Jonnu Smith’s YAC Production Hinted a Breakout Was Coming, But 1 Sleeper TE in 2024 Was Even Better: TE Advanced Stats Deep Dive, Part 3

Kevin Szafraniec
April 4, 2025

When it comes to fantasy football, receiving production at running back, wide receiver, and tight end is the backbone of strong roster construction. While counting stats such as yards, receptions, and touchdowns helps to tell the story, delving deeper can help fantasy managers identify breakouts before they occur, rather than react to last year’s trends.

That is where RotoViz’s Advanced Stats Explorer comes in. With six years of advanced passing, rushing, and receiving data, the Advanced Stats Explorer gives us an opportunity to get ahead of the competition by digging deeper into the data. This can help to both find potential stars and identify players who could be headed for a decline before other fantasy managers see it coming.

Yards after the catch (YAC) has the potential to supercharge the fantasy stats in a hurry, making it an important aspect of every player’s receiving profile. For years, Jonnu Smith showed plenty of promise creating after the catch, but it wasn’t until he joined Miami in 2024 that he was able to get the workload to put his full capabilities on display. Smith finished as 2024’s TE4, proving to be one of the best values at the position in drafts last offseason. With an exciting crop of young TEs starting to emerge, there are quite a few contenders looking to follow in Smith’s footsteps, including one who already surpassed Smith in every YAC metric last season.

The TE data from the Advanced Stats Explorer includes 735 individual seasons in which a player at the position earned at least one target. Moving forward, there will be plenty of references to percentiles. For the sake of simplicity, a season at or above the 90th percentile in any given metric equates roughly to a top-12 finish in any given season, while being in the 75th percentile or above generally represents a finish in the top 30.

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Kevin Szafraniec

Full-time Cat Dad, Sneakerhead, Record Collector, LOTR Fanboy, and Jeopardy Enthusiast. Fantasy football writer and beatmaker in my free time. Follow me on X and Bluesky @thecatdadff

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