OWINGS MILLS, Md. — The sign above the door frame that separates the Baltimore Ravens’ practice facility from their practice field reads, “Play Like a Raven.” Players emerged beneath it one by one Wednesday afternoon, walking down a ramp of green turf between slushy snow. Once Roquan Smith crossed the threshold, the walking ceased. Smith’s gait sped from amble to jog to full sprint.
Over the past 15 months, teammates have grown accustomed to the sight at the start of practice: a blur of white, black and purple streaking across the field in number 0. Smith began the ritual at Macon County High in small-town Georgia. Larry Harold, his high school coach, would tell the team: Once we hit this grass, we’re about business. Harold kept a standing rule never to walk onto a football field. It’s so ingrained in Smith, it feels like muscle memory.
“When you see the best player on the team running on and off the field, lifting weights, getting good grades, the rest of the kids can’t do nothing but fall in line,” Harold said this week. “I’m sure the Ravens see the same thing.”
The Ravens have fallen in line behind Smith, and they are one victory away from the franchise’s first Super Bowl in 11 seasons. When they face the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday at M&T Bank Stadium, Smith will stand at the center of a defense that turned dominant the moment he arrived in October of last season in a midseason trade from the Chicago Bears. Mediocre before adding Smith, the Ravens’ defense this season became the first in NFL history to lead the league in points allowed per game (16.5), turnovers forced (31) and sacks (60).
Whether Smith is the best player on a unit that includes defensive tackle Justin Madubuike and safety Kyle Hamilton can be debated. Whether he is the soul of the NFL’s best defense cannot be questioned. In Smith, the Ravens did not merely gain one of the league’s best inside linebackers. They acquired a spiritual descendant of the Baltimore legends who won Super Bowls with throttling defense and menacing attitude. They added a transformative presence.
“It was pretty much instantaneous: When he got here, we got better,” said kicker Justin Tucker, the lone Raven remaining from the 2012 Super Bowl team. “Our defense got better. Our offense got better. Our special teams got better. Our whole team, somehow with the acquisition of one player, just got better. It’s pretty special how one guy can come in and elevate an entire organization. He’s a guy who embodies everything it means to be a Raven.”
Smith is a cerebral strategist — “a seeker of knowledge,” his college linebackers coach, Glenn Schumann, said — who asks questions even coaches had not considered. He kept a 3.14 grade-point average at Georgia’s prestigious Terry College of Business and negotiated a $100 million contract extension last year by himself.
Once on the field, Smith views football as a primal test. He has likened opponents to jungle animals fighting for survival. He said this week he plays for the right reason, which he deemed, “trying to punish a cat every chance I get.” Smith complimented Chiefs running back Isiah Pacheco’s tenacious running style before clarifying that when they meet, “one is going to have to break, and I don’t plan to be on that breaking end.”
“I constantly remind guys: Whatever you put out there on film, it’s going to live forever,” Smith said. “I know one day when I have kids, I want them to know that I was that guy that’d knock your face off.”
Smith’s attitude provides connective tissue. Tucker sees in Smith the same traits Ray Lewis, Ed Reed, Terrell Suggs and Haloti Ngata injected into the Ravens’ defense. At a news conference this week, Smith wore a black hoodie with the phrase, “Give It All You Got” beside Lewis’s image.
“He brought that Ray Lewis juice back for our generation,” quarterback Lamar Jackson said. “The grit, the everything. The leadership, his poise, his aggression. We needed that.”
The Ravens’ scouting reports dating back to Smith’s college career suggested he would boost their chemistry. They didn’t realize they had found the player who would turn the Ravens back into who the Ravens are supposed to be. In the season and a half before Smith arrived in Baltimore, the Ravens yielded 23 points per game. In the season and a half since they acquired him for a second-round pick, they have allowed 15.6.
“He was always a Raven. He just didn’t know until he got here,” Coach John Harbaugh said. “He does make everybody around him better. The greatest players tend to do that.”
The Ravens’ improvement with Smith fits the pattern of his football life. “He is definitely a thermostat,” Harold said. “Not the thermometer.” Macon County had won one or zero games before him, and by his senior year it had advanced to the second round of the playoffs. Georgia lost five times in Smith’s first season as a starter, and a year later he led the Bulldogs to the national championship game. He has a catalyzing effect on his teams for reasons beyond his talent.
“You don’t want to let a guy like him down,” defensive lineman Michael Pierce said. “When you have leaders that set that standard, you have no choice but to fall in line. We all watch the film together. If our Mike linebacker is running, there’s no excuse for a nose guard not to be running. He established the mentality we liked to believe we already had.”
A ‘secret sauce’
Smith grew up in tiny Montezuma, Ga., a little less than three hours from Athens. He fell in love with running and hitting before he played his first snap. He played a game called “pick ’em up bust ’em.” Someone would throw a ball in the air, and everybody would try to tackle the kid who caught it.
