As Christina Smith-Sylve watched last Sunday’s game Eagles against the Minnesota Vikings in the U.S. Bank Stadium stands, her seat might as well have been made out of pins and needles with the way nerves pricked her skin.
That sensation intensified when she saw three Vikings defenders tackle her 6-foot, 170-pound son, DeVonta Smith, on a 16-yard reception down the right sideline in the second quarter.
Dallas Goedert even seemed to clamor for a defenseless receiver penalty against Blake Cashman after the play. The inside linebacker’s rally to Smith came after Byron Murphy already had stopped the small-but-stubborn receiver’s forward progress.
Smith-Sylve felt those pins and needles again when the 26-year-old receiver absorbed a hit from Harrison Smith on a 19-yard cross over the middle of the field. But after both plays, Smith popped up with the ball in his hands as if he had been grazed by a butterfly and not tackled by men who likely can bicep curl his body weight.
“It’s hard seeing him,” Smith-Sylve said. “It’s rough. But I know he’s tough. He’s small in stature, but he plays big.”
Jahan Dotson is used to Smith’s toughness by now, two seasons into his Eagles tenure. In theory, Dotson is one of the players responsible for assuming Smith’s or A.J. Brown’s spot on the field if either star receiver gets banged up or needs a moment to recuperate on the sideline.
It usually plays out the same way every time, according to Dotson. After the hit over the middle against the Vikings, Smith came to the sideline, hands on his hips, trying to catch his breath. He insisted to wide receivers coach Aaron Moorehead that he could go back into the game, refusing to miss a play.
“He’s not the biggest guy,” Dotson said. “He takes the biggest hits. And he pops back up like he’s the biggest guy.”
Smith was one of the biggest reasons the Eagles snapped their two-game losing streak, too, leading the team with a career-high 183 yards and a touchdown on nine receptions in that game. His 79-yard touchdown catch came on a play he had advocated for at halftime, eager to exploit the Vikings’ decision to bring a safety into the box when the Eagles were under center in their jumbo package.
“It was a great feeling seeing that little thing run down there to the end zone, man,” said left tackle Jordan Mailata. “It was beautiful.”
Everyone is a little thing compared to Mailata, who is 6-foot-8 and 365 pounds. Still, Smith’s big plays are putting him on pace for a career-best 1,224 receiving yards. With big plays often come big hits from bigger defenders, especially at Smith’s second-percentile weight among draft-eligible wide receivers in 2021, when he was picked 10th overall.
How does Smith bounce back up, regardless of his smaller stature? He claims he knows no other way to operate.
“If I can walk, I’ll be all right,” Smith said.
He “hopped right up”
Much to the chagrin of Smith-Sylve, Smith began playing little league football and basketball when he was 5 years old in his hometown of Amite City, La. She was particularly scared for her undersized son in his football pursuits. But all of his friends in their small town, with a population just over 4,000, were participating, and he wanted to play with them.
“I couldn’t crush his spirit,” Smith-Sylve said.
So she acquiesced. He quelled her fears, though, because even though “Tay” often was the smallest player on the field, he typically was the toughest.
He continued to cultivate his toughness at Butler Town Park, which is across the street from their home. Smith would hang around his older, bigger cousins and their friends, trying to join their basketball and football games. They allowed it, but they didn’t go easy on him. They roughed him up, Smith-Sylve said. As a result, Smith became well-acquainted with the surface of the basketball court.
“Plenty of times, I’d done hit that concrete,” Smith said.
Those scrapes and bruises formed calluses on Smith’s mental toughness. He applied that mindset to the football field at Amite High Magnet School as a freshman on the football team, where coach Alden Foster already knew plenty about Smith.
After all, Amite is a tiny town, and the football community is even tinier. Smith-Sylve is Foster’s cousin. His brother coached Smith in little league football. Foster’s nephew, Elijah Walker, was Smith’s teammate from little league through high school. Another cousin of Smith-Sylve’s, Dwayne Davis, was Foster’s defensive coordinator at Amite.
Football games practically were family reunions. So Foster had plenty of intel on his small-but-mighty receiver. He quickly found out that he still was learning how to read defensive coverages, too.
During Smith’s freshman year, Amite scrimmaged against Edna Karr, a perennial football powerhouse in New Orleans. Smith was running a route over the middle and didn’t remember to settle in the zone. A 6-foot-4, 250-pound defensive end — who went on to play for LSU, Foster said — dropped into coverage in the area.
“[Smith] ran across, and the quarterback threw it,” Foster said. “Oh, man. He knocked him out. That little sucker was 122 pounds then and hopped right up.”
Smith put the hit behind him. Later in the scrimmage, when the teams were working on goal-line situations, “that little freshman scored a touchdown against them people,” Foster said. The next year, Amite and Edna Karr played each other. Smith, then a sophomore, used that hit as ammo, fueling him to a three-touchdown performance, according to Foster.
“He said, ‘Coach, I got to get my revenge,’” Foster said.
“You’re not a quitter”
Despite his toughness, one hard fall in his sophomore year almost took Smith out of football for good.
On Thursdays, Foster sought to conclude their walk-throughs on a good play. The quarterback targeted Smith to end the practice, but he overthrew his receiver slightly.
Smith, ever the competitor, dove for the ball. He came down hard on the field. This time, he didn’t pop up.
“I said, ‘Oh, lord,’” Foster said. “My heart dropped.”
Foster took Smith to the hospital, where Smith-Sylve met them. They learned that Smith broke his clavicle, which ended his season.
