Jets’ Arian Smith shows floor and ceiling in roller-coaster game

One common misconception about Smith is that his athletic upside is limited to his straight-line speed. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

On top of his 4.36 speed, Smith posted strong marks in the three-cone (6.82, 74th percentile among WR), broad jump (127 inches, 83rd percentile), and vertical jump (38 inches, 78th percentile). He combines his elite long speed with excellent explosiveness and quickness. Most importantly, those things translate to the football field.

Jets X-Factor’s Joe Blewett broke it down in his film review of the Georgia product: Smith is extremely quick to get in and out of his breaks. For that reason, his potential as an offensive weapon extends far beyond just a straight-line deep threat on go and post routes.

We see an example of that here. Smith sells vertical to get his man to open his hips outside, and then undercuts him on the slant route, showing tremendous quickness. He uses a throw-by with his right arm to create more separation and generate momentum to the inside.

It’s a beautiful win on the slant route. But then we see the first glimpse of the dropsies that plagued Smith in college. Adrian Martinez puts the ball in Smith’s chest with perfect timing, and Smith drops it. You would like to see him attack this with his hands instead of letting it come to his body.

Play 2

On top of his drop issues, Smith also struggled to haul in contested passes at Georgia. According to Pro Football Focus, Smith caught just 3-of-18 (16.7%) contested targets in his college career.

This play is an example of that. Martinez lobs up a decently placed 50-50 ball for Smith, and Smith is able to get his hands on it after leaping in the air, but he can’t come down with it.

While this is by no means an easy catch, it is one that you would like to see NFL wide receivers come down with occasionally. Smith’s 16.7% contested catch rate at Georgia is nowhere near good enough. He must prove he can snag some difficult catches every once in a while.

Play 3

Once again, Smith shows that his NFL future is not limited to deep bombs. He can weaponize the threat of those deep bombs to make plays in other ways.

The cornerback is playing off coverage with inside leverage. Smith stays outside and threatens vertical, making the corner open his hips to the sideline. Once Smith gets the corner to open up, he throws his outside foot down and breaks inside on the dig route. He does a nice job of using a head fake to complement the break.

After cutting inside, Smith flattens his route along the 40-yard line, and he puts himself in the perfect spot to catch Martinez’s pass in stride.

Nice job extending his arms and catching the ball with his hands, too.

Play 4

Smith caught another deep in-cut two plays later on the same drive.

This time, the corner is playing with outside leverage and his hips turned to the inside. It doesn’t matter – Smith still finds a way to win.

You like that Smith doesn’t break too early on this route. He presses the cornerback until he is within about 2-3 yards of him, which gets him to freeze his feet for just a split second. Then, the break inside is quick and explosive – too fast for the corner to match it after his slight hesitation.

Again, Smith flattens the route nicely instead of drifting upfield. Then, as the ball arrives, Smith comes back to it, leaps to the high ball, and attacks it, securing the pure hands catch.

Artistry.

The way Smith caught this ball shows that he has made strides with his catching technique and is building good habits. If he continues catching balls this way, his drop rate should eventually dip.

Another important takeaway: Having this play in his bag will open up the deep game for Smith. If he can establish himself as a threat in the intermediate area, corners will start sitting on his routes instead of playing it safe over the top. Once that happens, Smith can hit them with a stutter-go and waltz to the end zone.

Play 5

It’s not a vertical bomb, but just one target later, we can already see the byproduct of Smith establishing himself as a threat on the intermediate in-cut.

Against the same corner he beat on the previous target, Smith throws a stutter and gets him to bite inside. Smith undercuts the corner and beats him on the out route. Check out the handiwork: He uses a throw-by with his outside arm and then swims over the top with his inside arm. That is how you keep yourself clean as a wide receiver.

Smith is wide open. Martinez airmails the pass.

While the ball placement is poor, this serves as an example of Smith’s relatively small catch radius. This is a bad throw and would be a difficult catch for anybody, but it’s close enough to where a bigger, lengthier receiver may have caught it.

