Pete Lembo on Texas A&M's Ainias Smith: 'This guy is like his own video game character'

Pete Lembo was an avid gamer growing up. He remembers playing the classic football video games, most notably Tecmo Bowl.

“Tecmo Bowl was great, you could pick your team,” Lembo said. “I think they had like four runs and four passes. You could run trap, you could run outside zone, you could run toss sweep, you could throw four verticals, you could run curl flat. It was pretty cool. In college, guys would come home after a long night and turn on the Tecmo Bowl, or guys would have Tecmo Bowl parties.”

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Some of the best players to play with in Tecmo Bowl were guys like Bo Jackson and Jerry Rice. But Lembo would’ve loved to have a guy like Texas A&M’s Ainias Smith in the game back then.

“To me, this guy is like his own video game character. He’s averaging 20-plus yards per punt return,” Lembo said.

Smith is not only a great wide receiver, but he’s also a dangerous punt returner for the Aggies. So far this year, he has returned seven punts for 263 yards and a touchdown.

“This guy is a special teams coordinator’s nightmare. He’s just truly explosive, and I think one of the best in the country,” Lembo said. “I usually get a call from Bruce Feldman or Pete Thamel about players so they’ll say, ‘Hey, who’s the first guy that comes to your mind that we should put on such and such a list?’ And this is the guy for me. He’s really like a video game character to me.”

Smith has been a player that’s kept Lembo up late at night as the Gamecocks head to Texas A&M this weekend. He’s been hard for most teams to stop.

But even South Carolina has had issues against him. Nearly two years ago, the Gamecocks were playing the Aggies in College Station. Early in the first quarter, Kai Kroeger had a nice punt that traveled inside the five-yard line. Smith camped under it and took off.

“There’s probably only one in a 100 punt returners that would have even considered returning that punt,” Lembo said. “It was a pooch punt that came down at the numbers on the five-yard line. So 99 percent of the returners in the country are going to decoy there, let that thing hit the ground and hopefully roll into the end zone.”

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Right away, Smith made multiple guys miss. Once he got out to his own 20, he had some daylight. Kroeger was the only man left to beat, and a defender laid down a great block to give Smith all he needed.

“He just made several guys on our coverage unit miss. It made them look silly,” Lembo said.

It was a 95-yard punt return touchdown that opened the scoring for the Aggies in a 44-14 win over South Carolina.

Lembo said he and the team have learned a lot from that play. They’ve even adapted some of the things they do now because of Smith.

At the same time, South Carolina was outmatched from a talent perspective. It was Shane Beamer’s first year with a hodgepodge of players and they still won seven games.

But Lembo is hoping for better results on Saturday.

“I look back to the guys that were out there on that unit that night. Great kids but some of them were playing in their first college football game that night, some of them were fifth-year walk-on guys and different guys that were just outclassed by him when it came to a moment of truth and having to get him on the ground. So I hope at this point, some of the guys that we have on our unit will match up a little bit better too,” Lembo said.

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