Joe Schmidt once convinced Jaylon Smith his grandfather was a Pitt legend

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SOUTH BEND, Ind. — File this under one of the better pranks pulled by a Notre Dame player on one of his teammates: Two years ago, Jaylon Smith was convinced Joe Schmidt’s grandfather was a Pitt legend and NFL Hall of Famer.

That’s because a football great of yesteryear, a linebacker also named Joe Schmidt, has his No. 65 retired at Heinz Field. Schmidt played for Pitt from 1950-1952 and was a seventh-round draft pick of the Detroit Lions in 1953, where he excelled in an illustrious 13-year career that saw him earn 10 Pro Bowl selections, win two NFL titles and be inducted into both the Pro Football Hall of Fame and College Football Hall of Fame. He also coached the Lions from 1967-1972.

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We’ll let Notre Dame’s Joe Schmidt take it away as to how he convinced Smith, then a freshman, that Pitt/Detroit’s Joe Schmidt was his grandfather:

“I knew that Joe Schmidt was on the wall at Ford Field and at Heinz Field,” Schmidt grinned. “He's up like in the rafters. I say it like offhand early in the season, then I said, Oh, yeah, I know he's on the wall. I got there, he's on the wall. He was like, This is more than a coincidence now.

“Then we get to Pittsburgh, I was like, Dude, he's on the wall at Pitt, too, man. This is my grandpa. You come to a game. We get to Pitt. He's like, No way, man. Your grandpa is in the Hall of Fame or whatever it was. I think I finally told him like USC or Stanford. He was disappointed. He asked me, How is your grandpa doing?

“I was like, Dude, he's not my grandpa.”

Smith admitted he was fooled by Schmidt.

“I was just amazed,” Smith said. “I kept looking at Joe Schmidt in Heinz Field and the Hall of Fame and things like that, he told me, I just kept looking up there. To find you that he lied about it was…yeah.”

So what does Smith know about the Joe Schmidt who played at Pitt and decidedly is not his teammate’s grandfather?

“He’s a legend,” Smith laughed.

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