NFL lineman T.J. Smith surprises CA Gray Junior High School students with visit

MOULTRIE — The students in CA Gray Junior High School’s Propel summer program got a surprise visit Tuesday afternoon when NFL defensive tackle T.J. Smith stopped by the school to offer encouragement.

Smith advised the students to be obedient to their parents and teachers and told them his life was not a whole lot different than theirs.

“I spend a lot of my time in the classroom,” he said. “Each day there is a team meeting where the coach tells us about the upcoming week, then we go to defensive or offensive team meeting, then to the position team meeting. We are in class from 9-2 learning what we need to do on the field, then we go out and practice what we have learned. It’s like football school.”

Smith, a 2015 graduate of Colquitt County High School, told the students to dream big and used the Biblical story of Joseph to lay out his message to the students.

“If you tell your friends about your dream and your friends don’t tell you ‘No way, you can’t do that,’ you’re not dreaming big enough,” Smith said.

He also told the students that if they didn’t have a plan to make that dream come true, it wasn’t really a dream, it was a fantasy.

“If you really have a dream you have to put a plan together and you have to work on that plan to make that dream come true,” he said. “Every day you need to work toward making that dream come true.”

Smith didn’t speak much about his journey to the National Football League, but the Joseph story could have been a part of his story. Smith quit football in the eighth grade and it wasn’t until he was a high school junior that he went back to football. After helping the Colquitt County Packers when the state football championship, he originally chose to play college football at Vanderbilt, but changed his mind and signed with Arkansas. He was redshirted his first year and played sparingly in his redshirt freshman season, but started all the games after that for the Razorbacks.

He wasn’t selected in the 2020 NFL Draft but was signed to the practice squad for the San Diego Chargers. He was released after that season and in 2021 the Minnesota Vikings signed him to the practice squad before signing a new contract with the team in January of this year.

Smith is the son of Dr. and Mrs. Fredrick and Avis Smith of Moultrie.

Joe Whitfield

Joe Whitfield