Football

Dolphins' Jonnu Smith enjoying career year, grateful for 'my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ'

By Kevin Mercer Nov 25, 2024
Dolphins tight end Jonnu Smith (9) celebrates after his touchdown, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

Last week, Miami Dolphins tight end Jonnu Smith set a single-game career high in receiving yards (101) on six catches, which included two touchdowns in a 34-19 win against Las Vegas. This week against the New England Patriots in Miami, he nearly did it again.

Smith hauled in nine passes for 87 yards and a seven-yard touchdown to open the scoring during the Dolphins’ 34-15 victory on Sunday.

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“First off — always, and I’m gonna continue to say it — first off, I want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” Smith told the media in the locker room on Sunday when asked about his impressive two-game stretch. “My faith is the reason why I’m able to go out there every week and be the player I am, be the man that I am. Without Him, I’m nothing.”

With six games remaining, Smith, at 29 years old and in his eighth year in the NFL, is on pace for his best season yet. The veteran has thrived in his first year with the Dolphins, already having accumulated 535 yards on 48 receptions this fall. That’s just 47 yards and two receptions fewer than his single-season career highs in both statistical categories, set last year with the Atlanta Falcons. Smith has also added four touchdowns as a Dolphin (his career high in TDs is eight, set with the Titans in 2020).

He’s third on the team in receiving yards, and he’s only just now rounding into form.

Three of Smith’s four TDs have come in the last two games, and he has eclipsed 60 receiving yards in four of the past seven contests. He didn’t accomplish the feat once in Miami’s four September games.

Coinciding with Smith’s surge has been the emergence of the Dolphins as a playoff contender. After starting the season 2-6, Miami has won three consecutive games and is now chasing the Denver Broncos (7-5) for the final wild-card spot in the AFC playoffs.

As Smith has settled into his role on the field and within the Dolphins’ locker room, he’s emerged as a veteran leader, and he always seeks to point those around him to Christ. He does so perhaps most noticeably on social media, where in his Instagram and X bios he writes that he’s a “Follower Of Christ” and that “God is the Greatest.”

Smith credits Jesus with providing the strength to persevere in the face of what has been an incredibly difficult life.

When Jonnu was 4 years old, his father, Wayne Smith Sr., tragically passed away while working as a tow truck driver. The city of Philadelphia had launched an initiative to tow away abandoned cars on the city’s streets, and while loading a car onto his truck, it slipped off its moorings and crashed down on him.

Jonnu’s mother, Karen, was left to raise him and his five older siblings on her own. Living in a low-income neighborhood, Jonnu was forced to pick up odd jobs throughout his childhood in order to help provide. Still, he always made time to attend church on Sundays with his mother, to pray with her, and to play football.

Yet as the family’s surroundings deteriorated further into poverty and crime that hit closer and closer to home, Karen sent Jonnu away to live with her sister, Daria, and Daria’s husband, Mike, in Ocala, Florida.

“She made a huge decision to send me to Florida,” Jonnu told the Patriots’ team website when he was with the team in 2021. “And it definitely changed my life for the better. She was just trying to put me in the best situation.”

He left much of the poverty and violent crime behind in Philadelphia, but he also left his best friend, Willie “Quasim” Jefferson, behind too.

As Jonnu’s football talent blossomed into an opportunity for a college scholarship, he accepted the only Division-I offer he received, from Florida International University in Miami. After a successful four seasons at FIU in which he caught at least one pass in every game he played, the Titans made him their third-round pick in the 2017 NFL Draft.

“Thank God,” he told the Patriots team site, “we had a loving family in the South that was in a better situation and more than willing to take me in.”

But vestiges of the life he left behind in Philly still weren’t far from his mind. He and Quasim had remained friends throughout Jonnu’s time in Florida, and Jonnu had often flown or bussed Quasim to Miami to stay with him and get a reprieve from the dangers of Philadelphia. On Oct. 1, 2016, however, having spoken to Quasim on the phone just days earlier, Jonnu learned from his mother that his best friend had been killed just a block from where Jonnu grew up.

Jonnu’s firstborn son, Jaiyen, born just weeks before, finally had a middle name: Quasim.

Now the father of two boys, Jonnu is determined to be the faithful father figure he never had.

“It’s been an empty void for me [not having a father],” Jonnu admitted to the Patriots team site, “but with Christ, He was able to fill that void.”

Jonnu’s life hasn’t been easy, but he knows God was working through all of it to bring him to Himself.

“I was able to experience my faith for myself and came to believe what I know on my own,” he said. “It definitely was because of my family planting that seed in me. God is first in my life and always will be. It’s who I am. It’s what makes me be. It decides every decision in my life. I don’t make every decision right, as none of us lives a perfect life, but that’s who I am.”

After he scored one of his two touchdowns against the Raiders, Smith launched the ball into the stands. It landed, of all places, amongst his family members.

“I’m just thankful,” Smith told the Patriots team site, “that I’m at a point in my life where I’m on a stage, a platform where I can let the light in me shine before a lot of people so they can see the way God has worked in my life and how He’s blessed me and brought me to where I am.”

 

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A post shared by Jonnu Smith (@easymoney9)


Smith is buoyed by faith and playing some of the best football of his career, but he won’t have much time to rest. The Dolphins are already preparing to travel to famous Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, to take on the Packers (8-3) on Thursday. The Thanksgiving Day game is set to kick off at 8:20 p.m. ET.

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