It wasn’t hard to see that the New York Jets entered the 2025 season with an uneven wide receiver room. Leading the room? Garrett Wilson, who is arguably one of the league’s top 10 wideouts. After him? One could say the room was “unproven” if they wanted to be kind.
But unproven isn’t always bad. Sometimes unproven allows for a player to rise to the occasion and make a name for themselves. Among the options, the highest upside was generally considered to be rookie Arian Smith who the Jets took in
round 4 of the draft for his superb athletic traits despite having little track record of great on-field success.
Thus far, Smith has yet to live up the challenge.
To be clear though, this isn’t really a knock on Smith. Smith was taken in round 4 for a reason, namely that a great deal of development was going to be needed before he would be ready to contribute. Unfortunately, the Jets have largely abandoned that idea in recent years, instead opting to throw players right into the fire and then acting surprised when their mid-to-late round flyer picks are unable to save largely talentless position groups.
Hopefully this general roster trend is something that will come to pass in the years to come.
