Smith Hopes to Prove Skills Haven’t Waned : Chargers: Healed from knee injury, veteran will go back into the linebacker rotation.

Maybe Billy Ray Smith has lost a step or two, maybe some of the life has been sapped out of him and maybe the people who say he’s washed up are right.

But no one, not even Smith, can answer those questions with him standing on the sidelines. So with the Chargers’ season all but through after eight games, the organization is going to use the last eight games to see if Smith is through, too.

Smith, 30, in his ninth year with the Chargers and in the last year of his contract, has played sparingly this season except for special teams. Last week against Cleveland, he did not play a single snap from scrimmage.

But Charger Coach Dan Henning announced Monday that Smith’s role will be expanded now that he is almost totally recovered from a sprained knee injury he suffered in the first exhibition game of the season. Wednesday, he said Smith will back up linebackers Gary Plummer, Junior Seau, Henry Rolling and Leslie O’Neal mostly in passing situations.

“I wouldn’t expect him to play 50 plays, or 40 plays, maybe not 30, maybe not 20, but I would expect him to play and contribute,” Henning said.

Defensive coordinator Ron Lynn said he hopes to learn a lot about Smith in the last half of the season.

“People say he’s at the end,” he said. “For that determination to be made, he’s going to have to play a number of games. This has got to be a period of great importance to him. He’s got these last eight games to put on film for us or to somebody else.”

Smith said he is ready to prove the skeptics wrong.

“I don’t have a doubt that I can go in and play, and play well,” he said. “I just don’t think it’s going to be a problem.”

Neither does safety Martin Bayless, who has played with Smith for the past five seasons.

“I really don’t see much difference in Billy Ray,” Bayless said. “The only thing that slowed Billy down was the knee injury. He’s the same type of player, in my eyes, as he was a couple years ago.

“If he gets the opportunity to go out there and do what they ask him to do, we’ll get good results. He’ll be able to help us. He’s a veteran, he’s a leader. There’s a lot of guys that look up to him. He’s still capable of making the big plays, there’s no question about that.”

But Bayless knows the questions will remain unless Smith answers them.

“Watching from the sidelines, we can all say, ‘Well, maybe he’s lost a step,’ ” Bayless said. “The only way we can find out is if he gets an opportunity to play on Sunday. Everybody’s going to second guess you when you’re not playing. ‘Is he too old? Is he still hurt?’ ”

Bayless might understand that feeling better than anyone. After starting for four seasons at strong safety, he was replaced by Anthony Shelton in the exhibition season. A week before the season opener, Bayless was waived. But the Chargers brought him back a day later and now he has reclaimed his starting job.

Bayless knows the first two months of the season couldn’t have been much fun for Smith.

“It was very tough in my situation, so I can imagine,” he said. “If he is in the same realm as I was, then it’s tough as hell. On the outside, he’s handled it well. We don’t know what’s going on inside. He could be burning up. He could be a living time bomb.”

Smith said it hasn’t been that bad, thanks in part to his wife, Kimberly Hunt.

“I don’t think it ever got to the point where she had to snap me out of a deep, dark depression,” he said. “I wasn’t sitting in the cellar with a bottle of Scotch having trouble getting up the stairs to go to work. She’s been a very consistent influence on me, very positive.”

Still, Smith acknowledges he’s been frustrated this year.

“It’s natural,” he said. “You feel bad when you’re losing, and then when you’re not able to contribute, it probably amplifies that.”

And because of Smith’s inactivity, Bayless said Smith is no longer one of the spiritual leaders of the defense.

“You feel like you’re an outsider looking in,” Bayless said. “You feel like somebody has taken away something that you’ve worked very hard for. You can’t find a reason why you shouldn’t be out there. It only leads you to not being a vocal player. You do kind of withdraw. You feel you aren’t part of the team.”

But he is hoping that beginning Sunday in Seattle, that will change.

“I’m going to be an injury-prone guy,” Smith said. “But for me to finish out the year strong would be nice.”

Bayless, for one, sees Smith playing somewhere next year.

“Billy has two or three good years left, because mentally, he’s the type of player who’s always going to prepare himself,” Bayless said. “Whether he’s lost a step, I don’t know that. That’s for someone else to decide. But I know one thing, mentally he’s always been on top of his game, so he’ll be able to compensate for that.”

Charger Notes

Running back Rod Bernstine (hip) did not practice and safety Anthony Shelton (shoulder) practiced very lightly, but Coach Dan Henning said he expects both to be ready for Sunday’s game in Seattle.