Smith is only a shade above six feet with 31¼-inch arms (30th percentile among WR) and 9-inch hands (20th percentile). You can see on the slow-motion view that Smith comes very close to touching the ball (he actually may have grazed it), so those inches make a difference here. He has good hops, but his small frame will prevent him from having a chance to catch some errant passes like this one.

Nonetheless, this is a fantastic route and a bad throw. More important than the route itself is how it shows that Smith can set defenders up with the threat of one route and use that threat against them later in the game.

Play 6

After getting beaten by Smith on two intermediate routes, No. 30 decides he’s had enough. He lines up in a soft press, trying to quickly get hands-on and run with Smith.

Good luck with that.

The corner unsuccessfully tries to get his hands on Smith (it is hard to tell if Smith did anything to deflect the hands or if the corner just flat-out whiffed), and Smith just sprints past him. Smith has a yard of vertical separation, but Brady Cook underthrows the ball in the face of an incoming hit.

Smith does a nice job of adjusting. He smashes the brake and comes back to the ball, undercutting the corner to put himself between the ball and the defender. Smith is in perfect position to grab it, but the corner grabs him early for what probably should have been called pass interference. Even the Giants’ broadcasters admitted it.

It can be argued that Smith still should have made the catch, though, at it landed in his breadbasket despite the probable interference. Smith has to prove he can make some difficult catches – that is one of the main themes from this game.

Regardless, Smith beat his defender deep and should have drawn a 30+ yard flag as a result.

A perfect encapsulation of where Smith stands

There is no disputing it: Arian Smith has the second-highest ceiling of any wide receiver on the Jets’ roster.

The rookie showed it throughout training camp, and now, he is putting it on display for the whole world to see in the preseason.

Smith is an all-around speedster who can quickly cover ground in any fashion. Not only can he out-sprint most defenders, but he also gets out of his breaks in a flash. He combines the threat of his vertical speed with his short-area quickness to cook defenders on horizontal breaks.

It is promising to see that Smith is already building a well-rounded repertoire of weapons – and that he is learning how to use each weapon to set up his next move. Smith punished defenders for selling out on the deep pass. Once they adjusted to his inside routes, he went outside, and once they clamped down on the intermediate game, he darted past them.

Because of these traits, Smith’s ceiling is undoubtedly high, and it’s no longer just a hypothetical ceiling stemming from combine numbers. We have seen Smith translate his physical tools into tremendous on-field performance. He can ball.

However, Smith still needs to prove himself as a more reliable pass-catcher before the Jets can trust him with a larger role on offense.

Smith’s drop on the slant was a freebie. He can’t drop those consistently as an NFL starter. Those are the focus drops that bit him in college.

In addition to minimizing the easy drops, Smith has to show that he can make tough catches. He will always be somewhat limited in this area due to his small frame, but after catching less than one out of every five contested passes at Georgia, Smith needs to snag a couple of difficult grabs to convince the Jets that he has at least become competent in this area.

Smith is proving that he has elite upside as an opportunity creator. The next step is to improve at capitalizing on the opportunities he creates. If he can only catch the ball when it is well-placed, a large chunk of his potential will be wasted – especially if he is still dropping some of those well-placed passes, too.

Things are looking up, though. With little competition in the Jets’ receiver room, Smith has a clear path to eventually becoming the Jets’ No. 2 weapon on the outside.

Smith will start the season in a specialized role, trailing veterans like Josh Reynolds and possibly one or both of Tyler Johnson and Allen Lazard. But if Smith can thrive in his role early in the season, it will not be long until the Jets deem his ceiling worthy of a spot in the starting lineup.

It all comes down to building trust with the coaches by capitalizing on a high rate of his opportunities. Outside of Garrett Wilson, no other receiver on the Jets’ roster can match Smith’s ability to create opportunities.

He just has to make them count.