The best Vikings defender you don't know? 'Gangster White Boy' Harrison Smith

Tom Pelissero | USA TODAY Sports

MINNEAPOLIS — Harrison Smith needs to come up with a catchy name for the Minnesota Vikings secondary or perhaps grow out his facial hair until it has a social media following.

Smith's commitment to authenticity just isn’t cutting it for one of the NFL’s best and most overlooked safeties, and his stats don’t begin to explain how he impacts a Vikings defense that has led the charge to a first-place tie with the Green Bay Packers atop the NFC North.

“A lot of people have a shtick, and that’s what sells, and that’s what people like,” Smith told USA TODAY Sports on a recent off day as he sipped a light beer while awaiting chicken quesadillas at a low-key uptown restaurant.

“I don’t want to say never, but I don’t see myself doing stuff like that. It’s not me. It would make me uncomfortable. The psychological part — that would affect me.”

Take the hype video the Vikings released recently promoting Smith for his first Pro Bowl. The original idea was for Smith to box in front of the camera. But Smith doesn’t box (not since he and childhood buddy Lee Smith of the Oakland Raiders used to beat each other up for fun).

Every time a video like that showed on the video board during a game, Smith said, it would’ve bothered him. He doesn’t want to play a character. “It wouldn’t sell anyways,” Smith said, smiling, “because it would be terrible.”

So the Seattle Seahawks can have Earl Thomas and Kam Chancellor in their Legion of Boom, and San Diego Chargers safety Eric Weddle can continue sporting his famous beard, and Tyrann Mathieu can revive his Honey Badger persona with the Arizona Cardinals.

At a position that often functions off the TV screen, the off-field stuff sticks with fans who make up one-third of the Pro Bowl voting panel. It may even impact some of the 50 national media members who vote for all-pro honors, too.

“The thing (Smith) does is he makes a lot of plays,” Vikings coach Mike Zimmer said. “As an overall safety and running game and coverage and blitzing and understanding concepts and taking away guys we’re trying to take away — those are things I look at. Not how many interceptions did he get and how many splash plays did he make, but how solid is he every day?”

In that regard, Smith is one of the best, opening up Zimmer’s attacking scheme. He’s behind his statistical pace from last season, but the Vikings credit him with a team-high 59 tackles. Since he entered the NFL in 2012, Smith is the only player with at least 11 interceptions and five sacks.

“I call him ‘Gangster White Boy’ for a reason,” star running back Adrian Peterson told USA TODAY Sports. “You don’t see guys laying the wood like him. As far as big playmaker, he’s a great tackler — he’s got it all. He’s the key to our defense.”

Yet when Smith was booked for a national radio interview after Sunday’s 21-18 overtime win over the St. Louis Rams — the fourth in a row for the 6-2 Vikings — the producer canceled because he wanted someone with “name recognition”.

It may take Smith, 26, getting paid on his second contract for his value to clarify outside Minnesota. But the Vikings picked up his $5.278 million option for 2016 and are sticking to their organizational policy not to extend him until after the season.

“Do I want the other stuff, too? Yeah, of course,” Smith said. “But I’m not just going to start going rogue, and then in the building I have guys mad at me.”

The irony is there’s a lot more to Smith than “Harry the Hitman” — a moniker from play-by-play man Paul Allen that the Vikings are trying to promote through social media. Smith is always seeking ways to test his body, his brain and his nerves.

He has a fear of flying, so he started in-flight training last spring at the controls of a single-engine Cessna 172. (He’s about three hours shy of finishing his pilot’s license.)

He has a fear of singing in public, so his rookie show routine back in 2012 was an acoustic guitar-driven rendition of R. Kelly’s Ignition (Remix).

Smith has other fears — snakes, spiders, getting run off the road by some maniac driver — but he tends to tackle them at full speed. He says he’s not fearless on the field, either, though he’s glad it doesn’t look that way.

“Not so much scared of contact or hitting people or taking on certain guys but of getting beat, of giving up touchdowns,” he said. “People always say, ‘Oh, I’m not scared of anything.’ To me, fear is one of the best motivators.”

That probably doesn’t make a great T-shirt, but it’s authentic.

Smith knows who he is, even if others are still finding out.

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Follow Tom Pelissero on Twitter @TomPelissero