Can’t Quit Football: For Steve Smith Sr., Comeback Is ‘Life and Death’

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The training center has a warehouse feel, with exposed ductwork and cinder block walls. Box fans are blowing on a midsummer’s day, but the thick air does not seem to move. 

Steve Smith Sr. wears a cotton hoodie soaked through with sweat, and his skin looks like it’s slathered in baby oil. In between most sets, he bends over, hands on knees. After one set, he lies on his back on the floor.

Time to go again—one-legged jumps on black Styrofoam blocks. He gets about halfway through the set and abruptly stops. He gives his trainer a look and walks swiftly out the open garage door, onto the dock. The rap music is loud but not loud enough to drown out the sound of retching.

Smith spends about a minute at the edge of the dock, aiming for a patch of weeds below. Then he walks back, wipes his face, gargles with water, gathers himself and takes a big gulp of Gatorade. He’s ready to start again.

This isn’t the first time this summer he could not keep his breakfast where it belonged. In fact, he admits, it’s the third or fourth.

“It happens with competitive people who push themselves,” Smith’s trainer, Daniel Ancheta, says.

“I know I’ve turned the corner when I puke,” Smith says.

He expected that trying to come back from a career-threatening injury at the age of 37 would be difficult. So why does he push himself so far? With all he has accomplished, why not spare his mind and body and just call it a career?

“I wouldn’t say the ability to overcome things is important to me,” Smith says. “I’d say it’s been the difference between life and death for me.”

This is about being true to himself—and learning everything that means.

Smith’s memory of the injury, sustained in November against the Chargers: He caught a pass, then felt a pull in the back of his leg, and then, “It was like my foot had no power. It was flapping.” Then he went down, thinking dark thoughts. The trainers came running.

“What’s the matter?” one said.

“I think I tore my Achilles,” Smith said.

“Roll over, let’s see,” the trainer said, examining his right leg.

And then, in a whisper, “I think he’s right.”

Smith draped a towel over his head, put his arms around the shoulders of trainers and hopped off the field.

It wasn’t supposed to end that way.

He had a double rupture of his Achilles—an injury that his surgeon, renowned Charlotte orthopedist Robert Anderson, would later tell him was the first double rupture he ever had seen.

During surgery, the damage was photographed.

What did it look like?

“Raw, shredded chicken,” Steve’s wife, Angie, says.

“Either the beginning or the end of something,” Steve says.

On that day in November, it seemed to be the end—and not the ending Smith had intended.

The 2015 season was supposed be a celebration for Smith of the completion of a 15-year career. It was supposed to end with a bow, not his body looking like shredded chicken.

After some reflection, Smith decided he did not want his magnificent career to end that way. He would attempt a comeback at the age of 37.

If you have lasted in the NFL as long as Smith has, you know injuries. He previously had a sprained PCL. He has broken his arm, his neck, his leg and a few fingers. There was one documented concussion and some bad hamstring injuries. But this was unlike any of those.

The pain was unbearable. With past injuries, Smith would be on pain meds for a day or two, then graduate to over-the-counter anti-inflammatories. This time, he took Oxycontin for about 12 days.

“After surgery, he would just say, ‘Give me more,'” Angie says. “He was kind of out of it.”

Finally, Smith didn’t want to feel so drowsy, so he went cold turkey with the meds.

“The day I stopped, about midday I started to get ornery,” Smith says. “I got a headache. It was my body craving the medication. I was having withdrawal symptoms.”

He opened the bottle of Oxycontin and dumped the pills in the toilet.

For two months, Smith could not bear weight on his right leg. He got around on a knee scooter initially. Then crutches with a boot. Then one crutch. And there were heel lifts. Each week, he was allowed to peel off a layer of the lift. Eventually, he was left with orthotics.

A father of four, Smith was learning a new meaning of “baby steps.”

One week before he was pushing forward despite retching into the weeds, Smith wanted to pack up his gym bag and go home. About halfway through a workout, he turned to Ancheta and said, “Screw this manure.” Or something like that.

And he went on. “I’m tired. I can see why guys get to a certain age, they say screw it. I’m not just training to not look fat. I’m training to play in 20 games, to run from other men who are trying to bodyslam me and hurt me. I ain’t got to do this. Why am I doing this? I don’t have anything to prove to anybody.”

His reaction was raw and unfiltered. Smith has rarely been known to hide his feelings.

He started thinking. He has a house in California rented for next offseason. Why wait? He could be on the beach. Toes in the sand.

Smith says he’s never had those feelings before. Then again, he’s never been 37 before. He’s never tried to come back from a torn Achilles before.

So what did he do when he was …

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