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ALL TWENTY-TUESDAY: USC WR JUJU SMITH-SCHUSTER
I had no idea who USC wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster was until this play.
I remember one of my friends coming up to me all excited and nearly screamed, “Dude, did you see the play that the USC wide receiver made last night?”
I had no idea what he was talking about. He quickly got out his phone, simply typed in “USC WR OWNS CORNERBACK” (yes, it was in all caps).
This is what I saw.
From that moment on I knew who Smith-Schuster was, and so did the rest of the college and pro football world.
At 6-foot-2, 215 pounds, Smith-Schuster provides a team with ideal size and skill to be a reliable outside wide receiver. But how has he fared in terms of his age and production?
Smith-Schuster was born November 22, 1996, and is currently 20 years old. He’ll be that age on draft day and for most of his rookie season. That makes him one of the youngest players in the entire draft class – that in and of itself is alluring.
In 2014, as an 18-year-old freshman, Smith-Schuster caught 54 passes for 724 yards and seven touchdowns. In those three categories, Smith-Schuster scored market share percentages of 16.9, 18.7 and 12.8, respectively. All three were below the suggested 20 percent starting point for special players.
In his sophomore season, however, Smith-Schuster recorded 89 catches for 1,454 yards and 10 touchdowns (all of which were team-highs). For that season, at age 19, Smith-Schuster had market share percentages of 28.8, 38.5 and 33.3 percent for the three major categories. All three of those numbers were far above Moore’s suggested slope for starting wide receivers, as the market share at age 19 is right around 25 percent of each category.
This year, unreliable quarterback play really hurt Smith-Schuster’s growth and overall production, especially early on. Still, as the team’s No. 1 wide receiver, Smith-Schuster only recorded 70 catches for 914 yards, yet finished with 10 touchdowns. Those scores came out to be 23, 25.4 and 30.3. So the touchdown market share remained above the line – which is a good thing since scoring touchdowns is the main goal of being on offense – but the rest of his shares suffered. So his stats as a 20-year old weren’t as stellar as they were when he was 19, but they weren’t too far below the line, either.
So what made Smith-Schuster capable of dominating his competition at age 19, and was it with skills we could see again at the next level.
The Incredible JuJu
We all know the Incredible Hulk. It’s a comic book story of how Bruce Banner exposes himself to gamma radiation in a twisted self-experiment that ends up giving him the power (or curse) to transform into this unstoppable beast when he’s angry.
When I watch JuJu Smith-Schuster, that’s what I think of.
There are times when I watch Smith-Schuster where he just looks disinterested. On plays that are designed to go his way, his effort is fine, but there are also time, like in the clip above, where early on into games he almost looks like he’s not there; he isn’t focused yet. That may just be his youth showing, but it’s not something you like to see too often.
Here again, in that same game, the ball was even being run to his side, and he had no desire to go out and get on a block. His body language was so relaxed that even when the defender broke to the ball carrier, Smith-Schuster wasn’t in a position to get in his way.
But then there are times like the one above, from later in that game, where Smith-Schuster looks like he’s ready to block his assignment into the stands. The only difference that I can find between the two is that Smith-Schuster had been bullied off a block earlier in the game, and after that moment, you saw a player who looked like he was blocking to get revenge. It’s almost like a defender said something to Smith-Schuster after bullying him on a block, as if to insult his strength or skill, and he wasn’t going to stand for it.
Here’s another example, but with a twist. This was on the first pass of the game. This is a tough catch, but Smith-Schuster should’ve had it. He’s a player who is known for his strong, big-time catches, and these are the kind of plays he has to have consistently if he’s going to be considered a future WR1 in the NFL – even if the catch is difficult. Instead, the defender was able to knock the ball away, and Smith-Schuster wasn’t happy about it – you’ll see the evidence of that on the next example.
A few plays later, Smith-Schuster responded by knocking the snot out of this defender. I don’t know how else to explain this kind of play other than that Smith-Schuster is about revenge. He’s a talented player who you don’t want to piss off. This is both good and bad. With wide receivers, you want consistency, sure, but you also want those guys who beg for the big moment and to either get redemption or just plain make a play when it matter most (with and without the ball). Smith-Schuster shows he has that kind of mentality. But, on the other hand, sometimes he can be too relaxed, and if that’s the case, by the time something happens where he snaps in his mind, the game might be out of hand.
I don’t want to have to wait for him to need revenge to stiff arm the soul out of a cornerback; I want to see that from the first snap; we know it’s there.
Since the NFL Draft is more about what a player CAN do for you more than what they CAN’T. let’s show a bit of what Smith-Schuster can do when he’s focused.
Big Play Mentality
Having a big-play mentality is key for any star at any position; and Smith-Schuster has it. He gets wide-eyed when he sees he has one-on-one coverage, especially when he knows he’s going vertical. He’s not going to be the fastest player on the field, but he makes up for it with strength when breaking press and when bringing down passes.
The play above is another example of Smith-Schuster’s strength at the catch point. He isn’t able to separate as much as you would like to see, but makes up for it by bringing the catch in, and though it seemed like the cornerback was trying to wrestle the ball away for an interception, Smith-Schuster (with one arm, mind you) easily held on to the ball and stood up on his own.
With strength at the catch point a big plus for Smith-Schuster, the next impressive trait of his is his hand-eye coordination.
The play above was not an uncommon one while Cody Kessleer was Smith-Schuster’s quarterback. Again, let’s note that Smith-Schuster is not the most precise route runner in and out of his cuts, and doesn’t separate as much as other receivers in his class because of it. But the hand-eye coordination and concentration to bring that ball in, along with the strength to wrap it up and complete the catch is almost harder to find that players who are good at separating with better feet or quickness.
Smith-Schuster does have some drops, but like Matt Harmon for NFL Network always says, drops are a part of being a wide receiver, and you have to live with them. What’s more important that the drop itself is how it happens.
In the play above, Smith-Schuster not only had the mentality, but also the athleticism and arm length to go out and attempt to reel in a pass like that. It’s tough break that he couldn’t complete the catch after getting his hands on it, but the traits are there for that to be a catch at another time. That’s what’s most important.
The NFL Scouting Combine is going to be important for Smith-Schuster. I expect his hand size and arm length to be a big talking point once they make his measurements official, and that will only increase his stock. But where he’s really going to make some money is in his runs. If he can run anything less than a 4.55 in the 40-yards dash, that will let teams know that, even though he hasn’t learned how to get the most out of it with separation yet, his speed athleticism is there. It just needs to be taught to efficiency. Evans ran a 4.53 at the Combine and then didn’t run the 40 at his pro day.
Marvel’s The Incredible Hulk
Personally, I will like Smith-Schuster more than most, even if he doesn’t run faster than a 4.5. The reason for that is because, in his 2015 season, I saw enough both in mentality and in skill at his high points to warrant him being a WR2 early on in his NFL career. So if you’re getting a fine-tuned Smith-Schuster a few years in, that means he’ll still be just 22 or 23 years old as a starter in the NFL.
As for the mentality, Smith-Schuster needs to be the Hulk more than Bruce Banner. He needs to find a way to get that revenge mentality going from the opening whistle to the last score. I’m hoping when teams question that (having to wait to be angry to be fully focused) Smith-Schuster responds similarly to how Banner’s character did at the end of the first Avengers movie.
“That’s my secret. I’m always angry.”
