For Bruce Smith, Hall of Fame honor was in the 'sack'

Funny thing, the "sack." The defensive specialty that will earn Bruce Smith a place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame tonight in Canton, Ohio, always existed. But for the longest time nobody called it anything special.

Tackling the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage was simply tackling the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage. Happened all the time.

And yet the NFL never actually counted how often it happened, which was odd because dropping the quarterback for a loss is a huge deal in the game's ebb and flow.

Anyway, some time in the 1960s, it dawned on David "Deacon" Jones that this oversight must be corrected. Not necessarily for the good of the game, but for the good of his bank account.

"Public-relations-wise, there was no way to refer to what we did for a living," says Jones, 70, a legendary end on the Los Angeles Rams' "Fearsome Foursome" defensive line. "Therefore, we made less money than anybody on the field.

"We had to put some pizzazz into it, not only by naming what you did, but also bya executing it to the point where people would buy a ticket to see you play."

So Jones coined a word and used it freely. All of a sudden, he and his line-mates "sacked" quarterbacks. And when Jones said it, fans, media and the NFL listened.

"Sack" was catchy. Quantifiable. And although sacks still weren't an official statistic until 1982, eight years after Jones' last game, awareness had been raised and respect for the sack artist had been gained.

"This game is about moving forward," Jones says. "Who wins the MVP the most? The quarterback. The game is throwing the football, and the quarterback moves it down the field through the air. He's not gonna be a superstar unless he throws the ball.

"The run ain't nothing but a disguise. As far as I'm concerned, even if I played now, your quarterback would be the person I'm after. The rest of it'll fall into place."

For Bruce Smith, the greatest sack artist of them all, it started to fall into place in 1985.

A graduate of Norfolk's Booker T. Washington High, Smith came to the NFL from Virginia Tech, where he was named the nation's best college lineman.

The Buffalo Bills, who were 2-14 in '84 and owned the first pick of the draft, selected the 6-foot-4, freakishly fast Smith, who weighed around 300 pounds.

Instant success, however, was elusive. Buffalo was terrible again, and Smith struggled to acclimate to the pressures of the pro game and of being the No. 1 pick.

"Uncharted territory," Smith calls it today. "I was learning as I was going."

As the Bills logged another 2-14 season, however, Smith managed to tackle quarterbacks before they could pass six times by himself and once with a teammate.

So there they were; 6-1/2 sacks onto the first line of Smith's ledger.

He added 15 more in '86 - nearly one per game - by which time Smith's 19-season march to an NFL-record 200 sacks and to immortality's door was well afoot.

"After a year or so, yes, I knew he could be great," says Ted Cottrell, Smith's position coach at the time, and the man who will present Smith for induction tonight.

"I told him that, too. He had that type of ability, but he had to make the most of it. A lot of people don't. They have Hall of Fame talent, but they don't utilize it."

Smith believed. He learned to trust Cottrell, who made him better against the run. And Smith learned to trust himself.

He started to eat smarter, slimming to 265 pounds. He trained harder, longer and with greater purpose; Smith claims credit for exhausting two of Buffalo's stair-stepper machines.

Significantly, Smith also learned from Cottrell how to study game film, voraciously and with keen insight. Routinely first in the video room - both with Buffalo and from 2000 to 2003 with the Washington Redskins - Smith became deft at uncovering the slightest tip-offs in a blocker's stance or a team's formation. Intuitively as the huddles broke, Smith gained advantages even beyond his size and speed.

"There were so many adjustments I made... changes I implemented into my life on a daily basis," Smith says. "You either get it, or it takes a little longer for you to get it, or there are those few that just won't ever get it.

"It took me just a little while. But once I got it, there was no turning back."

The game, after all, is about moving forward. And Smith took off on a sprint.

He made 11 Pro Bowls. He was a first-team All-Pro nine times. Twice he was the AP Defensive Player of the Year. He made the NFL's All-Decade team not only for the '80s, but for the '90s as well.

And he went to four straight Super Bowls, 1990 to '93, with the Bills, still the only team to reach so many in a row. Famously, Buffalo lost them all. But Smith, who lives in Virginia Beach with his wife and teenage son, has made his peace with that bittersweet achievement.

"Just look at the level of consistency that existed during that tenure," he says. "That should speak for itself."

Despite nine knee surgeries and two shoulder repairs, Smith dominated his peers as consistently as any defensive player. In one 13-year stretch, he notched double-digit sack totals a dozen times.

Extenuating circumstances only burnish Smith's resume. He played on unforgiving fake turf in Buffalo's bitter cold. And he played out of a 3-4 defensive base - three linemen and four linebackers. By definition, that's especially tough on pass-rushing ends because they regularly draw multiple blockers; two linemen, or a lineman and a running back. It's a physical and emotional strain - motoring throttle-out for a game's worth of plays, hunting the big sack - that Smith overcame in large part through his passion to play, his relentless film study and commitment to detail.

Combined, the facts make Jones a huge Bruce Smith fan.

"I played a little 3-4. I hated that defense," Jones says from Southern California, where he runs a charitable foundation. "That's a defense that's designed to make you want to quit playing defensive line. I admire what Bruce did out of that because I tell you, if I had to bet at the beginning, I would've bet against him getting 200 sacks out of that defense."

Remember too, says Jones, who by his personal tally counts 180-1/2 career sacks: R ules forbade Smith from clubbing blockers in the head as Jones could.

"I didn't invent the head-slap," jokes Jones, whose sacks aren't recognized by the NFL, "but of course, Rembrandt didn't invent painting.

"Bruce and I have talked about this a lot. He would've loved to have played in my era. You could hit a man from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. Bruce had to deal with half the body, from the waistline to the neck line. I don't know that I could've played football under the same circumstances."

Jones, a Hall of Famer since 1980, and Smith, 46, met years ago and stay in touch. They and the late Reggie White, whose mark of 198 sacks Smith topped, are in every discussion of the greatest pass-rushing ends. But comparing across eras is futile, Jones says.

"You've got to let it go in about a 10-year cycle, then the game changes," he says. "The rules do that."

Still, a couple of years ago, Jones feted Smith for his career excellence at a California casino. Why? "Because the situation called for it," Jones says. "You've got to recognize the guy's talents and what he accomplished. My hat's always been off to Bruce."

Cottrell shares the sentiment. Briefly an NFL linebacker, he recalls being hired by Buffalo's head coach, Hank Bullough, in 1986 "to see if I might be able to get through and handle Bruce."

Smith at the time was "leery," Cottrell says. And sensitive to criticism. "But once he found out I had a pretty good idea of what I was talking about, our relationship blossomed," says Cottrell, 62, now head coach of the New York team in the fledgling United Football League.

"I was one of the few people who could yell at Bruce and get away with it. He didn't like people yelling at him; he didn't want to be singled out in front of his peers. I didn't do it a lot, but when I did, it was for his own good."

As Smith weaved good into great, Cottrell says, his power and presence resonated. Simply put, he lived in the heads of opposing AFC franchises.

"They drafted guys to block him; they schemed to block him," Cottrell says. "Everybody in their off-season study said, 'How are we gonna handle this man?' Not their defense. It was, 'How are we gonna handle Bruce Smith?' "

The obvious answer, punctuated tonight in Canton, was not well. Not very well at all.

"I just loved what I did for a living," says Smith, whose name joins 252 others in pro football's shrine, including Portsmouth's Clarence "Ace" Parker. "I had no idea of the stories that would be written after my career was over. I just knew that I did not want to sell myself short."

Tom Robinson, 757-446-2518

tom.robinson@pilotonline.com