Hello and welcome to PFF Fancy football podcast. I'm your host Ian Hardickson. Today we continue our fancy file series with a look at Hunter Henry, John Smith, this Patriots receiving room people.

Thank God that the Patriots did something with this. I don't care if it's came to New York or Mac Jones, whoever is under center will have the sort of weapons that we saw make the weapons that we better weapons than the group of guys that we saw make Tom Brady look freaking washed in 2019 is what I was trying to get out of my mouth there.

So look, Cam as bad as he looked last year and it was not good. There are some stats, you know, deepball catchable rate. I think, you know, that see hawks say when they had Edelman, there were ways you can kind of paint that season as a little bit of an okay year for Cam, but hey, that's this my inner cam stand coming out of me.

We all know Cam was not good new England last year. My point is it was not all on cam cam was not good. Neither were the majority of his receivers again. We saw Tom Brady barely able to lead this offense down the field and that playoff loss against the Titans.

It was not just a quarterback problem as we found out via the 2020 2021 Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Bucking there. So basically free agency hit everyone was hype.

Every single year, it's middle March, it's kind of like our first big football event after the NFL draft and what happens.

The Patriots go absolutely crazy. First John who Smith lands, you know, $50 million, everybody's just shooting them up the draft boards, you know, it's there's 10 and 6 to high. Like, I don't know, there wasn't any spot too high. We were pulling up the Cam new and Greg Olson stats.

Life was good to be a John who Smith stand, but then suddenly literally hours later, the Patriots also signed Hunter Henry. So it was, you know, just such a quick kind of, you know, the John who Smith Titan one season, you know, you can put it on like March,

March, March, 1 p.m. to March, 2 p.m. Not sure exactly what day, you know, the free agency started, but either way people, it was wild like how quickly the Patriots seemingly made these moves and got it done. I mean to their credit, they got two great tight ends.

It was just surprising to see no Henry, John, you then we got Nelson Aguilar, then we got Kendrick born. It was almost like Bell, check one to go back to vacation with how quickly they made a lot of these moves.

And there was a manifold insiders kind of wondering about that, wondering about the amount of money that was dished out, I think particularly to Aguilar. Again, these were not drawn out negotiations. Maybe there was some tampering behind the scenes. We don't know either way.

Patriots spent a whole lot of money very early on the process and that's how they end up with these two tight ends. So before we kind of go into their overall fit in New England. Let's just talk about what these guys have been because

because John, if you have box score washer and watcher, you know, the type person that before last year said the Bonte Adams only had one 1000 yard season, never mind the 997 yard performances.

You know, haters can say that John, who has never reached 50 receptions or 500 yards in the season. Luckily you being smart, dignified scholar, know that John was largely held back by the constantly use multiple tight ends and just general lack of passing success before we had Tana Hill get there halfway through 2019 season.

And honestly, like John is production while it's not huge in a single season. It's still a hell of a lot better what we've seen in New England over the past few years.

Overall Smith has caught 84 passes for 955 yards and scores 13 total touchdowns over the past two years Patriots tight ends as a whole 55 catches 673 yards just three receiving scores.

That's going to be a sheesh from me, ladies and gentlemen. I guess the one thing about Smith is like this guy, maybe not typical, he's fine as a blocker. I'm not saying he can't do that. I believe, let's see, a last year he finished as PFS 45th highest grade run blocker among 88 qualified players.

I mean, the dude is a freaking tank 6 3248 462 jets. I mean, we had that weightlifting picture come out from earlier this off season.

Pretty much break Twitter for a day. I had some of my favorite things about fantasy Twitter is when we see just a jacked NFL player looking like a jacked NFL player and we all asked surprise.

It's a good time not hitting on it. Please continue to hype up all those workout picks everybody. But truly, look, grade hours PFS 20th best tight end receiving grade last year 27 years for excuse me since 2017 and also ranked 27th years per out run.

The big thing with John, though, is his ability with the ball in his hands borderline erotic people only George Kittle with 7.8 yards after the catch per reception has averaged more yards after catch than John who was at 7.1 among all tight ends with at least 50 receptions since 2010.

I mean, John doesn't turn 26 until August and he's already been right there at Kittle as truly the most dangerous yak guys in the league.

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