If you need any other reasons to think Harrison Smith is one of the toughest NFL players, here it is. Back in 2015, Smith returned from an MCL injury but he was also playing with another injury — a tear. Smith told Alec Lewis with The Athletic how he was playing with a torn gracilis in his left leg.
“This was my first game back from a pretty bad MCL injury,” he says. “I had also torn a muscle called the gracilis in my left leg. It’s still torn.”
“Yeah,” he says, “we just left it alone.”
The backstory: In early December 2015, the Vikings played the Seattle Seahawks. Smith had already hurt his MCL, and on one of the first plays, he swooped in for a tackle for loss. “A sick TFL,” he says. The next play, on a pass to the flat, the muscle snapped, but Smith says it was “only 90 percent torn.”
Doctors said he could undergo surgery, but then he’d miss time. Smith says they also told him he could tear it himself and keep playing. He tried to tear it on his own by jumping up and down. The pain brought him to tears. He still practiced. “It hurt like a b—-,” he says. One afternoon, after a play in practice, he was walking backward and bumped into a teammate’s foot. The gracilis fully popped.
“I was like, ‘Oh, I’m good now,’” Smith says. “It was fine after that.”
Almost 10 years later, Smith is still going strong. A team captain and one of the best safeties in the league, Smith is a force to be reckoned with. While his time in the NFL is approaching, Smith will always be remembered as one of the best Vikings to ever play.
Smith leads all active players with 34 interceptions, 766 tackles, 175 games started, 42 quarterback hits, and 12 forced fumbles.