Hot commodity

Sporting News, The, March 15, 1999 by Phil Barber

In the course of a season, AKILI SMITH evolved from being a decent NFL prospect to being a likely top 10 selection in the draft

As NFL scouts deconstruct Akili Smith in the weeks leading up to the draft, they will observe a strong arm, an intense personality and a body made to run with a football. If they dig a little, they also will uncover a checkered past.

Last summer Smith walked into the office of Jeff Tedford and found the new Oregon offensive coordinator seated behind a checkerboard. Smith was ready for a long, mentally draining summer; he didn't expected or black" to be among his toughest decisions.

But Tedford had used this technique before, with Erik Kramer in the CFL and with Trent Dilfer at Fresno State. Before the field drills, the endless repetition of fundamental technique, the chalkboard work and the piecemeal consumption of the Oregon playbook, Akili Smith was going to play checkers--a football version, that is. Again and again, Tedford would align his circular defenders and call a play. Then, Smith would have to arrange the offensive formation and recite the intricacies of the play--the protection scheme, the motion, the pre-snap read. Each game piece represented a specific player--Tedford would rotate a safety or blitz an outside linebacker, and Smith would have to react accordingly.

It was an exercise in concentration and a test of the athlete's spatial coordination. "When we started, I wasn't very good at checkers," Smith says. "But as we progressed, I got better and better."

That should come as no surprise to anyone who watched Smith play football last fall. Thanks largely to his summer school with Tedford, Smith went from being an NFL project to being a projected first-round choice over the course of the 1998 season. In '97, Smith shared the starting quarterback job with Jason Maas and often looksked like the Ducks' second-best passer.

But in '98, Smith was the starter and produced a stellar season. He finished the regular season with 3,307 yards and 30 touchdowns, led Division I-A quarterbacks with an average of 10.1 yards per pass, finished second (to Tulane's Shaun King) in quarterback rating (170.4) and became the school's first Pac-10 offensive player of the year, an honor he shared with UCLA's Cade McNown. Smith propelled Oregon, a defense-thin team, to an 8-4 record and an Aloha Bowl appearance. In that game, Smith passed for 456 yards and two touchdowns and nearly led Oregon back from a 44-14 deficit before the Ducks fell to Colorado, 51-43.

"Akili always had the will to win," Tedford says. "I wanted him to develop the will to prepare to win. He dedicated himself to that. He watched a lot of tapes, took homework assignments. It gave him the confidence to execute the game plan."

Smith was reborn. He became a steady leader and, after struggling with Oregon's relatively complicated offensive scheme as a junior, he showed a command of the system in 98. "I was really impressed with the way he could find a second and third guy," says former Oregon and NFL quarterback Chris Miller, who has been working out with Smith this offseason in Eugene. "And !t might not be on the shorter mute.

As Smith's game improved, his stock soared. The scouts flocked to his side, and so did the agents--when Smith went home for Thanksgiving, nearly a dozen representatives descended upon him. By the end of the season he was a consensus first-round choice, and by the time the National Invitational Camp departed Indianapolis two weeks ago he had moved into truly elite company.

Although it is a virtual lock that Tim Couch will be the first quarterback drafted, where Smith will go in the first round is subject to debate. One AFC personnel man thinks Smith will be selected between the 10th and 15th overall picks.

Another personnel man, Jim Lippincott of the Bengals, says of Smith: "He won't have to watch ESPN too long on draft day. He's easily a top-10 pick and maybe top-seven."

A third personnel man says Smith won't last past the fifth overall pick. He notes that the three other highest-rated quarterbacks--Couch, Daunte Culpepper and Donovan McNabb--each begged out of various drills and measurements during the Indianapolis combine. Why, he asked, did Smith submit to every test?

Well," Akili told him, "I can throw, and I can run.

Those assertions are not in dispute. At this point, the only lingering knock is Smith's relative inexperience. "He hasn't had a lot of defenses thrown at him," says one NFC Central scout. "He's played in only 15 or 16 (23) games. So even though he's an older guy, he'll need time to learn a system."

Smith will be 24 in August, though his age says as much about his upside as it does about his downside. He was San Diego's prep athlete of the year in 1992-93 after passing for 1,582 yards at Lincoln, the same high school Marcus Allen and Terrell Davis attended, and was recruited by big-time programs like UCLA. But Smith put football aside to pursue a career in professional baseball. The Pirates signed him to a $103,000 contract when he was 17, and he spent most of three seasons in the Gulf Coast and New York-Penn leagues. He was an outfielder and hit .176, and some complained that he threw a baseball like a football. Smith still wishes he had applied himself more.