When the Ravens and Steelers got together earlier this month, Baltimore receiver Steve Smith believed that Pittsburgh safety Mike Mitchell had speared Smith in the back with a helmet. This prompted Smith to put Mitchell on Smith’s personal, lifetime hit list.
Smith has since realized that Mitchell didn’t hit Smith. That hasn’t prompted a reprieve from Smith.
“[Lawrence] Timmons hit me, which I didn’t know,” Smith said Friday, via the team’s official website. “But Mike Mitchell, my former teammate, gets up and he’s talking, he’s kind of celebrating. He was in my face after I got up, when I was giving the ball to the ref, as if he hit me. Like a moron, I assumed that he actually did something.
“Then, when I went down because my back was hurting, he was yelling, ‘Yeah, how do you like that!’ and he said a few words. . . . That’s what ticked me off.”
So what about Timmons?
“It was a good, solid hit by Timmons,” Smith said. “He was knocking people all over the field.”
So what’s the criteria for landing on the list?
“You get on it because you’re stupid,” Smith said.
Smith will reunite with Mitchell, a former teammate of Smith’s in Carolina, on December 27.
