Harrison Smith Adapting to NFL Safety Role

It’s hard to believe, but Harrison Smith is finishing up his 10th NFL season.

The Vikings drafted Smith 29th overall in 2012; since then, he’s been a staple of Minnesota’s defense, setting himself apart as one of the league’s best at disguising coverages and making things difficult on opposing offenses.

The NFL has done its best to make Smith’s job more difficult, though, too. Ben Goessling of the Star Tribune spoke with the veteran safety about adapting to a “changing NFL.“ Goessling wrote:

He is a safety for his time, adept at the blitz disguises and last-second coverage shifts used to fool quarterbacks who started learning how to beat Cover-2 defenses while playing Madden on an Xbox. He has 29 career interceptions, more than any active player who’s spent his entire career at safety. He has nudged his way into comparisons with Hall of Famers such as Ed Reed, Troy Polamalu, John Lynch and Steve Atwater, the players Smith lionized as a kid in Tennessee.

None of it, not playing safety in an era of record-breaking offenses, not adapting to the rules changes that continue to make his job more complex and certainly not reaching the postseason, is as easy as it might once have seemed.

According to Goessling, Smith has “tried sharing his views about how rule changes have made defenders’ jobs difficult but knows why he’s not likely to get much of an audience.”

“I’m not a blunt instrument that thinks, ‘Oh, we should be able to hit anybody wherever we want,’ ” Smith told Goessling. “But it does make it hard on defensive players, and in some scenarios, I think it makes it impossible to participate in the game without penalty. It’s just what it is.

“I’ve tried to adapt,” Smith said. “I still don’t get it done every time. But all you can do is try to prepare yourself.”