Christopher
Smith.
Christopher
Smith.
Georgia· 5'11"· 192 lb· 4.62s 40
"A five-year Georgia starter whose value lives entirely between the ears: the deep-half organizer of two national championship defenses, with the ball production to prove the anticipation was real."Pre-draft read
Smith played Georgia's deep-half and single-high safety spots with the range and anticipation of a converted corner. He reads the quarterback's front shoulder from depth, triggers before the throw leaves the hand, and covers ground in a straight line without the false step that costs most college safeties a step of closing distance.
Against the run he is a fill-and-wrap tackler who takes correct angles from depth, not a downhill enforcer at the line. He is a better zone defender than man defender, more comfortable reading concepts than matching a tight end step for step. The athletic ceiling is average, but the signature is ball production off pure anticipation: six college interceptions and two return touchdowns that each flipped a game.
Split-safety zone structure that lets him play the deep half with his eyes and keeps him off man assignments against move tight ends.
Year 1: core four-phase special teams player and third safety. Ceiling: starting free safety in a Cover-2/quarters defense that asks him to organize the back end.
A heavy man-match defense that walks the third safety down over the slot and asks him to travel with a 250-pound tight end on third down.
His value is entirely in structures that reward pre-snap organization and post-snap anticipation.
Georgia DB Christopher Smith 74 Yard Pick Six vs Clemson | 2021 College Football
The only score of Georgia 10-3 win over Clemson to open 2021 — Smith jumps the route on DJ Uiagalelei and takes it 74 yards.
Christopher Smith II Highlights
Career reel showing his deep-half range, angles from depth and ball production in Georgia championship defenses.
Christopher Smith Interception Vs. Oregon
2022 season opener interception against Oregon, a clean example of reading the quarterback from the deep half.
A five-year Georgia starter and the quiet organizing voice of back-to-back national championship defenses, Smith is the rare safety whose value came almost entirely from processing rather than physical traits. He arrived in Athens as a four-star corner, spent two seasons on special teams behind J.R. Reed and Richard LeCounte, then started the last two years as the deep coverage player Kirby Smart trusted to keep everything in front of him.
His production shape was anticipation, not volume. The 74-yard pick six of DJ Uiagalelei in the 2021 opener was the only score in a 10-3 win, and the 95-yard blocked field-goal return against LSU in the 2022 SEC Championship Game was the most alert play of Georgia's season. The flags were just as clear: a targeting ejection in the Orange Bowl against Michigan, average length and mass, and only one season above 40 tackles in five years.
Boards had him as a Day 3 safety with starting upside in the right structure — CBS graded him a "chance to start" prospect and comped him to Rodney McLeod, and he sat around the twentieth defensive back on positional boards. At 170 overall, Las Vegas was buying a plug-and-play special teams contributor with a path to a two-deep coverage role.
- 01
Deep-zone processing
Reads the quarterback's shoulder and route distribution from depth, triggering on the throw rather than the catch, which is how he produced six interceptions on modest snap volume.
- 02
Ball production
Six career interceptions and two return touchdowns, including the 74-yard pick six that was the only score in Georgia's 10-3 win over Clemson to open 2021.
- 03
Championship-level experience
Fifty-six games and thirty-one starts across five seasons in Georgia's defense, including two national title runs against the best offenses in the sport.
- 04
Special teams value
Four phases of coverage work dating back to his freshman year, capped by the alert 95-yard blocked field-goal return in the 2022 SEC Championship Game.
- 05
Angles and tackling discipline
Fills from depth with correct pursuit angles and wraps rather than launching, a habit that kept explosive runs from turning into touchdowns behind him.
- 01
Average athletic profile
A 4.62 forty, 33-inch vertical and 9-foot-8 broad at 192 pounds put him in the middle of the safety class, leaving no margin when his read is wrong.
- 02
Man coverage limits
More comfortable reading concepts in zone than matching a big slot or move tight end step for step, which narrows how a defense can deploy him on third down.
- 03
Size at the point of attack
Under 5-11 and 192 pounds, he is a drag-down tackler in the box rather than a safety who can set an edge against tight end blocks.
- 04
Late production curve
Only one season above 40 tackles in five years on campus, so the evaluation rested on two years of starting tape rather than a long body of defensive work.
Relative Athletic Score (Kent Lee Platte) benchmarks combine/pro-day numbers against every measured prospect at the position since 1987. 10.00 is elite; 5.00 is average.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.62sp50
- Vertical
- 33inp50
- Broad jump
- 116inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- 15repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Georgia | 5 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | Georgia | 14 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | Georgia | 10 | 26 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2021 | Georgia | 12 | 34 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 0 |
| 2022 | Georgia | 15 | 61 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 1 |
| Career | — | 56 | 132 | 1 | 6 | 10 | 0 |
2020-2022 pulled directly from cfbstats.com (Georgia team 257, player 1094886, includes bowls/CFP). cfbstats does not archive 2018-2019, so those two seasons come from footballdb game logs and the Georgia career line; season sums reconcile exactly with the verified career totals of 56 games, 132 tackles, 6 INT, 10 PD, 5.0 TFL and 1.0 sack. Fumble recoveries are not published by cfbstats Misc. Defense split, so FR is left blank except 2022; FF is blank for 2018-2019 for the same reason.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Rotational safety who holds a roster spot for years on scheme knowledge and teams value without ever locking down a full-time job.
Undersized processor who turned deep-zone anticipation into a decade-long starting career on a title defense.
Day 3 Raiders safety whose entire NFL contribution came on coverage units before bouncing between rosters.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Las Vegas kept Smith for three seasons and never gave him a defensive job. He played 12 games as a rookie in 2023 with no starts and a single tackle, buried behind Marcus Epps and Tre'von Moehrig while filling a coverage role on kicks. In 2024 he appeared in 15 games and finished with six tackles, still almost entirely on teams. The 2025 season followed the same shape — nine games, three tackles, 71 percent of the special teams snaps — until the Raiders waived him on November 18. The Rams claimed him the next day, he appeared in four games there, and the Jets claimed him off waivers on December 24. New York placed him on injured reserve in May 2026 and waived him from IR days later.
The retrospective is honest and unremarkable: the pick returned what a fifth-round special teams safety usually returns. The processing that made him valuable inside Georgia's defense never translated because he never got the defensive snaps to show it, and without a plus athletic trait no coaching staff had a reason to create them. Forty-one games and ten career tackles is the resume of a core teams player, not a bust.