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Thursday, January 4
Dolphins ride Smith to victory
By John Clayton
ESPN.com
MIAMI -- Dolphins coach Dave Wannstedt assembled his tired squad together and called on weary Lamar Smith one last time.
|  | | Miami's Lamar Smith runs past Indy's Mustafah Muhammad for the game-winning TD. |
Minutes after the Miami Dolphins had defeated the Indianapolis Colts 23-17 in overtime, Wannstedt gave Smith the football for a 41st time on Saturday. A souvenir. The one -- and only -- game ball Wannstedt handed out before he jumped on Smith's tired back one last time. How fitting. The Dolphins rode the back of Smith all afternoon.
They needn't bother chartering a plane to Oakland for next Saturday's AFC Divisional Playoff game. Let Smith do the driving and he can carry the team on his back across the country.
Smith steered the Dolphins with an incredible 209 yards rushing, an NFL postseason-record 40 carries and two touchdowns. What makes this story more remarkable is the long road traveled by Smith, a veteran of seven seasons and three teams in a career always seemed to be at a crossroads.
Coming out of the University of Houston, Smith was considered more talented than former Seahawks running back Chris Warren, his teammate and a four-time 1,000-yard rusher. Smith had played in a run-and-shoot offense, but he slipped to the third round because of shoulder problems. In college, his injury-prone shoulder kept popping out of its socket, but he kept running.
At the age of 29, Smith's shoulders are sound and so is his life, though it hasn't always been that way. His life was disrupted early in his career when was involved in a car accident that left a teammate, defensive lineman Mike Frier, paralyzed.
The Seahawks never really gave him the chance to be the full-time starter, so he moved on to New Orleans where Saints coach Mike Ditka teased him with the chance to be the featured back. After one season in which he was in and out of the starting lineup, Smith sat through a frustrating 1999 season after Ditka traded away almost an entire draft to select Ricky Williams.
Ditka was fired, and so was Smith. He landed in Miami as a free agent for a franchise that had lacked a franchise running back. Smith responded with 1,139 yards and what turned out Sunday to be one of the greatest days for a running back in Dolphins history.
"This is the highlight of my career what happened today, overcoming that 14-point deficit, and I was part of that," Smith said. "It's nice to come up with the win. It's been a long road. It means a lot. It means a lot."
Wannstedt calls it old-style football -- in the style of his formative years growing up in Western Pennsylvania. With the help of three Jay Fiedler interceptions, the Colts jumped out to a 14-0 second-quarter lead. Considering that Wannstedt's team is built around a powerful ground game and a limited passing offense, chances of double-digit comebacks are minimal.
This season, in fact, the Dolphins had overcome only three deficits of 17 points or less during the regular season. To do it in a playoff game would be remarkable. Smith said he was up for that challenge.
"This offense is running back-oriented," Smith said. "I fit the bill for this offense. My hat is off to coach Wannstedt. He's always had faith in me."
Dolphins defensive end Trace Armstrong calls Smith a humble workhorse. Because he's so quiet, Smith shies away from interviews and concentrates on getting his 229-pound body prepared with extra treatment and workouts.
Smith quietly dominated Saturday's game. It had to be particularly frustrating for the Dolphins after a late first-quarter sequence in which Smith had six consecutive carries for 34 yards and caught a pass. But the Dolphins didn't score because of a Fiedler interception.
Offensive coordinator Chan Gailey couldn't have called a better series of running plays, but the Dolphins trailed 3-0. Smith had 61 yards rushing and Indianapolis led 6-0 when Colts defensive end Chad Bratzke intercepted a Fiedler pass at the line of scrimmage. After Peyton Manning hit Jerome Pathon for a 17-yard touchdown pass to open a 14-0 lead, few Dolphins fans might have given them a chance.
That's when Wannstedt, Fiedler and the rest of the Dolphins jumped on Smith's aching back.
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I've been waiting for this opportunity for six years. I just want to prove myself to everybody in the league and get their respect. ” |
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— Lamar Smith, Dolphins running back |
"I've been waiting for this opportunity for six years," Smith said. "I just want to prove myself to everybody in the league and get their respect."
Smith carried seven times for 42 yards in a second-half opening touchdown drive in which he scored from the 2 to cut the lead to 14-7. Early in the fourth quarter, Smith carried five times for 23 yards in a nine-play drive that ended with a 38-yard field goal that narrowed the margin to 14-10.
"I knew I was going to make it through," said Smith, who had 29 carries and 156 yards with five minutes remaining in regulation. "If we would have gone double overtime, I could have kept going. I could have handled 50 carries."
Mike Vanderjagt's 50-yard field goal put the Dolphins behind 17-10 with 4:55 left. Trailing by a touchdown with so little time left would have put most teams into a no-huddle offense. But Wannstedt and Gailey kept to the ground and called for the slowest drive in recent history.
Smith kept getting handoffs. Fiedler had enough confidence in the running game that the Dolphins showed no panic. Until the two-minute warning, they averaged 41 seconds a play trailing by a touchdown. Fiedler eventually tied the game with 34 seconds left with a 9-yard touchdown pass to tight end Jed Weaver.
"We knew that we had enough time left and we still had some timeouts left to burn if we needed them," Fiedler said. "We were going down and we had some things open for us and it turned out that we just didn't need to use it."
Instead, the Dolphins used up Smith. In overtime, he had nine carries for 40 yards, including the game-winning, 17-yard touchdown on a play Wannstedt planned to set up a field goal.
"We were obviously going to kick the field goal on third down," Wannstedt said. "We were going to hand it off one more time."
Facing second-and-4, Smith lowered his shoulders and banged off bodies until he found the end zone. "You get him one-on-one with a safety and he's going to break some tackles," Fiedler said. "He broke tackles today on everyone and did an incredible job."
An hour after the game, Smith wanted more. His memories flashed back to those disappointing Seahawks teams that were high on potential and low on wins. He said that he missed many of his old Seahawks teammates. He flashed back to New Orleans and the Ditka experience.
"I just didn't fit in in New Orleans," Smith said. "It just didn't work."
He also flashed back to Wannstedt jumping on his back and riding him in the locker room. Asked which was more tiring, his playoff performance or carrying his coach, Smith said, "The coach jumping on my back."
What's a 41st carry for a back when 40 are already banked.
John Clayton is the senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.
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