Steelers safety Mike Mitchell is still on 
Smith called out Mitchell, who played with Smith in Carolina in 2013, after their Week 4 meeting in Pittsburgh, where Smith had to leave early due to microfractures in his back.
Smith originally thought Mitchell speared him in the back and trash talked about it afterwards. Turns out, it was linebacker Lawrence Timmons who hit Smith, but Mitchell still did the talking.
Here’s Smith’s side of the story:
“Timmons hit me, which I didn’t know,” Smith said. “But Mike Mitchell, my former teammate, gets up and he’s talking, he’s kind of celebrating. He was in my face after I got up, when I was giving the ball to the ref, as if he hit me. Like a moron, I assumed that he actually did something.
“Then, when I went down because my back was hurting, he was yelling, ‘Yeah, how do you like that!’ and he said a few words.”
Smith is known for talking trash during games, but rubbing an injury into a player’s face is another matter. Smith also took it personally considering Mitchell called Smith for contract advice when he was leaving Carolina in 2014.
“That’s what ticked me off,” Smith said. “On a personal level, you’re asking me questions, then you get out there and you kind of forget.”
Then Smith threw out a barb of his own.
“He has a tendency where he doesn’t stay around teams much longer than two years, so I don’t find anything wrong with it,” he said.
Mitchell spent his first four seasons with the Raiders, then just one year with the Panthers, and is now on his third team in seven seasons with the Steelers. Smith, meanwhile, played 13 years in Carolina before coming to Baltimore for the past two seasons.
Smith actually didn’t have a problem with the hit itself.
“I guess the guy that actually did something didn’t say anything,” Smith said. “It was a good, solid hit by Timmons. He was knocking people all over the field.”
Smith was asked if Mitchell still had a place on his lifetime hit list.
“You get on it because you’re stupid,” Smith said. “Yeah.”
