I’m not a big TreQuan Smith fan. He’s had a few games where he’s come up with some splash plays (most recently, catching 2 touchdowns in the NFC Championship) but I haven’t seen him do enough where I have any confidence he’ll develop into a relevant producer on a week-to-week basis.
I will concede there have been a few flash games. He went over 100 yards in a couple of games as a rookie. And he passes the eyeball test – a former third-round pick who at times looks like a starting NFL receiver. His size and speed are fine.
But I have little confidence it will happen. I think the passing offense in New Orleans will take a step back, and even when it’s rolling pretty good, I don’t see him being a reliable, consistent part of it. I understand that Emmanuel Cook and Jared Cook are gone now, but Smith has had ample opportunities in the past and hasn’t done enough with him. Michael Thomas, most notably, missed about half of last year without Smith making much of an impact.
Below see a list of Smith’s last 16 full games (an NFL season’s worth of action). That is, I took his last 16 games where he was on the field for over two thirds of their offensive plays. He was a starter-type guy in all of these games. Yet in these 16, he caught only 40 passes for 509 yards and 7 TDs. The 7 TDs, I guess, is OK. But hard to believe a wide receiver could be on the field for a full season in that offense and catch only 40 passes, getting just halfway to a 1,000-yard season.
I don’t think Smith will be used extensively enough. Looks like a late-round guy to me, and you would pick him with the understanding he might be cut later on (when some other player shows up on the waiver wire).
| TREQUAN SMITH: LAST 16 FULL GAMES | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Opp | Result | Tgt | Rec | Yds | Avg | TD |
| 2018 | Car. | L 14-33 | 4 | 3 | 30 | 10.0 | 1 |
| 2019 | Atl. | L 9-26 | 2 | 1 | 13 | 13.0 | 0 |
| 2019 | Car. | W 34-31 | 3 | 1 | 13 | 13.0 | 1 |
| 2019 | at Atl. | W 26-18 | 2 | 2 | 14 | 7.0 | 0 |
| 2019 | S.F. | L 46-48 | 4 | 2 | 29 | 14.5 | 1 |
| 2019 | Ind. | W 34-7 | 1 | 1 | 21 | 21.0 | 1 |
| 2019 | Min. | L 20-26 | 1 | 0 | 0 | .0 | 0 |
| 2020 | at L.V. | L 24-34 | 7 | 5 | 86 | 17.2 | 0 |
| 2020 | G.B. | L 30-37 | 6 | 4 | 42 | 10.5 | 0 |
| 2020 | at Det. | W 35-29 | 4 | 4 | 54 | 13.5 | 2 |
| 2020 | LAC | W 30-27 | 3 | 2 | 8 | 4.0 | 0 |
| 2020 | Car. | W 27-24 | 4 | 4 | 54 | 13.5 | 0 |
| 2020 | at Chi. | W 26-23 | 7 | 5 | 43 | 8.6 | 0 |
| 2020 | Atl. | W 24-9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .0 | 0 |
| 2020 | at Atl. | W 21-16 | 6 | 3 | 42 | 14.0 | 1 |
| 2020 | at Phi. | L 21-24 | 6 | 3 | 60 | 20.0 | 0 |
—Ian Allan