Small, mighty Smith has Hawks' attention

Forget that Steve Smith stands only 5 feet 9 and weighs just 185 pounds.

He might as well be Goliath, the way the Seahawks are talking about how they have to defend him.

Smith is a dynamo of a wide receiver for the Carolina Panthers, an eye-black-wearing speed demon who is in your face. He's strong enough to wrestle an apparent interception away from a bigger defender and make it a big catch. He's brash enough to stare down TV cameramen and tell anyone who's watching he told you he was going to have a great game. He's relentless enough to persevere in the face of double-teams and bumps at the line of scrimmage in an effort to throw him off his route.

Stop Smith, the NFL's top receiver in 2005? The Seahawks can only hope to contain him.

"I know one thing, there is not going to be anything we haven't seen," Panthers coach John Fox said. "Everything has been tried. The thing in this game is, you can take somebody away but you open up some other holes."

Except there might not be any taking away of Smith.

Seahawks cornerback Andre Dyson has a long history with Smith. The two were teammates in college at Utah for two years.

"I know what he's capable of doing," Dyson said. His brother Kevin spent a year with Smith in 2003. "You know every time you go up against him, you're going to get his best.

"There's only so many defenses you can run. You get the right play call and the players play the coverage right and you don't give up the big play. I don't think you can come up with this mastermind, super-sneaky defense. He's going to make some plays, hopefully not any big ones, and we're going to make some plays."

Both Dyson and fellow cornerback Marcus Trufant feel it's going to take a team effort to limit Smith. The Seahawks don't normally game-plan specifically toward one player, but they do have a history of devising schemes to counteract the playmaking ability of such weapons as Atlanta Falcons quarterback Mike Vick.

"With the numbers he has put up, I think if you don't approach it at the start that way, you're making a huge mistake," Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren said. "He catches 14 balls, 12 balls, 13 balls, that's a lot of passes in a game. Clearly, they want him to be a big part of what they do. ... You better have some sort of answer for playing them or they can make you look pretty bad."

What is that answer? Double-teams? Press coverage? Soft zone coverage? Realizing Smith will get his yards and concentrating on stopping the run?

"The great thing our coaches do, we put him in different formations," Carolina quarterback Jake Delhomme said. "We kind of motion him around, we try to create opportunities for him. A lot of teams have rolled to him and taken two guys to cover him. When you can take two guys out with one, you need to be able to run the football."

How about some good old-fashioned mind games, via trash talk?

"The guy is truly a competitor," Smith's teammate, Ken Lucas, said. "He fears nobody. Talking to him does not work at all. That makes him want to beat you even more on every play."

Holmgren said teams can't ever completely shut down the great players.

"The great pass receiver is going to catch his balls and he's going to gain his yards," Holmgren said. "You just hope he's not too much of a disruption in the game. And then don't push the panic button when he does catch a pass. You've got to tackle him. Don't let him run all over the place. Team defense is huge when you're playing against a great player."

José Miguel Romero: 206-464-2409 or jromero@seattletimes.com