He’s More Than Just Smith, S.

Remember those high school annuals where they tried to put something pithy under the pictures of the graduating class? One of the staples was: “Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith.”

Fate tried to conceal Stephen Smith, all right. So did the Penn State Nittany Lions and the Los Angeles Raiders.

Look! Supposing you were a Parade magazine All-American running back in high school. Suppose you had won letters in track, rushed for 201 yards and four touchdowns in one football game, had run a 4.5 40-yard dash, had all the moves and reason to think you might be the new Galloping Ghost. Then you got to Penn State, and Joe Paterno asked how you would like to block for D.J. Dozier?

How would you like to get in the pros with the Raiders and find yourself in a backfield with Marcus Allen and Bo Jackson or Eric Dickerson--to say nothing of Roger Craig and Nick Bell?

Steve has done all of the above. He might as well be named Smith. Or Jones. He could play in a mask--a ski mask as well as a face mask. He’s the phantom of this opera. He’s as anonymous as a ransom note. He might as well be John Doe. He’s as taken for granted as a butler.

But he is super important to the Raiders. The tailbacks don’t run and the quarterbacks don’t throw, usually, if Steve Smith isn’t in there doing his job--which includes blocking 300-pound pass rushers, hard-hitting cornerbacks and the terrorists known as linebackers.

This might not be the role Steve Smith envisaged for himself. Blocking backs don’t get carried off on the shoulders of teammates. They don’t get voted into the Pro Bowl.

They get drafted 81st, as Steve Smith did. They get to touch the ball only every other eclipse of the moon. They’re on the bottom of more piles than a hunk of coal.

Even offensive linemen, specialists in anonymity themselves, occasionally are identified as “the Electric Company” or “the Carpet Sweepers.” Blocking backs simply are identified as Smith, S.

His number is 35 but he’s usually the only guy in the backfield who needs one. He may not even be the best-known Smith on the team if defensive end Anthony Smith keeps piling up the sacks--and doing the appropriate sack dance afterward.

If he were a one-purpose back, Steve Smith would still be indispensable to the Raider attack. But he’s not.

In the second quarter of the Raiders’ game against Kansas City on Sunday, the Raiders had a 14-0 lead and the ball on the Chiefs’ 11-yard-line. Jay Schroeder faded to pass. Smith did his obligatory pass blocking, then sneaked to the far sideline. He got open. Schroeder spotted him, threw him the ball. Smith streaked around a defender and into the end zone for the score that really broke Kansas City’s back and ensured their 28-7 defeat.

Was that an isolated instance? Not at all. It was the third pass Smith had caught in the game, the 25th he had caught this season--more than any other Raider back--and the 92nd of his career with the Raiders.

He has even carried the ball 345 times--not to be compared to Dickerson’s lifetime figure of 2,953--but if Dickerson complains of not getting the ball enough, Smitty should call his lawyer.

Does his secondary role bother Steve? Or is he resigned to being a Smith?

Steve smiles. “I don’t mind not being in the limelight,” he says. “I take pride in doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”

He adds: “I weighed 200-205 when I was a tailback. When (Paterno) put me at fullback, I decided to bulk up to 220, 230 and 240, if that’s what it took.”

Smith is the Raiders’ Sherman tank. His job is to clear the path for the queen of battle, the infantry. He does this as well as or better than anyone else in the league. The path to the quarterback goes through him.

So, fate has only been minorly successful in concealing him. And the poet, Longfellow, might have been closer to the mark about Steve when he said:

The Smith a mighty man is he With large and sinewy hands. His brow is wet with honest sweat, He earns whate’er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man.