Last month, when the Panthers cut receiver Steve Smith, Steve Smith wasn’t happy.
"[P]ut your goggles on cause there’s going to be blood and guts everywhere,” Smith said at the time regarding the prospect of facing the Panthers.
Now that he’s had some time to process the turn of events, Smith has become ambivalent. Or so he says.
“What’s in the past is in the past,” Smith said during a Friday appearance in Charlotte, via Joseph Person of the Charlotte Observer. “At the end of the day, you go to the kitchen, you get a washcloth, you pick up the spilled milk and you move on. That’s what I’m doing. I’m moving on.”
He’s moving on, without hard feelings. Or so he says.
“I have nothing bad to say about Mr. Richardson or the organization,” Smith said. “And I won’t. And I refuse to because they deserve nothing but my respect. At the end of the day, they’ve done great things for me, given me an opportunity to bless my family.”
We buy it. While it’s understandable to be disappointed and to have that disappointment flash initially as anger, Smith has matured. It doesn’t mean he won’t be ready to spill some blood and guts when his new team, the Ravens, face his old team. But Smith seems to be ready in any given game to do that, which is the way football at its highest level must be played.