“The first thing he said: ‘That’s it for football. I quit. I’m not playing. I quit,’” Foster said.
Smith was a multisport athlete at the time, competing in track and field and basketball. Smith’s father, Kelvin Dickerson, was adamant that his son had a future in basketball. The injury nearly led to Smith dedicating himself to basketball, which both of his parents played.
Foster wasn’t having it. Smith had too much upside to waste as a football player. Smith was a good basketball player, Foster said, but he was different in football. Dickerson eventually came around to Foster’s pleas and had a conversation with Smith.
“‘You wanted to play football,’” Smith-Sylve said of Dickerson’s message to their son. “‘That’s what happens. That’s a part of the game. You tough. You’ll be all right. You know what you’ve got to do next time.’ I think both of them, just talking to him and letting him know, ‘You’re not a quitter. That’s one hit of many. So let’s just go.’”
That injury changed the way Smith approached the game, according to his family. He became more serious about hitting the weight room. Moorehead, the Eagles’ wide receivers coach, got to witness that work ethic in person when he traveled to Amite on a recruiting trip while serving in the same role for Texas A&M.
The small weight room tucked beneath the football stadium looked like it hadn’t been updated in 25 to 30 years at the time, Moorehead said. Rust tarnished the weights. The air inside mimicked the sticky Louisiana heat outside, causing the 145-pound Smith and his teammates to drip with sweat. But Moorehead never heard a complaint.
“That was just what they knew,” Moorehead said. “They didn’t know anything else. Didn’t care. Just trying to get better.”
Smith grew stronger, but he didn’t bulk up with ease. Zephaniah Powell, Amite’s football coach beginning in Smith’s junior year, said his build was genetic. Powell claimed Smith looks just like his father, with a “thin build, not that big of a frame. But long arms, long legs, kind of put together like an antelope.”
His lack of size had nothing to do with his appetite. Foster would host seafood boils complete with crawfish and turkey necks in the yard. He said Smith loved to come by and eat with his cousins. But it didn’t seem to matter that Smith enjoyed seafood boils with his family or ate tablespoons of peanut butter to cram in extra calories, Foster explained.
“His DNA wouldn’t let him gain a whole lot of weight,” Foster said. “But you can’t measure his heart.”
Proving people wrong
Moorehead once questioned how Smith would fare in the SEC. He wasn’t the only one.
Some coaches at college football recruiting camps looked at the undersized receiver skeptically, Foster said. But he liked taking kids to Alabama’s camps because Nick Saban didn’t care how big they were. If they could play, Saban would give them a chance.
One Heisman Trophy and two national championship titles later, the chance Saban took on Smith paid dividends.
“All he’s done is prove people wrong,” Moorehead said.
That includes Jalen Hurts, his quarterback at Alabama for two seasons.
“I remember times asking, ‘Hey, man, how much [do] you weigh?’” Hurts said. “And I stopped asking him that as the years have gone on, because that’s no indication of what type of player he is. He’s a hell of a player, and he’s been making some big-time plays.”
The grittiness Smith once exhibited as a kid at Butler Town Park is still evident in his game in the NFL. In fact, Eagles coach Nick Sirianni could rattle off the specific plays over the past five seasons in which Smith exemplified the toughness that Sirianni so often preaches to the team.
There was the third-down play Smith made in Super Bowl LVII on a shallow crossing route, when Kansas City Chiefs safety Justin Reid sent him flying out of bounds.
There was the 2022 win over the Arizona Cardinals, in which Smith caught a screen pass from Hurts then immediately took a hard hit from Murphy, a member of the Cardinals at the time.
There was the third-and-19 play against the San Francisco 49ers in 2023 when Smith caught a screen pass and broke three tackles before picking up 21 yards after the catch.
In true Smith fashion, he just kept going.
“We didn’t win that game, but it brought life to everybody,” Sirianni said. “I think that that’s what a big play can do, that’s what a great assist from a teammate can do, and that’s what great toughness shown on tape can do, because those are the things we talk about all the time that can just bring that energy to a football team.”
Perhaps no play in Smith’s NFL career can amount to the energy generated by his 46-yard touchdown in Super Bowl LIX, which has since been referred to as “The Dagger.” But Moorehead had been hesitant about the Eagles calling that play. Smith had been nursing a hamstring injury that week, and he was worried about the health of his receiver.
Moorehead said he asked Smith four times before that play if he was sure he wanted to run it, deep route and all. Smith, playing in front of his loved ones at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, had no hesitation.
“He finally looked at me and he said, ‘If you don’t get the F out of my face, I’m running this route,’” Moorehead said.
Smith wasn’t finished.
“‘They’re going to have to drag me off this field [in] the Super Bowl,’” Moorehead recalled Smith saying. “And he meant it. He was home. He wanted to win in that stadium. He wanted to play in front of his family and friends and score a touchdown in the Super Bowl and play well. And he did.”
NFL rules have evolved to better protect receivers. John Lynch and Ronnie Lott aren’t patrolling the middle of the field anymore. But receivers still get hit hard on occasion, a fate Smith seems to have accepted, according to Moorehead.
The receivers coach surmised that those hits energize Smith, too. Smith-Sylve has a different feeling, but she wards off those pins and needles when she remembers the 5-year-old who pleaded with her to let him play little league football.
“I know that’s what he loves to do,” Smith-Sylve said. “He has a love for the game. He’s small in stature. But he plays big, and he’s going to give it 100%.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
