NFL legend Cris Carter shares his path to Hall of Fame, predicts if Steve Smith is next
If you ask Cris Carter about his path to NFL greatness, he’ll have an answer for you.
But he’ll also admit he’s not used to talking about it.
“It’s always a very humbling experience to be in front of a crowd like this,” Carter began on Wednesday morning at Carmel Country Club in Charlotte, serving as this month’s guest speaker for the Hood Hargett Breakfast Club gathering. “People expect you to say something that’ll make a contribution, that’ll help them in their journey.”
It’s a reasonable expectation, of course.
Carter, 59, is one of the greatest receivers to play America’s favorite and most intense game. The Class of 2013 Pro Football Hall of Famer finished his 234-game career as the NFL’s second all-time leading receiver with 1,011 receptions for 13,899 yards and 130 touchdowns. He’s become a renowned sports broadcaster and an executive director of player engagement at Florida Atlantic, too, since his retirement as a player.
Still, the energetic speaker admits he didn’t previously know the weight of his story — about his life as an addict; about the day he got cut from the Philadelphia Eagles; about how he used a football field as an escape from a difficult childhood, only to return to that same Middletown, Ohio, field as an adult and see it bearing his name.
But ask him about another great wide receiver named Steve Smith — a Carolina Panthers legend who was named a Pro Football Hall of Fame finalist last month — and he has a lot to say.
In fact, it’s something he’s thought a lot about.
“I think he’ll be a Hall of Famer,” Carter told The Charlotte Observer in an interview. “But most people don’t understand the listing and the sequence of things. Torry Holt’s been on the list longer than him. Reggie Wayne’s been on the list longer than him. And there’s nothing in Steve Smith’s career that’s going to distinguish him from those guys.
“So now, it’s: Can he get in before other receivers get on the list? Because Steve had a great career. But so did those other guys. But typically there’s an order through which they’re going to go about doing things.”
Smith is one of 15 finalists for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2025. He’s looking to be just the second player to be drafted by the Carolina Panthers to forever live in Canton, Ohio, following Julius Peppers in 2024.
Smith’s candidacy to join just 20 other receivers in the Hall is compelling. He has 1,031 receptions, 14,731 yards and 81 touchdowns to his name — numbers eerily similar to those of newly minted Hall of Famer Andre Johnson — and was also an adept special teams player.
His statistical comparisons are close to Holt and Wayne as well, though they each have a Super Bowl title to their respective names. But the way Smith (5-foot-9, 195 pounds) did what he did in his 13 seasons in Carolina and three elsewhere shouldn’t be lost in the calculation, either, Carter said.
“To be that small and to be a dynamic player: He’s one of the great small players that we’ve ever had,” Carter said. “And then the conversion from a special teams player to being an elite receiver, we don’t typically see that. Devin Hester: an elite returner, never an elite receiver. So I think that combination is what makes his story special. And then the numbers speak for themselves.”
Cris Carter on sobriety, getting cut by the Eagles
Most of Wednesday, however, was about Carter’s own life story.
Including an important part of his path to NFL greatness — his sobriety.
Carter told this story through the lens of one of the most difficult days of his life: Labor Day 1990. It was the day “his career basically got started,” he says now, after Philadelphia Eagles coach Buddy Ryan cut him.
“He came to me and told me he couldn’t trust me,” Carter said. “He told me he didn’t believe in people like me. And at the time, did I have a drug problem? Was I strung out on cocaine? Yes. Was I diagnosed as an alcoholic at 24 years of age? Yes. But to have a leader tell you that, and tell you they don’t believe in you, that was the beginning of everything I wanted to do.”
The decision set Carter on the path to sobriety and a limitless career in Minnesota. Still, Carter set the record straight that Ryan’s decision to fire him didn’t “save” him; rather, Carter used the decision to change himself.
A member of the audience asked when and why Carter began doing drugs. He answered openly.
“I don’t think people really have a legitimate reason why,” Carter said. “We say ‘peer pressure,’ but ... I was 14 years old. My buddies and I, we had just got done playing a pickup basketball game. And one of the kids’ uncles bought four 40 ounces of Old English. Anybody heard of Old English? Forty-five minutes later I was throwing up outside the car. But that’s how I got started, something just as innocent as that.”
Carter said he had addiction on both sides of his family and was clinically diagnosed as an addict in his early 20s.
“The woman who was over my care, she said the only way my kids would have a chance is if I stopped,” Carter said. “She said, ‘If not, your kids’ life will be a disaster.’ And at that moment, I raised my hand and said, ‘I’m gonna do this for my kids.’ So it’s still throughout my family. It’s still everywhere I go. It’s still a huge part of our society.
“But we have to deal with it. And I still believe that we can have an impact on that community by continuing to tell our story and let people know you should be comfortable with who you are.”
What else Cris Carter shared
Here’s a recap at what else Carter discussed on Wednesday in Charlotte:
▪ Carter and Randy Moss made up one of the best receiving combinations in NFL history. (If you ask Carter, “one of the most” is an unnecessary qualifier.) Moss, 47, who’s lived in Charlotte for years now, announced last month that he had been diagnosed with gastrointestinal cancer. Carter knew of Moss’s ailment before the announcement and told The Observer that it was “very alarming” for someone that young.
Still, Carter said of Moss’s diagnosis: “We’ve faced a lot of adversity throughout our life. It just becomes the next adversity. No one’s invincible. This is not foreign to anyone. Cancer knocks at everyone’s door. I think that his approach is that I’m going to get through this, and that’s probably the best way to look at it.”
▪ Carter also answered about the NFL’s biggest news of the year: Bill Belichick and his hiring at UNC. The NFL legend told The Observer that he thinks a pro coach can succeed at the college level — “but I don’t think that’s the question. The question is, ‘Will he succeed?’ It’s about players, man. You gotta go get players. If you don’t have players, you won’t win. So they have money. Can they get enough players?”
He added: “I think it’s going to be more difficult than people realize. I’m involved in college athletics. The landscape is not new to me. And it’s difficult.”
Belichick spent Tuesday hopping around several different high schools in Charlotte, including Myers Park and Providence Day, recruiting some of the nation’s top talent. On Wednesday morning, reports emerged that he’d been contacted by NFL jobs to see if he’d consider returning to the NFL.
