Sorry I misunderstood. Well we maybas well have taken a chance on Royals and his injury worries at least he can catch.
This feels like Stephen Hill 2.0. If he's dropping catches vs NE I can already picture the boos in the stadium... BUT on a brighter note, I wish the kid well and hope it works out.
Nice another receiver who can’t catch, thought we had one in Lazard already? What are the odds that opposing defenses stack the box and double team Garrett Wilson? How long till Garrett Wilson is fed up?
He caught 48 passes this season. Anytime he's on the field his speed will require safety help. Like a 3 point shooter you can't leave open.
I think this was a panic pick after taking a day to really sit on it. They needed speed and I think I heard Connor Rogers talking about he had a feeling that the NYJ were going to take Kyle Williams until the Patriots swooped in and grabbed him. They are definitely trying to build a Detriot Lions type of offense by the offseason moves so far, including the draft. Only I think we probably have a little more flexibility with our QB being so athletic on top of everything. Still.. They needed a Jamall Williams type WR. This is as off brand of that as you can get, but he does have wheels. Hopefully they can develop the kid. I do like his change of direction and routes though. That's a plus. That drop rate is absurd though.
at least heres some positives about his not being able to catch Smith had some inconsistent moments connecting with former quarterback Carson Beck — the two were sometimes not always on the same page. But Smith had a strong showing during the NFL draft evaluation process, at the Senior Bowl and at the NFL combine, leading many to believe his dropped passes were more of an outlier than a trend moving forward
tbh it is the only pick that has irked me, speed is good but fuck you need to have hands as a WR or it is pointless. How can you ever trust him in a big moment as he runs onto a bomb to take the Superbowl (yeah, I know) and he fumbles it with no defender in sight
A few thoughts. Value-wise, Arian Smith went where he should have gone - he was a 4th round talent every day of the week. Happy for the kid. But I wouldn’t put much stock in any of the draft profiles or chatter. Not saying everyone is wrong. One guy I saw was pretty good. He went all the way back to his junior season in high school. Most others are just lazy plagiarists. All I’m saying is - there’s more to this kid, both good and bad, than what I’ve read. Unsurprisingly, since Arian Smith has been frustrating me for four years, OF FUCKING COURSE the Jets pick him. He was the highest WR recruit at Georgia since George Pickens. There have been a handful of 5-stars recruited as “athletes,” but you have to go all the way back to AJ Green before you get to an elite, true WR. Georgia just doesn’t recruit them very well. Never has. So, every WR-starved UGA fan was hoping Smith was it, then had to wait when he entered UGA injured. But, he is NOT injury prone, despite what you may have read. More on that and a few other misunderstood points below. First, the bad - the drops, in context. Yes, he had an unacceptable number of drops; and, yes, that’s definitely something he needs to work on. I think it’s correctable with good coaching, repetition and confidence. UGA took a player with great athleticism and enormous potential and made him into a (mostly) one-dimensional player. I’m not laying blame here. Colleges really only have two years, at best, to develop a player before they have to move to Plan B. Smith was injured most of his first two years. That said, think about what the UGA passing offense was during Arian Smith’s junior season. A crapload of injuries made RB depth thin, causing them to lean heavy on a passing game which was successful, despite being so predictable that I can summarize it in a few words. Not very complicated: throw anywhere near Brock Bowers and he’ll grab it or, if he was covered, that usually meant someone else like Dominic Lovett would be open; hit McConkey in space and expect that he’ll stretch it; use short passes to athletes in lieu of RB depth; and, lastly, have Arian Smith and Dillon Bell burn downfield to keep the defense honest. Maybe even hit one of them, but touch and accuracy on deep balls wasn’t a Carson Beck strength. In 2023 it almost didn’t matter. The team went 13-1 and should have gone through to the playoff undefeated and three-peated if it weren’t for one motherfucking referee who I’m sure beats his wife and cruises public restrooms looking for holes to kneel by. What happened in 2024 when you replace the pieces that made that passing game successful and have a QB who thinks it was his strong arm? There was a deeper RB room but when injuries and inexperience held that in check, we saw that a QB with preseason Heisman odds, rumors flying of a top-10 pick, and a stable of high-end cars from NIL money might have holes in his game. 2024 told me more about Carson Beck than it did Arian Smith. He still threw to the same tight spaces as in 2023 as if he was throwing to the same exceptional targets at the other end. Best example is the 2024 UGA-Alabama game, down 30-7 at halftime, mostly due to shitty defense that couldn’t contain either Jalen Milroe or Ryan Williams, but Carson Beck was useless. Despite the UGA comeback, he sucked most of the game. It was only after they got some traction on the ground and, to my point here, started using Arian Smith all over the field - UGA clawed back. Until Carson Beck did exactly