Jim Ray Smith obit

Jim Ray Smith

NFL offensive guard

Lifespan

February 27, 1932 – October 3, 2026

 He was not on the list.

On Cleveland's signature sweep of the late 1950s, the play that sprang Jim Brown loose for enormous gains, no one in a Browns uniform could keep pace with the guard clearing his path. That guard was Jim Ray Smith, the Baylor All-American whose speed at the point of attack carried him to five straight Pro Bowls and three first-team All-Pro seasons. Smith died October 3, 2026, at 94, having closed a nine-year NFL career with the Dallas Cowboys after seven seasons in Cleveland, six of them blocking for Brown, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Smith was born February 27, 1932, in West Columbia, Texas, an oil town about an hour southwest of Houston. He was the first in his family to go past the sixth grade. "My mother always wanted me to finish high school," he said in an interview with the Cleveland Browns. "No one in my family on either side had gone past the sixth grade." At Baylor he played tackle and guard, earned first-team All-America honors in 1953 and second-team honors in 1954, and was picked for the 1955 College All-Star Game. The Browns drafted him in the sixth round in 1954, after his sophomore season. He served 23 months in the Army, from January 1955 through December 1956, and reported to Cleveland partway through that final season.

Smith moved from defensive end to offensive guard in his second year and turned into one of the league's fastest linemen, the trait that made him Cleveland's choice to pull and lead sweeps for Brown. He earned five consecutive Pro Bowl selections from 1958 through 1962 and three first-team All-Pro nods, and the Browns led the NFL in rushing in both 1958 and 1959. Fellow Browns guard John Wooten, who lined up beside him for several seasons, rated him among the best he ever played with. "All three of us could run, but none of us could outrun Jim Ray," Wooten said. "He could do it all. He could pass protect, short trap, lead the sweep. If he'd stayed in Cleveland, he'd be in the Hall of Fame with Hickerson. He was one of the top five guards I ever saw." Wooten also spoke to what Smith was like off the field: "He was just an outstanding player, and even more so just a tremendous, God-fearing, activist person. He lived the Ten Commandments."

Playing for coach Paul Brown left its own mark. "He was very demanding. He demanded perfection," Smith recalled. "He was probably the most organized person I have ever known."

Smith announced his retirement after the 1961 season, but teammates Ray Renfro and Mike McCormack talked him into playing one more year in Cleveland. When Browns owner Art Modell later pushed him to talk with the expansion-era Dallas Cowboys, Smith balked at first. "I do not want to talk to them," he recalled telling Modell. He relented, finished his NFL career with Dallas in 1963 and 1964 under coach Tom Landry, and absorbed two knee operations and two broken hands along the way. "It was different," he said of playing for Landry. "We were friends in the off-season. Tom is a good man." He retired from football for good after the 1964 season.

Off the field, Smith built a long career in Dallas commercial real estate, concentrating on warehouse leasing and industrial space, and he managed the Dallas area land holdings of Oklahoma businessman Ed Gaylord for 28 years. By 2014 he and his wife, Paula, had raised three children and counted four grandchildren, and he was still working both trades part time. "I like to call it tiddling," he said. "I still do a little bit of real estate. A little bit in the oil business." He also gave more than three decades to the Cotton Bowl Athletic Association's board of directors after filling a vacant Baylor seat in the 1970s, chairing the organization from 1984 to 1986 and leading its team selection committee from 1994 to 1996.

His playing career brought induction into the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame in 1968, the College Football Hall of Fame in 1987, and the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 2007, and the Browns recognized him as a Cleveland Browns Legend in 2005. Dave Marmion, president and chief executive of the Cotton Bowl Athletic Association, said Smith was "a tremendous leader, a legendary football player and, most importantly, a great man who gave so much to the Cotton Bowl Classic," adding that "his impact on our organization spanned over half a century."

Smith described his own arrival in pro football with the same wry faith he brought to describing Paul Brown's demands. "The good Lord said, 'Boy, we are going to make a football player out of you until we figure out what to do with you.' I guess he made a pretty good football player. I don't know," he told the Browns.

What persists from that career is concrete. Browns teammates still point to the lane he cleared on the league's best running offense of 1958 and 1959. The warehouses and industrial parks he leased across North Texas anchored twenty-eight years of a second career. And the Cotton Bowl Athletic Association, where he sat on the board for more than three decades and ran team selection through the mid-1990s, continues to field the teams he once helped choose.

He played as an offensive guard for nine seasons in the National Football League (NFL) for the Cleveland Browns and Dallas Cowboys. He played college football for the Baylor Bears.