Hot commodity

Sporting News, The, March 26, 2001 by Dennis Dillon

In a draft class full of small defensive ends, Justin Smith's stock has skyrocketed because of his size, all-around skills and upside potential

Play defensive end most of your life. Become true freshman in 12 years to start every game. Rack up 22 1/2 sacks and 53 tackles for losses in three seasons. Pick up your cell phone in January and hear an NFL college advisory committee rep say you'll be a first- or second-round draft pick if you come out now, as a junior. Declare for the draft. Vault to the top of the defensive end rankings. Project to be a top-10 choice, maybe even top five.

You're Justin Smith, and your skyrocketing stock is turning the NFL draft into a bull market. And now, just 5 1/2 weeks before the draft, they want you to what?

"Justin, come on over here," shouts Scott Studwell, standing in one quadrant of the indoor practice facility last Wednesday at the University of Missouri. Studwell, a former Vikings linebacker and now Minnesota's player personnel director, is coordinating this pre-draft workout for Missouri players. "Somebody is trying to make a linebacker out of you. One of those 3-4 teams."

"Linebacker?" Smith mutters skeptically as he jogs over. Tim Lewis, the defensive coordinator of the Steelers, is waiting with a football in his hands. He wants to experiment.

For the next several minutes, Lewis puts Smith through some linebacker drills. First, they face each other and Lewis throws Smith several passes-right at him, to one side, then to the other side. Then, Smith turns to his left and stretches out his arms to catch Lewis' passes. He turns to his right and does the same thing. Now for some change-of-direction drills. Smith moves backward, forward or to the side, depending on which way Lewis points the ball, then tries to catch Lewis' passes while on the run. He drops two in a row. Finally, Lewis has Pat Duffy, a Missouri linebacker who also is participating in the drills, line up as if he were a tight end and run a pass pattern while Smith tries to cover him.

"I just wanted to see what he could do as an outside linebacker," Lewis says. "Whether he could stand up and drop and feel comfortable in space. He did a nice job. He was very energetic and very eager to go out and impress. I could see how he could fit in our dime package."

Lewis is dreaming. The odds of Smith becoming a linebacker in the NFL are about as prohibitive as him dropping into the Steelers' laps in the draft. The Steelers have the 16th pick. Unless they make a trade and move up--way up--Smith's name will be called long before they're on the clock.

The Chargers have the No. 1 pick and are expected to select quarterback Michael Vick. The Cardinals (No. 2) and Browns (No. 3) both covet Smith. The Bengals (No. 4) have Smith ranked among the top players on their board and had Smith work out privately for defensive coordinator Mark Duffner and defensive line coach Tim Krumrie last Friday in Columbia. If Smith is still available after those teams pick, he won't be for long.

"It was obvious that everybody rated him a first-rounder," says Rams general manager Charley Armey, a member of the NFL advisory committee who, along with coach Mike Martz and quarterbacks coach John Ramsdell, has driven over from St. Louis to watch the workout. "He's fast, quick, agile, strong. Has good change of direction. All those intangibles."

Here's why Smith will be Missouri's highest draft pick since 1968, when offensive tackle Russ Washington was selected fourth overall by the Chargers:

* At 6-4 1/8 and 267 pounds, he is a giant in a class of undersized ends. And his body frame is big enough to accommodate another 10-to-15 pounds without diminishing his quickness.

* He's not just a pass-rush specialist. He projects as an every-down lineman who also can defend the run.

* Since he's coming out as a junior (he'll turn 22 in September), 2001 will be like a bonus season for the team that drafts him.

"He's already playing at a level that far surpasses a lot of seniors," says Ted Sundquist, director of college scouting for the Broncos.

Almost every NFL team has dispatched a scout or coach--or both--to Columbia, which sits about midway between St. Louis and Kansas City, for the Wednesday workout session. Even the Houston Texans, who don't begin play until 2002, have a representative in the house. Eleven players will perform, but the eyes of the scouts will focus mostly on Smith. He doesn't disappoint.

Dressed in Missouri colors--a black tank top and old-gold shorts--Smith puts up impressive numbers in all his tests (see sidebar). He runs two 40-yard dashes, and the scouts huddle to compare their stopwatches. The clockings recorded: 4.56, 4.58, 4.59, 4.60, 4.64 and 4.66 seconds--scorching times for a lineman. Not even a Russian judge would have tainted the marks.

Smith slips while running the three-cone drill, a peculiar agility test in which a player must dart and dash around and inside three orange cones lined up in an "L" shape, making both a half figure-8 and two 90-degree turns. Smith asks for a retry and gets it. He cuts a tenth of a second off his first time. He also leaps one inch higher in the vertical jump and four inches farther in the broad jump than he had at the NFL Scouting Combine in late February.