what I’m talking about and blew it at the end anyway. My point is - yeah, Arian Smith led the planet in drops; and yeah, an NFL receiver needs to win battles and catch tough balls. But Arian is one of several UGA WRs on the 2024 dropped-passes list. I’m saying it’s something to correct, but it wasn’t all him and it’s not who he is. Or, shouldn’t be. Second, this flawed narrative that Arian Smith is “injury prone” - horseshit. This is a tough fucking kid. He was recruited as a WR because he transferred his senior year of HS and settled into that position. Not sure why, but my guess is to focus his recruitment on the one position to best utilize his speed. But go hunt down video of his junior season. Dude played all over the field, on both sides of the ball - QB, RB, WR, LB, S, PR, KR. Sure, recruiting profiles will focus on highlights, but he was a standout everywhere he played. He wasn’t some prissy speedster who out-ran and out-jumped HS DBs and then coasted when he wasn’t the focus of the play. He was a football player through and through. True, his college career was hampered by injuries. If you only look at the number of injuries it’s easy enough to say he’s injury prone, but the full picture says otherwise. As I said, after his recruitment, UGA fans were dying to see what he could do on the field, and disappointed when his career started with surgery for a fractured wrist. Except, he played with that fractured wrist in his senior HS season. I’m 99% sure he was a mid-year enrollee because almost everyone these days is, so he played through the end of his HS season, including the all-star bowls, and enrolled right after he was done knowing he’d have surgery. The way these draft profiles read, you’d think that the kid was injured his first practice at UGA. Not true. He had a fractured wrist after he had already committed to a Power 5 program with offers everywhere - he had nothing to prove but he played anyway. He was also a two-sport recruit, so he was training year-round for competition. Eventually, he dropped track, no doubt because of the time it took away from football training. His string of injuries ended when his track career did. Now, I’m not saying that track caused his injuries; what I’m saying is - from the moment he shifted his focus solely to football and football training, he’s been healthy. I don’t think that’s an accident. Also, take a look at his injuries. These weren’t skinned knees. College careers are brief, and there’s always some new, hot talent coming in - especially now with the portal. Tons of examples of kids with any one of the injuries Arian Smith suffered ending up on a perpetual “questionable” list or migrate down the depth chart until they’re eventually memory-holed. Arian Smith always made it back onto the field. Of course, now that he’s a Jet it’s in his contract to aggravate and make me look stupid. But, when I think of the term “injury prone” I’m think of soft players with soft injuries who seem too comfortable in the training room and not comfortable enough on the field. That’s not Arian Smith. The kid rehabs and fights for playing time. Doesn’t hurt that his speed isn’t easily replaceable, but still. Last point, my biggest concern with Arian Smith: that the offensive coaching staff at UGA is actually good their jobs and put him in the best position to utilize his talent. What I mean is - aside from a few recent seasons and a handful of exceptions over the last 40 years, Georgia has always been a run-oriented offense, where WRs go to die or just avoid altogether. I hope that’s what happened here and explains Arian Smith’s good-not-great stats in 2023 and, especially, 2024. Here’s why that might be the case. He came in as a high 4-star - the highest rated WR in the No. 1 recruiting class that year, a few notches above Jermaine Burton. Burton passed Smith on the depth chart while Arian was injured. Right after UGA’s first championship, when it looked like Burton was going to break out, he jumped ship to Alabama. AD Mitchell did the same thing the following year, leaving for Texas. Neither surprised me. They were each as close to a No. 1 WR as Georgia gets, but all the attention was on Bowers. Meanwhile, there was another player recruited the same year as both Smith and Burton, who wasn’t ranked within miles of either of them, but eventually passed both, and just nailed down a 1100-yard NFL season. Ladd McConkey. UGA didn’t develop McConkey. They barely even found him. He had zero Power 5 offers and was headed to Chattanooga until UGA made him an offer only like a week or two before Signing Day. It didn’t take long before he was taking targets away from Burton, then Mitchell, then Smith. But it wasn’t genius it was dumb luck. And Arian Smith, with tons more expected talent, doesn’t really light up the world when McConkey leaves, and ends up a “reach” in the 4th round. So, what I’m saying is - my concern is that UGA pulled every bit of talent out of Arian Smith and all he’ll ever be is a marginal NFL player. My hope is that they were true to form and were more interested in an offense with half a dozen guys pulling 300-400 yards plus two RBs with 700-800 rushing, rather than any offense that featured a 900-1000 yard WR. Geezus, that was longer than I ever expected. But what I’ve been hearing about Arian Smith has bothered me. Maybe he is what everyone thinks he is. Just don’t believe all the plagiarizing draft experts. Don’t believe this either. Go look at the full picture and see for yourself. Rooting for you Arian.
