- Jonnu Smith had an eighth-year breakout: Smith played for four NFL teams, and it took the Miami Dolphins offense to unlock Smith’s fantasy potential.
- A reunion with Arthur Smith: Jonnu Smith had spent five years of his career with Arthur Smith as one of his coaches, and he was in a tight end rotation each season, failing to finish among the top-15 fantasy tight ends each year.
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Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
PFF’s Fantasy Football Player Profile series delivers the most in-depth fantasy football analysis available for the 2025 season.
Using PFF’s exclusive data, we evaluate player performance, competition for touches and how teammates and coaching staffs
Last updated: 7:15 a.m. Monday, July 7
Player performance
Jonnu Smith was a third-round pick by the Tennessee Titans in 2017. He worked his way up to more playing time, and in 2019, had a 79.3 PFF receiving grade on a 35-catch, 439-receiving-yard season while playing 70% of the offensive snaps. His snap rate increased to 74.4% in 2020, and he caught eight touchdowns. However, he still received a low target volume and finished 13th in fantasy points per game despite the high touchdown total.
Smith signed a big $50.0 million contract with $31.2 million guaranteed with the New England Patriots. However, the Patriots also signed Hunter Henry. Smith ended up only playing 50.6% of the offensive snaps in his first season and 49.0% in his second, and he finished with less than two receptions per game each season. The Patriots moved on from him, so he reunited with Arthur Smith on the Atlanta Falcons. With Atlanta, he had the first two games of over 85 receiving yards in his career despite Kyle Pitts‘ presence. However, he was also under 40 receiving yards in 12 of 17 games, making it impossible to trust him for fantasy purposes.
This led to a two-year contract with the Miami Dolphins, who lacked a receiving option at tight end. Smith had a quiet start with the team, averaging 20 yards per game in September. That shot up to 60 yards per game in October and 78 yards per game in November. That dropped to 45 per game in December, but he also scored seven touchdowns in his last eight games. This was enough for a Pro Bowl birth and career-highs in basically every stat, making him a rare eighth-year breakout.
The one area in which Smith has always stood out is his ability to avoid tackles. His 0.04 avoided tackles per route is the most for tight ends since 2022. Smith will be 30 years old before the start of the season, which is typically past an age where tight ends decline. While Smith doesn’t have as many receptions as other 30-year-old tight ends, he does have over 5,000 career offensive snaps.
Projected role
Smith joins the Pittsburgh Steelers, who already have a crowded tight end room with Pat Freiermuth and Darnell Washington. The Steelers arguably have the best one-two receiving punch at tight end behind their division rivals, the Baltimore Ravens.
While this is good for the Steelers offense, it’s bad for the fantasy value of both Smith and Freiermuth. It is exceptionally rare for a team to have two fantasy-relevant tight ends. The Rob Gronkowski-Aaron Hernandez pairing in New England was the best example. The 2019 Philadelphia Eagles featured Zach Ertz and Dallas Goedert as the only other instance of two tight ends accumulating at least 130 PPR points in the same season.
The offense needs to use a lot of two-tight-end sets, which will be true for the Steelers, but it also needs a pass-heavy offense with both tight ends playing at a high level. It’s unlikely this offense will be pass-heavy, and the duo won’t play as well as Gronkowski and Hernandez. It’s fair to expect them to play similarly to Ertz and Goedert, but the trade makes it unlikely Smith will remain a top-10 fantasy tight end unless he can be clearly ahead of Freiermuth on the depth chart.
Impact of teammates
Jonnu Smith will be playing in Arthur Smith’s offense for the third time in their careers. When Jonnu Smith was drafted by the Titans in 2017, Arthur Smith was the tight ends coach. In 2019, he became the Titans' offensive coordinator. After four years together, both Smiths changed teams in 2021 but reunited with the Atlanta Falcons in 2023. They spent 2024 apart, and now they are together again.
This is not great news for Jonnu Smith’s fantasy production. In three years with Arthur Smith as offensive playcaller, Jonnu Smith has finished TE20, TE16 and TE17. He only ran a route on 49-68% of his team's passing plays in those three seasons compared to 75% last season and 81% over the second half of last season. He’s never played more than 52% of 11 personnel snaps in Arthur Smith’s offense, so it’s highly unlikely Jonnu Smith will play significantly more snaps than Freiermuth. In Atlanta, Jonnu Smith was primarily competing with Kyle Pitts, and in Tennessee, it was Anthony Firkser. Freiermuth may be the most competition Smith has seen for snaps, so Jonnu Smith might even play less than he did in the past with Arthur Smith.
Jonnu Smith’s one hope is that the offense changes significantly with Aaron Rodgers at quarterback. Rodgers is used to a pass-heavy offense with significant 11 personnel usage. If the offense is much more pass-heavy than past Arthur Smith offenses, then there is a chance Jonnu Smith will run enough routes to be a fantasy starter. Without that, we can expect a lot more of the same, with Jonnu Smith finishing outside the top-15 fantasy tight ends.
Bottom line
Smith’s 2024 season was very promising, but a return to Arthur Smith’s offense has greatly diminished his fantasy value. While he could have a few spike weeks to help in DFS or best ball, chances are you won’t be able to trust Smith in fantasy starting lineups outside of a potential bye week fill-in.
Footnotes
- Statistics in tables and charts were chosen based on their ability to predict future fantasy performance on a per-game or per-opportunity basis or to describe the player relative to others at the same position.
- “Opportunities” are defined as passing dropbacks, rushing attempts and routes run as a receiver.
- Numbers are provided either by season or based on the past three years. For rookies, only college statistics are included. For non-rookies, only NFL statistics are considered, regardless of whether they played in college within the previous three years.
- As college competition is easier than NFL competition, most rookies are likely to see a decline from their historical numbers.
- Only FBS data is considered for college players and comparisons.
- Kneel-downs are removed from rushing data to provide cleaner quarterback rushing rate statistics.
- The table colors in this article range from blue (indicating good/high) to red (indicating bad/low).
- All percentiles and color codings compare the given player to others with a high sample of opportunities. Generally, the cutoff is one-third of the possible opportunities in the sample. If a player does not meet the threshold, they are still included in the comparison, though their results may appear better or worse than expected due to the smaller, less predictive sample size.
- Information on utilization classifications and their importance can be found here for running backs, wide receivers and tight ends.
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