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After a dominant junior season at Alabama in 2018, the Minnesota Vikings made Irv Smith Jr. the 50th overall pick in the 2019 draft, and the draft capital attached to his name brought lofty expectations. Smith's talent was evident when he ran a 4.63 40-yard-dash at the 2019 NFL Combine, second among top tight end prospects to only noted athletic freak, Noah Fant.
At first glance, Smith's raw production in his first two NFL campaigns leaves something to be desired, but in many ways, the young tight end has put his natural talent on display. Smith has yet to rack up more than 365 receiving yards in a season. Considering that he's a very young player who played in a run-heavy offensive scheme in each of his first two seasons while dealing with groin and back injuries in 2020, we should be willing to look past his raw numbers.
Instead, we should focus on weighing the context that has framed Smith's early career production to this point against his efficiency when forecasting 2021 production.
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Team Context
The aforementioned context involves the Vikings' scheme and personnel around Smith. In both 2019 and 2020, the Vikings, heavily influenced by the Kubiaks, finished fourth and eighth in rush attempts, respectively. Additionally, in 2019, Smith had to compete for targets with alpha wide receivers Stefon Diggs and Adam Thielen as well as veteran tight end Kyle Rudolph in an already run-heavy offense. Meanwhile, 2020 brought injury trouble and saw the same offensive situation around him minus Diggs.
Few, if any young tight ends, would put up big early-career numbers with that type of situation around them. Efficiency is another matter — for his career, Smith has a superb 73.3% catch rate and his 2020 campaign also saw him ranked in the top-10 at his position in both yards per target and yards per reception. Perhaps most importantly, Smith's efficiency also manifests itself in the red zone, where he finished with five touchdowns (13th among TEs) despite a 68 percent snap share (24th among TEs).
Irv Smith is discount Dallas Goedert in fantasy football land pic.twitter.com/Vce9QWFHPt
— Ian Hartitz (@Ihartitz) August 20, 2020
Things get exciting when analyzing how different Smith's situation within the offense will be in 2021. Sure, Smith still has to compete with Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen for targets, but Kyle Rudolph is now a New York Giant, leaving Tyler Conklin (32 career receptions in three NFL seasons) as his lone competition in the tight end room. Something like 65-70 targets seems very attainable, especially considering these sound bites from Vikings OC Klint Kubiak regarding Smith's prospects this season — "He's really been working... and now he's going to have more opportunities, and I'm excited to see what he does with it... [he] can play wideout too."
That is exactly what you want to hear if you're high on Irv in 2021, as it seems like the Vikings are confident in Smith and are willing to provide him more targets in various areas of the field. Kubiak's statement regarding Smith playing wideout is especially intriguing, as we often see tight ends produce big numbers when they are lined up in the slot.
All things considered, in Irv Smith Jr. you're getting a talented young tight end with proven efficiency and an emerging role in Minnesota's offense. That's not even the best part though, the kicker is that Smith can be had in the 11th or 12th round based on his current 132.5 NFFC ADP. Smith's value is immense when you consider his price in drafts, and grabbing such a promising tight end later in the draft allows you to maximize value at other positions early in the draft without sacrificing too much upside.
Smith's place on the depth chart provides a nice floor, but it's the potential ceiling production that could result from combining efficiency and volume that makes Smith one of the most intriguing sleepers to target in drafts this summer.
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