Juju Smith-Schuster Has Plenty to Prove in First Year With Chiefs
In this story:
The JuJu Smith-Schuster era with the Kansas City Chiefs technically got started in the preseason, but the actual beginning will happen on Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals.
Smith-Schuster, whom the Chiefs signed to a one-year deal this offseason in an effort to partially offset the loss of superstar wideout Tyreek Hill, went untargeted in Kansas City's preseason opener against the Chicago Bears. After that, a nagging knee injury caused him to miss both practice and in-game reps. In a ramp-up period for the entire team that could've seen Smith-Schuster build additional chemistry with quarterback Patrick Mahomes, he was instead stuck watching from the sidelines for a good chunk of it.
Smith-Schuster has now been back at practice for a week-plus, however, and he also claims to be 100% healthy. As the Chiefs' first regular season game of 2022 — an afternoon showdown in Glendale against the Cardinals — approaches, the 25-year-old receiver says he's excited to get back out on the field for real games while being healthy.
“I’m excited," Smith-Schuster said on Wednesday. "It’s been a while since I’ve stepped onto the field. I should be fully healthy going into this game. I’m just happy to play with this team, happy to play with these guys. Like I said, just all excited, all positive vibes.”
Those real games have been a point of emphasis for the Chiefs as of late, and even Mahomes touched on that during his Wednesday press conference. When asked about how so many moving pieces and parts in the wide receiver room will jell together, Mahomes said it's simply time for he and his peers to show what they're truly made of when it matters the most. The entire offseason has provided ample opportunities for everyone to get acquainted with one another, but the real tests will arrive very soon.
For Smith-Schuster, he projects to possibly be Mahomes's top non-Travis Kelce target this season. He elected to join forces with an entirely new unit during the offseason, and that group features only Mecole Hardman in terms of returners from last year's club. Smith-Schuster, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Skyy Moore and Justin Watson are all brand new to the Chiefs and Andy Reid's offense. With that said, one of the elder statesmen of the lot says things are coming together nicely heading into the regular season.
"It's meshing really, really well," Smith-Schuster said. "I think the biggest thing, like coach talked about, was being able to go out and dominate [training] camp. I think camp was the hardest camp of my NFL career. Being a part of that and then going through this whole process leading up to Week 1, it's coming together really, really well."
In addition to proving that he can produce outside of the Pittsburgh Steelers organization, Smith-Schuster must prove himself right and his detractors wrong in 2022. Some folks don't believe that he can replicate his early-career numbers or be the same player he once was. Despite missing a great deal of the 2021 campaign due to injury and also having a mixed bag of production in the 2019 and 2020 seasons, however, it wasn't too long ago that Smith-Schuster was off to one of the better starts for a wide receiver's career in NFL history.
Over the course of his freshman and sophomore seasons with Pittsburgh, Smith-Schuster hauled in 169 passes for 2,343 yards and 14 touchdowns. All three of those marks rank among the top 20 all-time for all receivers in their first two years. That came while also sharing the field with Antonio Brown, who was still enjoying the last couple of prime seasons of his career. A new opportunity presents a new challenge for Smith-Schuster as the 2022 season begins shortly: show that he's still got it.
“Honestly, just (that) I still got it," Smith-Schuster said of what he needs to prove. "I think last year was kind of like the toll where ‘Hey, I kind of fell off,’ obviously injuries and stuff like that happens. It’s the name of the game, it happens. At the end of the day, I came here for a reason. I came here to win. I came here to win a Super Bowl. I think it was the best fit for me. The coaches, my teammates, the staff, everyone around, and obviously you guys. You guys made me a better person, a better player so that’s what I came here to do, win a Super Bowl.”
