NEW ORLEANS — The stories land like bricks on a freshly mortared slab year after year, game after game, season after season. This quarterback overcame a learning disability, that linebacker had reconstructive knee surgery.
The Super Bowl has become a clearing house for up-close-and-personal tales of redemption and reflection and rehabilitation. Sometimes it’s the players themselves: The Packers’ Max McGee introduced the whole concept in the very first game, after all, rising from a hangover haze and a season of near-inactivity to catch two touchdowns from Bart Starr in Super Bowl I.
Sometimes, it’s family: Jim Plunkett was famously asked one time, “Is it blind mother, deaf father, or the other way around?” In truth, Plunkett’s parents were both blind and it was a wonderful story when their son grew up to lead the Raiders to two Super Bowls after overcoming his own football failures.
Maybe that’s why Torrey Smith has seemed to walk an uncomfortable tightrope this week. If you have even a peripheral interest in the NFL, you certainly know that Smith, a wide receiver for the Ravens, lost his younger brother, Tevin, in a motorcycle accident late in the evening of Sept. 22.
Less than 24 hours later, his heart bursting, he caught six passes for 127 yards and two touchdowns to guide the Ravens to a 31-30 win over the Patriots. In the weeks and months that followed, still grieving, Smith had a fine season, catching 49 balls for 855 yards and eight TDs.
But Smith has been careful this week to try to steer the various conversations with various media members toward football, while still recognizing how much the memory of his little brother has driven him.
“Listen,” he said earlier this week. “I am not the only person who’s ever had to suffer and endure a terrible loss like this. I’m not the only one who’s ever gotten a call like that in the middle of the night. It happens to people every day. It’s terrible, but you aren’t doing anyone any favors by shutting down your life.”
He shook his head.
“That wouldn’t honor my brother,” he said. “And for anyone who’s lost a loved one unexpectedly, it doesn’t help anyone to stop being a brother, a husband, a co-worker, an employee. You have to honor them by living your life as well as it can be lived.”
Smith, of course, is blessed with the kind of talent that can lead to extraordinary accomplishment and honor. On an offense rife with big-play options — Joe Flacco, Ray Rice, Anquan Boldin — he has emerged as another walking highlight reel.
Never was that more apparent than in the Ravens’ divisional playoff victory against the Broncos in Denver, when twice he burned Denver’s iconic corner, Champ Bailey. The first time was a simple case of speed beating speed, Smith simply outsprinting Bailey to a beautifully thrown Flacco spiral and cashing in a 59-yard touchdown.
The second one was something else, something special: 43 seconds to go in the half, Flacco dropping back to the Denver 40, throwing what looked like it was supposed to be a deep out, until Smith somehow managed to shift his momentum, sneak in front of Bailey, catch the ball at the 5 and trot in for another six.
“He got away from me,” said Bailey, who has spent most of a football lifetime barely allowing anyone to ever get away from him. But Smith could, because Smith can.
“It’s exciting throwing the ball his way,” Flacco says, “because even if you’re not perfect, he can make it look like you’re perfect.”
Smith’s outlook was especially useful in the aftermath of the Ravens’ surprising win at New England in the AFC Championship Game, when a smattering — at least, let us hope it was only a smattering — of especially vile Patriots fans actually taunted him on Twitter about his brother. The Tweets are too tasteless to repeat.
Smith was philosophical — he tweeted the next day, “yet NE fans cry about class” — but, perhaps, that best underscores why he wants this week to be about football, not the strength of carrying on.
“He’ll be with me wherever I go,” Smith said. “Non only on a football field. And not only this Sunday.”
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com