Hello and welcome to PFF Fancy Football Podcast. I'm your host Ian Hardickson. Today we continue our Fancy Final Series with a look at the Vante Smith.

Mr. Heisman, Alabama's absolute stud. If you did not watch what the Vante Smith was doing last year, you're either living under a rock. Maybe you just kind of had a lot of stuff going on. You're like, I don't know. But either way, he absolutely balled the hell out every single game.

His worst performances came against Tennessee where he only caught seven passes for 73 yards and then against Arkansas where we got held the three catches 22 yards, but he also happened to bring a punt back to the house. So just the amount of explosive performances he had otherwise were absolutely loony.

He reached 130 yards and scored multiple touchdowns in nine of 13 games people. I mean, the stretch that this dude was on at the end of the year 250 yards, three touchdowns against Ohio State in the first half.

Another three touchdowns against Notre Dame, 184 yards, two touchdowns against Florida, four scores, two and three yards against Mississippi State, three scores, two and 31 yards against LSU.

And I was like, this is why when you talk about the Vante Smith and the biggest issue people can find is the fact that he weighed 166 pounds. And to that, I just say, who cares because show me one instance over the last season where that made an impact on his on field performance.

And I think you're going to be looking for an awfully long time size did not matter for Smith inside of college football's best conference didn't matter even when they made it out of that and played the rest of the country's best teams.

And it doesn't matter for him throughout his career. The guy comes in as a freshman catches the game winning touchdown, the national freaking championship against Georgia.

The next year, you know, and his playing behind some pretty great receivers still managed to catch 42 balls 69 three yards six scores in 2019 at 68 catches for 1256 yards and 14 scores again with a lot of great BAM receivers.

And I think that's the last year it's really I mean, at this point, we either need to admit or at least really wonder like as the Vante Smith just been the best BAM receiver here the entire time with all respect to Judy to rugs to Waddle just from a production standpoint, we have not seen anybody do it quite like the Vante Smith and really I mean, this is from our pFF 2021 draft guide and kind of echoes my thoughts.

And I think that's the most fabulous Mike runner. It's difficult to find on field cons for Smith his weight will be brought up again and again over the course of the spring, but that's it. That's his con not as routes his ball skills is releases body control or speed.

When that's the only concern and it hasn't even come to light as an issue on a college football field and there's not much to be worried about Smith is a versatile game breaker who just wins. That's a fit for any scheme in the NFL.

I love it 95.6 pFF grade 4.39 yards per out run. I mean, this was asked again an absolutely absurd season that you likely all witness on your own. So we get that Vante Smith truly one of the best college football wider series we've seen.

What can we expect in the NFL. I talked about jail hurts on one of these fancy files recently and brought up how even if he hasn't been even if he wasn't pretty as a passer last year, you know,

41st among 44 qualified Q is in pFF passing grade 39th and term of the play rate dead last and just a completion rate. We saw a lot of bad from hurts. We just don't really care how bad it looks as long as we get the production and fan ceiling he managed to throw

338 yards against the Cardinals 342 yards against the Cowboys and that's fantastic. It took Josh Allen who is now on anyone short list the top five quarterbacks in the NFL. It took Josh Allen to his 30 year into league to clear 300 yards. Now I would put my money against hurts ever developing to be as good as Josh Allen,

but at least we already know even on Eagles team with one of the more injury ravaged offensive lines you'd ever see even throwing to a wide receiver core led by rookie disappointing rookie. Let's be honest, Joe and regor XA effort Greg Warden,

Ash on Jeffries corpse. Travis Folk and was like the only bright spot they wouldn't even play him towards the end of the season even with all that going on. Joe and her still found a way to put up some production through the air and now Devonte Smith is the clear cut number one guy in this group. We shove a better offensive line. It makes sense of Joe and her to just having a whole off season to now work as the undisputed starting QB even if the Eagles are still saying it's a competition.

You know, take some notes there Matt Maggie. It's seemingly better quarterback who Smith already has plenty of experience with from going to Bama together and now what might just be the number one wide receiver from this class. I would say Mark Chase or maybe even jail and model, but at least in terms of a rookie wide receiver going to an offense and we're looking for opportunity.

I don't think there's a better situation in the league Devonte Smith deserves to have the highest target projection of any year one wide receiver and if he's even 80% as good in the NFL as he was Alabama. I mean, that's a scary thought about the numbers he could put up right away.

So we've gotten some new just some news about the new look Eagles offense and one of the notes is how jail and rigger is going to spend most of his time in the slot now people to me that's fine. I mean, they're probably going to use this guys all over the place.

We only see a few offenses kind of really stationed their receivers in one spot the whole year more. I think more and more teams are trending towards like a Kansas City cheese model where they end up playing kind of 30 40% all over the field.

...