WACO – The drill was called "Blood Alley" and it almost resulted in Abram Smith becoming a basketball player. The Baylor running back was seven years old at the time, and it was his first tackle football practice. He loved the flag football season a year before. He wasn’t so sure about the contact required in pads. 

“The other kid hit me so hard that my head hurt,” Smith remembered. “I started crying and went to my mom. She told me to go rub some dirt on it and that I’d be fine. That is how my family is built.” 

His father, Mark Soliz, had a solution. He gathered Smith and a few of Smith’s older cousins for a personal football practice built to toughen up his son. It was a Sunday afternoon, and Smith credits that outing for his success on the football field. Smith would go on to play varsity as a freshman at Abilene High School, and now that same kid who cried to his mom after taking the first hit of his career, is leading the Baylor rushing attack with 930 yards and 11 touchdowns on 126 carries in 2021. 

“We hit each other until I understood that it was better to be the hammer than the nail,” Smith said. “That Sunday helped it click with me that you go hit someone before they can hit you.” 

Football appeared as an avenue to a free college education and a chance to live out dreams as his career at Abilene High School ascended starting with his freshman season. Smith began the season on junior varsity before getting the call up as a running back with two games remaining in the season. Smith scored touchdowns on his first two carries. 

Former Abilene High School head coach Del Van Cox said that he’s had two players play varsity as freshman in his 25 years at Abilene, and Smith was one of those two. Smith would rush for 915 yards and 10 touchdowns early in his sophomore season. Nothing could stop Smith, or so he the young version of him believed. An ACL tear cut his sophomore season short and forced Smith into surgery. It wouldn’t be his last knee injury. 

“That first ACL tear humbled me,” Smith admitted. “I was rolling and climbing the ladder. Everything was going right. That injury let me know that football is not guaranteed.” 

Smith rebounded from rehabilitation with a renewed spirit and outlook. He’d leave Abilene High School as the program’s all-time leading rusher with 4,995 rushing yards in 33 games over four seasons. He also caught three touchdowns and ran back two kickoffs for touchdowns in his prep career. His two-time All-State career came to an end and the three-star prospect picked Baylor over a handful of other offers. 

“He was a great football player for us,” Cox said. “He has a great football IQ. He’s just a good West Texas kid. That’s the way we grow them out here. His parents did a great job instilling a work ethic in him that was hard to match. He’s one of the most mentally tough kids I’ve ever been around.”

Smith breaks out as a linebacker 

Smith joined Baylor in the 2017 recruiting class just months after the Bears hired Matt Rhule as the head football coach to follow Art Briles. Smith would face more adversity early in his college career. He didn’t find success as easily in Waco as he did years earlier in Abilene. He was redshirted in 2017 thanks to another knee surgery and only saw the field in six games as a redshirt freshman in 2018. 

The 2019 season was memorable for the team’s success, but Smith remained a role player. He appeared in all 14 games, mostly on special teams. He recorded seven tackles on the season, including two against Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game. That was when a seed was planted: Could Smith earn more playing time at linebacker than at running back? 

“The first time a position change came up was because I was flying down the field on kickoff knocking back defensive linemen and making tackles,” Smith said. “The old staff suggested that I could play linebacker and I moved over there hoping to get more playing time. What could it hurt?” 

A new coaching staff arrived in the early part of 2020 when Rhule dashed away to the NFL. Dave Aranda, who engineered LSU’s defense a year earlier, was the new man in town. Smith admitted that the transfer portal popped into his mind and that he wanted to return home, but his father nixed that idea as quickly as Smith proposed it over the phone. 

Smith was a Baylor Bear, so he began to amerce himself into the linebacker position. Aranda and the new staff moved him inside to back up Terrel Bernard.  The move changed the trajectory of Smith’s career. He’d be called upon against Iowa State on Nov. 7 of 2020 when he noticed a teammate injured. 

“I heard my name getting called and it clicked that it must be Terrel who was injured, and I immediately felt the nerves,” Smith said. “I didn’t tell anybody that I was nervous because I wanted them to trust me enough to play me, but I was nervous.” 

Smith wouldn’t look nervous the next week when he first his first college start. Now a junior, Smith recorded 13 tackles against Texas Tech. He’d averaged 11.5 tackles, including 1.5 for loss, in the four starts to conclude the season. He led the team in tackles for each of those four games. 

“It didn’t surprise me at all that Abram enjoyed so much success at linebacker despite not playing much of it since high school,” Cox said. “He’s a great teammate who will do anything for the team. We actually knew a couple of guys on the staff and told them that he could play some defense if he wasn’t going to play much at running back.” 

Another new path 

Baylor struggled in 2020 despite Smith’s personal journey into a starting linebacker. A change was needed, so Aranda hired offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes away from BYU. Grimes brought a wide zone running concept with him from Utah and there wasn’t a running back on the roster with the right build and skill set to be the No. 1 back. Well, not currently playing offense in the spring of 2021, at least. 

“Aranda pulled me aside and asked if I ever thought about going back to running back,” Smith recalled. “It honestly wasn’t something I was thinking about. I had found a spot as a linebacker and was happy with where I was, but an opportunity is an opportunity.” 

Smith ran with that opportunity. He started by rotating into the offensive sets on occasion during spring practice. He arrived back to fall camp to realize that his green defensive jersey was replaced by a white one to indicate he was an offensive player. Officially back at running back, Smith went about establishing himself as the go-to player on the Baylor offense. 

“It was the first time I ever ran wide zone, but I loved it,” Smith said. “The offensive line started to push around our defense, and that grew our confidence because we knew that we could have success against anybody if we could win against our defense.” 

The confidence spread as the Baylor offense exploded. Smith ran for over 100 yards in wins over Texas State, Texas Southern, and Kansas to help the Bears to a 3-0 record. He was held to 47 yards against Iowa State, but the win over the Cyclones announced to the Big 12 that Baylor was back. In recent wins over BYU and Texas, Smith has rushed for 333 yards and four scores on 48 carries. One of those carries was a touchdown run against Texas that included a spin move on a linebacker and a hesitation move on a safety that reminded Smith of a younger version of himself. 

“I was surprised I still had those moves in me,” Smith joked. “That was the old me. I was a little amazed myself when I saw the highlight. I think those moves surprised them, too.” 

Baylor, and Smith, won’t take anyone by surprise moving forward. His 930 rushing yards are third in the Big 12 and his 7.4 yards a rush lead the conference. Baylor is 7-1 and in control of its own destiny to reach the Big 12 championship game in year two under Aranda. It also took Rhule two seasons to bring Baylor back to conference contention. 

The Bears face Oklahoma in Waco on Nov. 13, but first is a trip to Fort Worth to face a wounded Horned Frogs program without Gary Patterson roaming the sidelines as a defensive coordinator or head coach for the first time since 1997. 

Smith says Baylor won’t look past TCU because the Horned Frogs remind the star running back of the tribulations of the Bears in 2020. Smith said Baylor had the pieces but wasn’t sure how to put the puzzle together. He sees something similar in a TCU team that is more talented than a 3-5 record suggests. 

“They have a lot of really good players who can ball,” Smith said about TCU. “They’re just waiting to put it together, and we don’t want to be the team they put it together against.”