Forty-eight hours had passed since the start of the NFL Draft at the end of last month, and Georgia WR Arian Smith was waiting … impatiently.<\/p>\n
“I was just sitting on the couch with my family,” he said. “I had a feeling like, I don’t know, I had this weird feeling. I just needed to sit down, just feeling a lot of emotions, just been a long 48 hours. So I just sat on the couch and I felt my phone vibrate and I was like, ‘Somebody better not be calling me that’s my family or something.’ “<\/p>\n
Nope. The call originated from the Jets’ draft headquarters in Northern New Jersey. “They asked me ‘Am I ready to be a Jet and get to work?’ “<\/p>\n
It’s often been said that “you can’t teach speed,” and when it comes to the fleet-footed Smith (6-0, 179) he probably doesn’t have much to learn. Before being selected by the Jets on Day 3 (Rd. 4, No. 110 overall), Smith showed his Flash-like ability in high school when he ran a nationally recognized 10.39 in the 100-meter dash as a junior in high school in Florida. He also was part of the gold-medal winning 4×100-meter relay team at the 2019 Pan American U20 Championships. In college at Georgia, he was back running the 100 in a personal best time of 10.10 at the SEC Men’s Track and Field Championships.<\/p>\n
“Elite speed, he has an explosive element,” GM Darren Mougey said after drafting Smith, one of four SEC players taken by the Jets. “When you have a piece like that on offense, it allows you to do more. Whether you’re taking the top off or you’re taking shots or you’re getting him on speed sweeps, quick smokes, just elite speed. He brings an element of speed to our offense, an offensive weapon. When you have a piece like that on offense, it allows you to do more.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Forty-eight hours had passed since the start of the NFL Draft at the end of last month, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1945,7,929,88,6,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-20822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl-draft","8":"tag-arian-smith","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-latest-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-nfl","13":"tag-nfl-draft"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114444518385167013","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}