Kelly: Dolphins hoping to get even more from Jonnu Smith

Miami Herald

21-05-2025

Jon Embree has coached greats of the game, legendary tight ends such as Tony Gonzalez and George Kittle, talents who are either in, or going to gain entry in the Hall of Fame.
He has coached two of the best ever at the position. We're talking first-ballot Hall of Famers.
So the Miami Dolphins tight end coach knows what it's supposed to look like, which is why he will shrug his shoulders at Jonnu Smith's record-setting season for the franchise last year.
Smith's team-leading 88 receptions, which he turned into 884 yards and eight touchdowns, which are all career and franchise best marks, allowed Smith to become Embree's fifth Pro Bowler.
However, Embree, who also served as the Dolphins' assistant head coach, needs the world to know Smith can be, should be and will be better in 2025 if he locks in.
'For Jonnu, the next step for him is to be more consistent, and someone we can rely on in the run game, and then being better with the ball when he has it,' Embree said Wednesday, at the conclusion of the team's on-field work during Phase 2 of the offseason program. 'If we can get every yard we had available to us, that's what I'm looking for.'
Smith and Embree discussed just that in the team's end-of-the year meeting, before Smith replaced Travis Kelce as the AFC's Pro Bowl alternate.
Embree showed Smith cut-ups of instances where Smith dropped passes, ran the wrong route, ran out of bounds when extra yards were there for the taking and delivered lackluster blocking performances.
'He left 182 yards on the field, and another two touchdowns,' Embree said of Smith, who is notorious for being the last player off the practice field because of the extra work he does daily. 'He could be better in the run game. We've got to clean up some things at the top of his routes. My players get it. I tell them all the time, my job is to never be satisfied.'
Put all those missed opportunities together and Smith, who led Miami in receptions despite getting off to a slow start in the first month of the season, mainly because he didn't have a good grasp of Miami's offense, would have become a 1,000-yard producer.
Embree wouldn't push if he wasn't certain that Smith, a former Florida International standout who is beginning his ninth season in the NFL, didn't have the potential to become the best tight end in franchise history.
The Dolphins haven't had a route runner like him since Randy McMichael, whose single-season receptions and yards produced record, which was set in 2004, Smith shattered.
If Smith were a better run and pass blocker the Dolphins wouldn't be so reliant on Julian Hill to serve as Miami's in-line tight end, and that would create more snaps for the 29-year-old, who is earning just shy of $4.1 million in the final year of the two-year, $8.4 million contract he signed as a free agent after the Atlanta Falcons released him at the end of the 2023 season.
'Jonnu is the kind of guy who is naturally pushing himself. It's been quite a journey for him to get to where he is now. He hasn't been complacent,' Embree said about Smith's nomadic NFL career, which includes stints with the Tennessee Titans, the franchise that selected him in the third round of the 2017 Draft, the New England Patriots, the franchise that signed him to a massive four-year, $50 million contract in 2021 and the Falcons the team that traded for him when the Patriots wanted to unload his hefty contract.
The Dolphins targeted Smith in the 2024 offseason, making him the team's first free agent signee because the team's decision-makers felt his athleticism and run-after-catch skills would open up the offense, and it did, to some extent.
But in Year 2 the focus is on helping Smith get to the next level, maximizing his skill set, further diversifying the Dolphins offense. And Embree is certain Smith will put in the work to get there because 'complacency isn't something that's in his DNA.'