D’Joun Smith: Football dreamer battling nightmare start

• Bengals at Colts, 7 p.m. Thursday, Fox

Scattered inside his new locker at the Colts’ West 56th Street facility, tucked behind his practice uniform and his playbook, hang four black-and-white photos of the best to ever play his position. There’s Deion Sanders. There’s Rod Woodson. There’s Champ Bailey and Darrelle Revis. Their faces stare at D’Joun Smith before he hits the practice field each morning, daily reminders of the lofty ambitions he refuses to hide from.

Nestled beneath those photos is a spiral notebook, the kind high school students scribble in during chemistry class. Smith’s kept this one with him since ninth grade, and it shows: The edges are tattered, some pages torn. The Colts rookie cornerback opens it up and starts reading from a page titled ‘Goals.’ Among them:

Become the Defensive Rookie of the Year.

Become a lockdown corner.

Become a Super Bowl champion.

Become legendary.

That’s D’Joun Smith, a football dreamer who never wanted anything to do with mediocrity. He didn’t write “Become great” on that page. He wrote “Become legendary.”

Colts coach Chuck Pagano sensed it the first time he met Smith, in an interview at last winter’s NFL Combine. Pagano asked the little-known league hopeful from the little-known school to name the best cornerback in the draft. The position pool was a deep one, littered with All-Americans, national champions, sure-bet prospects from SEC powerhouses. No matter. Smith didn’t flinch.

“It’s me,” he stated.

Pagano loved that.

Two months later, on draft night — which doubled as the evening Smith graduated from Florida Atlantic — he offered this bravado moments after the Colts swiped him with the first pick in the third round: “Under the right tutelage and the right coach that’s going to make my technique even better, I’m probably going to be the best cornerback to play the game.”

Huh?

Three months later Smith refuses to hide from such swagger, despite a sobering reality he can’t ignore: No Colts defensive back was humbled more often in training camp. Smith took a beating in Anderson. Andrew Luck torched him, practice after practice, day after day. If it wasn’t T.Y. Hilton slipping past him for a long bomb, it was Andre Johnson. If it wasn’t Johnson, it was Phillip Dorsett. Or Duron Carter. Or Donte Moncrief.

Welcome to the NFL, rookie. Now go cover those receivers catching passes from that quarterback.

Smith couldn’t. Not yet. Class was in session; he was failing.

“Me getting abused,” is how he puts it now. “In Anderson, everything was just … so fast. Giving up passes like that, it made me appreciate football even more. Made me appreciate the hard work that you have to put in to get to this level and stay at this level.”

The humbling ate at Smith, wore on him. Best cornerback to play the game? No. He was playing like one of the worst on the roster.

“I did get down on myself,” he admits. “As a defensive back, you don’t want to give up passes. Every time, I’d be in a great position, but they catch the ball. I’m on his shoulder, but they catch the ball. I tip the ball, but they still catch the ball. So, you’re just like, ‘Come on, man. You know you’re better than this.’

“That doubt always starts to creep in your mind, like, you can’t do this.”

Can’t. This was new to Smith. His conviction had never wavered before, never like this. He was competitive and combative as a high school star in Miami, and likely would’ve landed at a bigger college program if not for a four-game suspension that ended his junior season. After being penalized for several illegal hits, Smith was sent to the sideline for good after leveling a blow on an opponent that triggered a bench-clearing brawl. But that was Smith’s game: Fearless and ferocious. It’s what made him the player he was.

His idols were Sanders, Woodson, Bailey, Revis, among the best corners the NFL’s ever seen. As a Miami boy, he took a special liking to Ed Reed and the late Sean Taylor, a pair of menacing safeties whose faces also adorn the inside of his locker.

“He’s probably my favorite player of all-time,” Smith once said of Taylor, who died in 2007. Why? “He put fear into his opponents. That’s what I try to do — instill fear.”

On draft night in May, Smith boasted that he’d been thrown at just 11 times his entire senior season. He was ready for his next challenge. He was confident.

Until Anderson. He slumped on his bed one evening in his dorm room, fresh off another uneven practice, and realized he’d reached his lowest moment. He called his mother back in Miami.

“It’s not going to happen overnight,” she urged him. “If it happened overnight, what testimony would you have?”

Perspective. Smith sorely needed it. He still needs it.

“(That’s) a rookie corner playing in the National Football League,” Pagano explains. “It’s a tough, tough duty. But he’s the right man for the job.”

Smith says he feeds off the tough-love offered by Pagano and Colts secondary coach Mike Gillhamer, and the daily toil of facing the Murderer’s Row of Colts receivers in practice. There won’t be many Sundays when he lines up opposite a wide receiver group this deep and this dynamic. Not to mention one catching passes from Andrew Luck.

“Going against this talent every day, you might want to get down on yourself, but you just have to keep working,” says another rookie in the Colts secondary, safety Clayton Geathers. “D’Joun wants to be one of the best, and he will be. Right now, he’s just putting tools into his tool belt.”

Smith’s third preseason game saw progress: He didn’t allow a completed pass in a win at St. Louis (a 25-yard catch by the receiver Smith was covering, Tavon Austin, was called back to due pass interference on the offense). Thanks to the Colts’ lack of cornerback depth, he’ll be counted on this season. And he’ll take his lumps. Like Pagano said, all rookies do.

Mindful of the beating he took in camp, and the long road ahead, the man who drafted Smith walked up to him in the locker room after the team’s first preseason game.

“You said you wanted to be great,” Ryan Grigson told him. “To do that, you have to accept the process. The game’s going to slow down. It’s going to slow down.”

Smith vows it has. He’s sworn off having a girlfriend this season. He spends his free time playing the brain-testing game Lumosity. In his mind, it sharpens his reaction time, a vital tool for a young cornerback in the NFL. He remains resolute to not just become great, but legendary. He’s embraced the process, humbling as it’s been. He won't let this nightmare start define him.

Sanders. Bailey. Woodson. Revis. Taylor. Reed.

D’Joun Smith?

Say this much for the young man: That’s the plan.

Call Star reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134 and follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.