PHILADELPHIA -- Rod Smart was in the shadow of Veterans Stadium on Wednesday as his teammates started drifting off the practice field.

Smart, who football connoisseurs will remember better as He Hate Me of the XFL's Las Vegas Outlaws, has played exactly two games in the NFL. The first one, Week 10 against the Redskins, was memorable. Smart played the demanding position of "gunner" on the punt coverage team. For the record, he is not playing the position anymore.

	Tennessee's Derrick Mason is brought down by Cleveland's Scott Frost, obscured, during a punt return.

"Man," he was told, "you got shredded."

The dozen or so players in the vicinity, including linebacker Mike Caldwell, broke up laughing. Soon, Smart was laughing, too.

"You got that right," he said. "It's not that easy."

This, as it turns out, is the understatement of the season. The gunner is the NFL's dirty little secret, the most thankless, difficult job in a league rife with occupational hazards. ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown, which airs at 11 a.m. ET, will profile these brave -- some would say unbalanced -- warriors. Like their military counterparts, they must overcome adversity in many forms to accomplish their mission. The few, the proud, the ...

"It's mayhem in about four seconds," Atlanta special teams coach Joe DeCamillis said. "You want to try to go off a double-team and blow the returner up. It takes a special kind of guy to do that."

They are called gunners, fliers, forcers -- the Seattle Seahawks call them bullets, which is just about right.

	“	I tell them, 'We're gonna shoot you out of the gun and we're gonna go right at the heart of the guy and stab him.' You should have hazard duty pay for that kind of job. ”
		— Pete Rodriguez, Seahawks special teams coach

"I tell them, 'We're gonna shoot you out of the gun and we're gonna go right at the heart of the guy and stab him,' " explained Pete Rodriguez, the Seahawks' special teams coach. "You should have hazard duty pay for that kind of job."

The good ones draw a double-team, known in football parlance as 'The Vice' at the line of scrimmage. When the ball is snapped, they attempt to release, generally trying to bend outside or inside the two blockers. If they are lucky enough to get by the Vice, they will probably draw the attention of an inside safety who is the last line of protection for the punt returner. If he's good enough, the gunner somehow will elude that third blocker and find himself in position to down the ball, force a fair catch or -- the dream scenario -- make the tackle. Even if the gunner forces the punt returner to run laterally, even for a second, he has successfully disrupted the play. The whole thing involves a 50-yard sprint with numerous diversions and is over in less than 10 seconds.

"There's really not much technique to it," Rams gunner Yo Murphy said. "It's really about just working hard. Maybe like cleaning out the gorilla cage at the zoo. It's not fun, but you've got to do it. You've got to work your way up to zoo manager, I guess."

What does it take to be a good gunner? Those who play the position all possess, to some degree, raw speed and incredible toughness. Really, those two assets will pretty much get the job done. Mostly, gunners are fringe players who earn their way onto the roster by filling special-teams roles -- the fifth wide receiver, the fourth running back, the dime safety, etc.

	Tebucky Jones does double-duty with the Patriots as a starting free safety and a gunner on punt coverage.

The lone exception: New England Patriots safety Tebucky Jones, who is also the team's starting free safety. While most coaches say that double duty is too taxing, Jones insists on playing. The Patriots, following the lead of head coach Bill Belichick, who was a special-teams coach early in his career, emphasize special-teams play to the point that they sometimes run Jones down the field as a gunner, then take him out of the game on first down to allow him to recover. It is a sound strategy; the Patriots' punt defense is second in the league (allowing a scant 5.3 yards per return) to Baltimore.

At 6-foot-2, 218 pounds with 4.4-second speed, Jones is an unnatural athlete among great athletes.

"There was a play a few weeks ago," said Brad Seely, the Patriots' special teams coach. "Tebucky is going down the sidelines and he beats one guy, then gets around the other guy. The first guy reaches out, right in front of the official, and grabs Tebucky.

"Later on, when I asked him why he didn't throw the flag, the official goes, 'Well, he didn't slow him down too much.' That's the problem. These are great athletes and they're being penalized for it. The officials have a tough time reacting to things they've never seen before."

As obscure as the gunners are, they are often featured on network television with isolated cameras. The pounding they take is alarming. Recently, the Washington Redskins' Michael Bates was shown working diligently against a double-team. He was held repeatedly and worked over pretty well. Bates' frustration grew and grew before he swung a wild forearm at one of his tormentors. Sure enough, the official who had been watching everything, flagged Bates.

Bates is one of the league's elite gunners who has made a living on the edge. This is his ninth NFL season and he has been named to the past five Pro Bowls and six overall. Bates is 5-10, 189 pounds and faster than light; he was the bronze medalist in the 200 meters at the Barcelona Olympics and a kick returner at the University of Arizona. He has playd for Carolina, Cleveland, Seattle and Washington in his NFL career. He is the quintessential gunner; he has played in 132 NFL games and started only one.

	New England's Troy Brown returns a kickoff 85 yards for a touchdown against Cleveland last weekend.

Other notable gunners: Chicago's Larry Whigham, Philadelphia's Dameane Douglas and Fabien Bownes of Seattle.

The deck is stacked hopelessly against the gunner. Officials have basically told teams that if a player gets caught in the Vice, if there are four hands on the gunner, he is fair game.

"It's how they interpret those rules," explained Rodriguez. "The officials say that once you're in the Vice, anything goes. The only thing you can't do is drag him to the ground. I don't understand that. Why is it legal to do illegal things on one guy when that guy is at a greater disadvantage?"

Said Atlanta gunner Johndale Carty: "They can grab you, they can hold you, they can pull you down. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there and every man for himself. It's get out and be a beast. If you're not a beast, more than likely, you won't make it down the field."

Rodriguez says the gunner is rapidly becoming a lost art.

"The kids today," he said, "they don't always want to do that job. You're always looking for that guy. It's a place you can be featured. I mean, some of these guys make the Pro Bowl. It's a chance to be in the spotlight, and it takes somebody who's hungry."

Greg Garber is a senior writer at ESPN.com