Dennis Smith played each one of his 184 games in the NFL with the Denver Broncos.
Smith was selected to the Pro Bowl six times and finished his Broncos career with a whopping 1,152 tackles, 30 interceptions and countless highlight reel hits.
Smith’s greatness gets overshadowed some by the great Steve Atwater, his teammate on the back-end of a legendary Broncos defense.
Smith was a first-round pick in the 1981 NFL Draft out of USC, and was inducted into the Broncos’ Ring of Fame 20 years later.
This is another player whose best days were before my time, but I will never forget growing up and hearing so many stories about the safety tandem of Smith and Atwater at their very best. These were two of the most feared hitters in the NFL at the time, players whose feature on the Broncos history DVD I would watch over and over again.
Thinking about a safety duo as great as Smith and Atwater is very exciting as a fan, and for those who were able to watch it live, I’m sure we only know a piece of the story.
Unfortunately, Smith’s career ended in 1994, just before the Broncos went on to dominate the AFC for the next four or five years, and he never won a Super Bowl with the team.
– SB