the middle of the field, no one on the team is better at out-leveraging a one-on-one defender or finding the open hole in a zone. According to TruMedia, 112 players in the NFL ran at least 100 routes from the slot in 2022. Among that group, Smith was targeted more often than any other player, 35.3 percent of the time. That target rate rises to a league-high 43.6 percent when Smith is in the slot and the Eagles are in an empty formation, which makes reading the defensive plan easier.

“If you know the coverages,” Smith said, “you kind of know where guys are supposed to be.”

Smith’s early-morning tennis ball routine is infamous in the locker room. He’s typically one of the first players at the NovaCare Complex, part of an early crew that usually includes Hurts, Brandon Graham and Zach Pascal. Smith rotates through a series of drills, with an assistant tossing him balls in different positions to hone his hand-eye coordination. Covey and other wide receivers reference it as evidence of his unceasing quest for greatness. Except, well, even they don’t know Smith as well as they think. Smith halted the tennis ball routine midway through the season to focus on soft-tissue work during that time instead. It was a rare change in the routine of someone who agrees with the assessment of being very, very stubborn.

“Once I got my mind made up, that’s that,” Smith said. “I ain’t gonna change my mind.”

Like last week, when he was asked about the impending Super Bowl media circus. “I ain’t for it, to be honest,” he said. “I just wanna play football.” So when the festivities began Monday evening in the Phoenix Suns’ arena, Smith did not exactly embrace the night with an open mind. He put on a hoodie and sunglasses and avoided the media throng, blending into the crowd. Next-level spatial awareness.

Which brings us to the one way in which Smith may not be fully prepared for the big moment. He was recently named GQ’s “Most stylish player,” a reward for a season-long array of well-coordinated suits. His fashion obsession began as a child on church Sundays and grew in high school when the football team was expected to dress up on Fridays. At Alabama, his coach Mike Locksley put him in touch with his Washington D.C.-based tailor, Brian Lunsford, and the two have been, uh, thin as thieves ever since. This year’s game day outfits have included loud pink numbers and attention to detail like a hat adorned with a map of Louisiana, his No. 6 and the inscription, “A kid from Amite.”

.@DeVontaSmith_6 stays suited up pic.twitter.com/8A6VseaH2W

— GQ Sports (@GQSports) October 16, 2022

Smith’s Super Bowl attire, though, is still up in the air. His Lunsford-made suit has been delivered, but Smith hasn’t decided whether he likes it yet.

“I’m kind of half in, half out,” he said. “I don’t know, you might see me in a sweatsuit. There’s no telling.”

Say it ain’t so, Batman.

(Illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletic; Photo: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)