Steve Smith had to watch the Baltimore Ravens grind out an overtime victory without him Thursday night, as the veteran receiver left the game in the third quarter with a lower back injury. The actual hit that knocked Smith out came from Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback Antwon Blake and linebacker Lawrence Timmons, but Smith is blaming a former teammate.
Defensive back Mike Mitchell, who played with Smith in Carolina in 2013, apparently talked smack to Smith after the 36-year-old went down. Smith credited Mitchell with both the hit and the trash talk and said Mitchell is now on his “hit list.”
“I got speared in the back by an ex-teammate,” he told reporters according to the Ravens official website. “I kind of know his character, who he is. After he hit me he said, ‘How do you like that?’
“The best thing I could do without threatening him and saying that I will assault him when I see him, is I’ll say I look forward to playing him again. He’s on my lifetime hit list.”
As Ben Rohrback of Shutdown Corner notes, Mitchell could be seen saying something to Smith after Smith got to his feet and before he went down and needed attention from the training staff. But if we know anything about 89, he probably doesn’t care.
Smith is one of the toughest players in the NFL, so you know the injury — which is being called a lower back contusion — was serious enough that he couldn’t play through it. He’s also one of the best trash talkers in the game, which he proved again last weekend. The “lifetime hit list” comment was par for the course.
