Eagles DeVonta Smith Returns For Minicamp, Recounts Super Bowl And The Dagger

DeVonta Smith was back. The Eagles receiver looked like he always does - fast, shifty, and, as usual, nattily attired, with stylish pink cleats completing his usual practice garb of black workout pants and his familiar green No. 6 jersey over a gray long-sleeve shirt.

Where you been, DeVonta?

“Working,” he said after looking like he is poised for another monster season.

Smith wasn’t at the two previous OTAs that were open to reporters, but he was at Tuesday’s mandatory minicamp. All his teammates were there, too, for 100 percent attendance.

The receiver had his string of back-to-back 1,000-yard yards snapped last year, but that was because injuries cost him three games and because he sat out a meaningless season-finale.

That is something he wants to work on, is not getting hurt, though when asked to elaborate on what he can do, he simply said, “Just strengthen whatever I need to strengthen. Anything I had that was bothering me, strengthen it.”

Smith missed time early in the season with a concussion then missed time late with a hamstring issue.

He wasted little time showing what he has done to so many others in his career, which has him at 4,011 yards receiving in his first four years with a team record for most yards receiving in the playoffs with 595, when he took advantage of a coverage breakdown on Tuesday and sped to open space for a long touchdown throw from Jalen Hurts.

It wasn’t the “dagger” that Smith used to bury the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX, when he gained a step on a Chiefs defender and accepted a perfectly thrown ball from Hurts to give the Eagles an insurmountable 34-0 lead with 2:40 left in the third quarter. Smith ranked the catch one of the top three of his career, with two others against the Washington Commanders being the other two, though Smith couldn’t remember which ones they were.

“There’s a lot of them,” he said.

Since Smith hadn’t been available since walking off the Superdome turf in New Orleans as a Super Bowl champion, he talked about the emotion of the experience, since he was playing in his home state of Louisiana.

“The emotion, I really don’t know,” he said. “I just kind of came out of the tunnel and it kind of hit me. I guess it was just the feeling of being back home. My grandfather doesn’t come up here for games, so him being able to see me in the NFL, the biggest game there is, and him just being him there, think that kind of set in with me.

“For me, the biggest thing was it being at home. I think it was winning at home in front of my family. That hit me harder than winning it overall, just doing it in front of my family.”