I kind of figured this was going to happen shortly, but it is sad nonetheless: the Steelers placed longtime DE Aaron Smith on injured reserve today, ending his 2011 season and mosty likely his career.
Smith had sat out the last 2 games with a foot injury and has had injury issues the last three seasons, tearing his rotator cuff in 2009 and his triceps in 2010.
While he never put up lofty sack numbers, Smith was one of the league’s best defensive lineman against the run and the Steelers considered him their greatest defensive end in the three-plus decades of running the same defensive system.
Here’s an interesting tidbit on Smith from the Trib’s Dejan Kovacevic:
What will resonate most for me – at least for the short term – are two words Smith spoke to me after a rough outing a month ago in Indianapolis. Well after the game’s final snap, as much as a half-hour later, he looked up at me while putting on his shoes and said, “I’m tired.”
While the Steelers are stocked with two young, solid defensive ends in Ziggy Hood and Cam Heyward, it is hard not to view Smith’s injury and likely retirement as the first of many key components of the Steeler past two championships to ride off into the sunset.
Here’s what SI’s Peter King wrote about Smith when he placed him on his all-decade team for the 2000s:
He’s the upset pick of the team. But the mostly anonymous body of work over the decade makes the 1999 fourth-round pick a worthy choice. The Steelers were the top-rated defense three times in the last half of the decade, and the 6-5, 298-pound Smith’s ability to shed blocks as a 3-4 defensive end and stop the run was a vital part of their success. “He can’t be blocked,” defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau said. Well, almost.
What a player. If this is the end of the road for Smith, he should go down as one of the greatest defensive lineman in Steelers history.
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