[Full Cougar]

The Detroit Lions will retire the number 93 for the 2009 football season in memory of player Corey Smith, one of three men lost when their fishing boat capsized off the Florida Gulf Coast three weeks ago.
Lions player development director Galen Duncan told several hundred mourners in Smith’s hometown church Saturday that Smith’s number would be retired for a year in honor of a player of extraordinary heart and competitive drive.



“I want to tell you something about Corey Smith playing with pain,” Duncan said of Smith, who played with such abandon that high school teammates called him the Tasmanian Devil.
“I’d tell the coaches, `You’ve got to watch Corey because he’s not going to tell you he’s hurt,”’ said Duncan, whom Smith befriended in his three seasons in Detroit. “If you could see the way this man worked.”