The competitive spirit of Steve Smith will never die. Smith is already more than one year removed from officially retiring from the NFL, and settling nicely into his new role on the NFL Network, but it doesn’t take much to turn him back to his old ways.
During his playing career, Smith was one of the most intense trash-talkers in the league, and all it took was one answer from Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield to make the former Carolina Panthers wide receiver flip the switch. After Mayfield revealed that he would have played safety if he didn’t end up becoming a quarterback, Smith fired off a little trash talk, claiming that he would run him over.
What made their brief exchange all the more entertaining is that Mayfield wasn’t afraid to return fire. The two were able to find common ground in the fact that Smith is a "disrespectful kind of dude," and the 2018 first overall pick likes that about him. In a way, Smith may have been testing Mayfield to see if he’s prepared for the type of trash talk that he will encounter all season long as opposing defenses try to get into the rookie’s head.
It looks like he passed. Check out their little back-and-forth below.