Harold met Smith when he arrived at Macon County for spring practice. He reprimanded Smith for wearing saggy pants without a belt, telling him he should know better for a senior, making an assumption based on his physique. “Coach, I ain’t no senior,” Smith replied. “I’m a freshman.”
During Smith’s senior year, Macon County’s biggest game came against Lamar County. Macon had lost to Lamar the previous two years in the playoffs, and anticipation for the rematch swelled so much the school installed an extra set of bleachers. After warm-ups, Smith retreated to the locker room and emerged with a new pair of all-black cleats emblazoned with the Batman logo. Harold asked Smith why he changed.
“I got to go save the city,” Smith replied.
Smith threw up before every game, a habit he said continued until this season. “The bigger the game, the more he used to vomit,” Harold said. Shortly before kickoff, on cue, Smith puked on the sidelines. Harold turned to a referee and told him, “You’re about to see a show.”
Harold re-watched the game tape to verify statistical totals — he knew they would be met with disbelief. On offense, Smith rushed 16 times for 256 yards and three touchdowns. On defense, he made 24 tackles, eight of them for loss. On special teams, he returned punts. Macon County won, 36-21.
Smith would not abide less than extreme effort. If a teammate executed a drill improperly, he would make him do it again. In Smith’s final season at Georgia, the Bulldogs were blowing out rival Florida, 42-0, when coaches pulled the starters. Smith watched from the sideline as the second team yielded a cosmetic touchdown. When he could have been reveling in a defining blowout, Smith yelled at his backup for allowing the touchdown with such ferocity that coaches had to separate them.
“At a young age, there was a hunger and a drive that’s deep inside of him,” said Schumann, now Georgia’s defensive coordinator. “I don’t think he’ll ever lose that. … I don’t think he thinks about those things: ‘I wasn’t very big’ or ‘I was from a small town.’ It’s just all these little pieces of his life that have made him who he is.”
The maniac from practices and games would also befriend everybody in the program, from walk-ons to cleaning staff. Schumann’s wife asked Smith on a recent FaceTime call why his teammates didn’t keep in touch like he did.
“He would have friends he’d go hang out with from the business school,” Schumann said. “He does invest in people. Sometimes you’ll meet people who are really close with him, and you’re like, ‘Huh, how did that happen?’ And that’s because he really enjoys other people. He has a joy for life.”
In Baltimore, Smith learned the name of every staffer in the building within a week. He stops by the lockers of practice squad players to make sure they feel part of the team. Thursday afternoon, wideout Odell Beckham Jr. walked by Smith’s locker and announced that “Uncle Ro” was sneakily one of the best dancers on the team. Smith broke out his infectious smile. “One of my favorite teammates I’ve ever had in my entire life,” Beckham said.
Once Smith steps on the field, “it’s like a whole alter ego comes out,” said Ravens safety Geno Stone, one of Smith’s close friends. From the moment he arrived, teammates realized they would have to match his effort. His speed on the field allowed other defenders to be more aggressive, knowing Smith’s sideline-to-sideline hustle could eliminate any mistakes.
“It’s a secret sauce, and there’s magnetism that guys gravitate toward him naturally,” defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald said. “He always has great energy. You can’t help being around a guy that plays with the passion that he has and not be attracted to that. If you’re not playing with him, then it pops out on tape.”
No nonsense
Smith’s presence may be most noticeable during pregame speeches that have already grown legendary. Ravens circle around Smith the way they once circled around Lewis. “That would be really interesting to have a pregame speech-off between Ray and Roquan,” Harbaugh said.
Smith peppers his exhortations with “some stuff you can’t really repeat,” Pierce said. Before the Ravens played the Detroit Lions in October, Smith screamed at teammates that the Lions were coming to their house, and it wasn’t a den. He added that he’d told team security to “lock the doors, and we’ll decide when we want to let them out.” Baltimore won, 38-6.
“He makes you feel like you could run through a brick wall,” cornerback Brandon Stephens said. “It’s an honor to play with a guy like that.”
The speeches differ from game to game, but one thing binds them: They are acts of emotional improvisation. Smith does not think about what he will say before the moment arrives.
“I don’t try to make things up to make guys feel this way or feel that way, because at the end of the day, it’s fake,” Smith said. “I’m myself. All I know is to be myself and deliver what’s on my heart, instead of trying to create things that are nonsense. That’s where a lot of people go wrong in this world — trying to be something they’re not.”
Smith is the still the rambunctious kid from Montezuma, the fiery linebacker from Georgia. One victory from football’s pinnacle, he has done more than play like a Raven. He is the man who shows the Ravens how to play.
