Derrell Smith never heard the voice message himself, rather secondhand from his high school coach. It was probably for the best. The sobering call came from a coach at the University of Delaware.

We don’t see you as a college linebacker. We’re pulling your scholarship.

They were piercing words Smith refuses to suppress. This was his hometown team. So now, before every game – when most of his teammates are blasting angry rap or heavy metal – Smith flicks his iPod to Usher. He stays mellow, stays quiet. His motivation rages internally. With ‘Can You Handle It’ slowly beating on, Smith rekindles that Delaware snub.

‘You’re not a D-I linebacker,’ recalls Smith, with a smirk. ‘That’s what I think about before every game. I’m going to show you all.’

And he has. Getting snubbed by Delaware turned out to be a blessing. Now as a junior, Smith is arguably the best linebacker in the Big East.

Through 10 games, he leads the conference with 60 solo tackles (82 in total) and four forced fumbles to go along with 6.5 sacks. He’s the catalyst of a run defense that ascended 88 spots nationally, from 101st last season to 13th this year. Smith’s spontaneous playmaking ability has given Syracuse (3-7, 0-5 Big East) a fighting chance each week.

He never let Delaware’s denial float in one ear and out the other. He clung to it and converted it into energy. Something about not being wanted in his own backyard still motivates him.

‘Once they call defense out and I step on the field, I become a whole different person,’ said Smith, who hails from New Castle, Del.

Syracuse was his lone Division I-A scholarship offer. Even that took a stroke of luck. Smith said the man who recruited him, former SU assistant Tim Cross, needed to convince the other Orange coaches to give him a shot. Sure, Smith was a standout running back at Paul Hodgson Vocational Tech (Del.) His 18 touchdowns earned him Gatorade Player of the Year honors.

But his defensive film wasn’t exactly a SportsCenter highlight reel.

Smith was undersized and tentative. When Paul Hodgson switched to a 4-3 alignment, Smith moved from safety to outside linebacker as a senior. Littered with pancake blocks and poor decisions, the defensive film scared teams off, including Delaware.

‘I was recruited by a lot of schools, but none of them offered scholarships because I was horrible at linebacker,’ Smith said. ‘I didn’t know how to read. I was scared at outside linebacker, honestly.’

Delaware floated one wild idea to Smith’s high school head coach, Frank Moffett. Smith could stay in-state, one Delaware coach said, if he added 60 pounds and played defensive end.

Or in other words, ‘Get Lost.’ Considering Smith’s frame, such a substantial gain was ludicrous.

‘It motivated him,’ Moffett said. ‘I really believe that Syracuse’s gain was Delaware’s loss.’

So when Syracuse gave Smith a realistic shot to play, he went to work. Those hulking forearms didn’t inflate overnight.

As a freshman, the 210-pound Smith was the walking punch line in the weight room. Trainers gave him two nicknames. They told Smith looked like ‘Tarzan’ and lifted like ‘Jane.’ Smith couldn’t bench press 155 pounds – hardly a milestone – six times.

Driven by what he called ‘that whole scholarship thing,’ Smith beefed up.

Now, he’s 240 pounds.

‘Since Syracuse was my only offer, I figured that when I got here, I’d outwork everybody,’ Smith said. ‘That was my whole mentality.’

Moffett, Smith’s high school coach, saw signs of Smith’s resolve early. Despite living multiple bus trips away, Smith never missed offseason workouts. Whenever one of Moffett’s current players says he can’t make a summer session, the coach points to Smith. Go the extra mile and you’ll earn a scholarship, he says.

‘You know the old saying, ‘You practice how you play?’ That was him,’ Moffett said. ‘When he practiced, he practiced hard. He ran hard. He tackled hard. He blocked hard. Those are the little things that transfer into the bigger picture.’

The bigger picture became the heart of Syracuse’s defense. After a brief stint at running back, Smith settled in at outside linebacker. A new coaching staff came in, and Smith was moved to the middle – the ring-bearer of SU’s new defense.

The rest is history, a mash-up of crushing hits, forced fumbles and The Bone. Given to the player with the hardest hit each week by SU coaches, the giant animal bone has become a mild obsession for Smith. He has earned it more than anybody else.

‘It’s kind of embarrassing when he gets it because he flaunts it around a little bit too much,’ joked Mike Stenclik, Smith’s backup. ‘He’s one of the best linebackers in the Big East and the best defender on our team in my eyes. When you talk to him, he doesn’t show it. He doesn’t express arrogance about him. Just his demeanor on campus and in the locker room is humble.’

A few weeks ago, it looked like Stenclik would temporarily supplant Smith at middle linebacker. Smith pulled up lame at the end of Syracuse’s 28-14 win against Akron with cramps. He hobbled off the field, didn’t return, and his prognosis was a mystery all week.

The next week, Smith was starting against Cincinnati.

‘He has played through pain, played through injuries and really is having a year where he should have some honors,’ SU head coach Doug Marrone said. ‘He’s been aggressive, decisive, and from a leadership standpoint, he’s done a great job.’

So Smith keeps adding tracks to his Greatest Hits album. There were the two forced fumbles against Northwestern, two more tackles-for-loss and a sack against Maine, and one goal-line smack of Pittsburgh’s Dion Lewis. Such instinctive plays were rare in 2008.

Last year was a blur. Too much thinking, Smith said. This year, he’s planning and reacting.

Before the snap, he logs every possible hint – how many yards deep the running back is, which direction each linemen is leaning, what linemen are mumbling to each other, anything to get a head start. Usually, he can tell if a run or pass is coming. Then he instructs the front seven accordingly.

Back in the spring, Smith said it would have been nearly impossible for him to run the defense. Now, the front seven is strumming with ease. Smith credits linebacker coach Dan Conley, for accelerating his learning curve, and Art Jones, for devouring double-teams. Conley, a former All-Big East middle linebacker for SU in 1994, showed Smith how to read within the box.

‘Coach Conley drilled that into my head,’ Smith said. ‘He taught me how to use my hands and get off blocks.’

And Jones? As Syracuse’s NFL-bound defensive tackle shuffled to the main table inside the cafeteria to talk about his season-ending knee surgery last week, he rubbed Smith on the head.

A few moments later, Smith’s eyes fixated on Jones.

‘He’s going to be missed, man,’ Smith said. ‘He’s going to be missed. …He kept people off of me, so I could get to the tackles.’

True, of course. But when Jones is playing on Sundays next fall, Smith will likely be back for one final hurrah at Syracuse. He is a senior academically, but a junior athletically. Maybe this season is hinting at something bigger.

Syracuse’s hot-potato offense has forced Smith’s unit to run on and off the field ad nauseum. The Orange’s 25 turnovers are the seventh most in the nation.

For Smith, it’s different. He relishes these extra snaps. After all, they’re snaps Delaware wouldn’t give him.

‘I love playing so when that happens I just look at it as another opportunity to stop them,’ Smith said. ‘That’s just the mindset I bring to it.’

thdunne@syr.edu

Published on November 17, 2009 at 12:00 pm