The Jets’ patience with Arian Smith is running on fumes, and Week 2 may have been the moment it finally snapped.
In New York’s 20-17 loss to the Green Bay Packers, Smith was on the field for just one offensive snap. That alone told the story.
But his bigger damage came on special teams, where he was one of the gunners on punt coverage and missed Skyy Moore late in the fourth quarter. That whiff opened the door for a punt return that flipped the field into the Jets’ red zone and helped set up Green Bay’s tying score.
That kind of lapse is hard to shrug off, especially when the Jets only dressed four wide receivers. This was supposed to be a chance for Smith to carve out a role, or at least show why the team keeps him around. Instead, he was out there almost entirely for special teams, and even that phase of the game turned into a problem.
At this point, the case for keeping him on the roster is getting thinner by the week. Smith has caught just seven passes for 52 yards in his Jets career, and the drop issues that followed him out of college have shown up again. His straight-line speed remains the one trait he’s consistently flashed, but that hasn’t been enough to make him a useful NFL receiver.
And that’s what makes the investment in Smith look so rough. He was taken with a pick that was just a few slots shy of Day 2, which suggested the Jets saw him as more than a depth piece.
Instead, they appear to have missed badly on what he could be as a pass catcher. Putting him back out there now doesn’t fix that mistake - it only keeps exposing it.
The front office also has other options. After Cooper’s injury, the Jets added Sterling Shepard and 2025 holdover Tyler Johnson to the practice squad, and both would make sense on game day ahead of Smith.
If the team doesn’t want to dress two veterans, Malik McClain is another name worth considering. He stood out in the preseason on special teams and as a boundary receiver, and even in a scheme leaning heavily on multiple tight end sets, he has done more to earn a look than Smith has.
Darren Mougey’s 2025 draft class has not gotten off to a strong start through the first three rounds, and the decision to use a premium pick on a player who looks more like a sixth- or seventh-round talent is the clearest miss so far. The Jets don’t need to keep forcing the issue.
Smith has become a loss. It’s time to move on.
In Other News...
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Packers Fans Got Caught In Foxs Most Infuriating Broadcast Mess
Week 2 brought a familiar kind of football frustration, only this time it came from the screen instead of the field. FOX Sports ran into a broadcast error across multiple early games, with audio feeds not matching the action viewers were actually watching, and the mishap was jarring enough to distract from the afternoon slate before the network moved on to its primetime coverage. For Jets fans who tuned in expecting a straightforward Sunday of football, the glitches turned the telecast into part of the storyline.
The Packers-Jets game had its own extra wrinkle in overtime when FOX briefly lost the scorebug, adding another layer to an already messy broadcast window. The network fixed the audio problems before the night game, but it still has not offered a public explanation for how the early mix-up happened, leaving viewers with the same lingering annoyance that tends to follow a bad broadcast more than a bad quarter. [Read more 🡒]
Should Geno Smith Really Wear This Jets Collapse
Geno Smith did enough Sunday to give the Jets a chance, and for much of the afternoon it looked like they might finally be leaving Lambeau Field with a road win. New York built a double-digit lead in the fourth quarter before the game slipped away in overtime against the Packers, even as Smith kept the offense moving with steady accuracy and no turnovers.
Smith finished 27 of 41 for 247 yards and a touchdown, and his adjusted completion rate and passer rating both pointed to a generally efficient outing. The bigger issue was everything around him, from a running game that never got going to late-game decisions that helped turn a manageable finish into another painful Jets collapse. [Read more 🡒]