Those guys Ray Lewis hadn’t heard of add three more sacks

“Someone had said something about our defense and our leadership, and that really hit home,” Za'Darius Smith said.

Maybe Ray Lewis was too busy with “Dancing with the Stars.”

Or, maybe NFL legends shouldn’t be put on TV unless they actually promise to do some work before pontificating. (Right, Deion Sanders?)

Speaking on Showtime’s “Inside the NFL,” the Hall of Fame linebacker said: “The Green Bay Packers have a real issue on defense, and that is in that front seven, they don’t have that dictator no more. I know Clay Matthews was not a heavy run stopper, but he created havoc.”

Someone should introduce Lewis to Za’Darius Smith – never mind that Lewis was a dominating force at linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens and Smith spent his previous four seasons with that team. On Sunday, Smith continued his rampaging ways. Playing through a knee injury that slowed him last week against Philadelphia and knocked him from Sunday’s game against Dallas on three occasions, he had two sacks and four quarterback hits to help the Packers beat the Cowboys 34-24. After both of those sacks, he celebrated with the dance that Lewis did before pregame introductions while with the Ravens.

“Someone had said something about our defense and our leadership, and that really hit home,” said Smith, who was voted a permanent team captain. “As you can see, we are going to keep doing what we have to do to help this team and this defense, and we are going to keep doing it.”

Calling Lewis “someone” was a spectacular troll job. Za’Darius Smith and Preston Smith, two of the team’s free-agent additions, have been a driving force behind Green Bay’s unexpected 4-1 start. According to the official league stats, Preston Smith has a team-high 5.5 sacks, including one on Sunday, and 10 quarterback hits. Za’Darius Smith has 5.0 sacks and a team-high 11 quarterback hits.

Last season, Matthews had 3.5 sacks and 12 quarterback hits for the entire season.

“Every time we touch the field, you’ve got to silence the naysayers but we know at the end of the day what we’re capable of,” Preston Smith said. “We’re capable of being a great defense. Of course, y’all see flashes but we’ve got to make sure we’re being consistent with it. At the end of the day, we were disrespected by somebody saying there was no leadership up front and we’re not going to say the name and make him more famous.”

Added Za’Darius Smith during their usual tag-team interview session: “It’s cool. I’m going to hit on that. Just to have that comment come in – what we did was I told the guys it’s more than being a leader on this defense. We’re all going to have to be leaders at some point. To be able to do that, we focused on that the whole week. We actually printed out some papers and put them in the defensive room. So, to have the motivation, man, it all worked out for us and we’re 4-1.”