Scoggins: Aaron Rodgers and Harrison Smith’s cat-and-mouse game continues Sunday in London

LONDON – Harrison Smith was playing his first game in Lambeau Field, and his 12th game as an NFL rookie, in 2012 when he saw Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers toss the ball to Randall Cobb.

Smith diagnosed the play instantly.

“Randall Cobb is from my area, and I knew he played quarterback,” said Smith, a Knoxville, Tenn., native who played high school football in Tennessee at the same time as Cobb. “When he caught it, I was like, ‘He’s going to throw it.’ He threw back to Rodgers and then Rodgers threw it to Greg Jennings. I stayed deep and got that one.”

He intercepted it, the second one of Smith’s career.

Thus began a cat-and-mouse game between a future Hall of Fame quarterback and a future Hall of Fame safety.

The Rodgers vs. Smith chess match has covered 13 seasons, mostly as division rivals, and will reconvene for the 21st time Sunday when the Vikings play the New York Jets on foreign soil.

This will be their 20th regular-season meeting, with one playoff showdown in 2012. Smith’s record against Rodgers: 9-10-1.

Smith has intercepted Rodgers twice, which he reminded the quarterback of when they played a practice round together at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe this summer, a story that Rodgers shared in an interview with ESPN’s Pat McAfee this week.

“I didn’t show up talking trash about it,” Smith said, smiling. “He didn’t know that I had picked him off before.”

Oh, Rodgers knew. All part of the friendly gamesmanship between the two.

After Smith’s pick in 2012, Rodgers didn’t throw another interception at home until the 2015 season, a streak of 587 pass attempts.

Rodgers is clearly a big fan of Smith’s. He called Smith a “master of disguise” and shared a glowing assessment of Smith in an appearance with McAfee a few years ago.

“The way that he disguises should probably be standard secondary teaching tape,” Rodgers said. “I think he’s the best in the game at that. And then you add to it he’s a really good blitzer. And then you add to that he’s a great tackler. And then you add to that he’s got great ball skills. He’s definitely the total package.”

Smith’s response to that praise?

“He’s probably just trying to butter me up,” he said.

Rodgers described Smith’s presnap disguises as the most difficult to decipher of any player he faces. Smith jumps in and out of the box, sometimes showing blitz, sometimes not, hoping to create confusion.

“I try to make it as hard as possible on him,” Smith said. “But he knows sometimes when it’s not real.”

Once, Rodgers motioned his hand to Smith before the snap in the universal sign for “come closer.”

“He was like, come on,” Smith said, showing the gesture with his hand. “He knew I was going to end in up the box, and I was trying to act like I wasn’t.”

Rodgers is 40 now and coming off a game in which he was hit 14 times, sacked five times and left with a sore knee in a thumping by the Denver Broncos.

Rodgers doesn’t move as well as he did when he was younger and kept plays alive with his scrambling. And his offensive line is a mess. But Smith knows better than anyone not to assume anything, cautioning that “he’s still got it.”

“I think what makes it hard,” Smith said, “if you want to talk about the disguise stuff, is he can release the ball so quickly and so suddenly that if you get too carried away, you’re going to put yourself in a bad spot.”

Smith has been in the right spot plenty of times, too. His second interception of Rodgers came late in the first half of the 2022 season opener on a deep pass to Cobb.

Smith kept that ball as a souvenir, though he notes he didn’t do anything spectacular on the play.

“It was kind of like, ‘Let me give my guy a shot,’” he said of the pass.

Smith nearly intercepted Rodgers in 2014. He got a torn labrum instead.

“I caught it like this,” he said, stretching his arms out to demonstrate. “But I swear the force of the ball was so violent that when I caught it, it slung me into the ground.”

He landed on his shoulder and dropped the ball. He shrugged off the labrum injury as life in the NFL.

“That one I’ll remember for a while,” he said.

Sunday very well could be the final meeting between the two football savants. Smith hopes to make another good memory.