The JSN stats that Megatron fans don't want you to see

Jaxon Smith-Njigba is even more special than the season totals suggest

Jaxon Smith-Njigba will probably need all 17 games to break Calvin Johnson’s single-season record for receiving yards, if he breaks it at all. People will say that JSN needed the 17th game, an opportunity that receivers never had prior to 2021, and I think that’s fair.

So while we are being fair…

Smith-Njigba has 1,313 receiving yards on 107 targets.

Calvin Johnson had 1,117 receiving yards on his first 107 targets in 2012.

JSN has 107 targets on an offense that averages 27.4 pass attempts per game and he has sat out of 27% of Seattle’s offensive snaps this season.

Johnson was on an offense that averaged 45.4 pass attempts per game and Johnson sat out of 4% of Detroit’s offensive snaps that season.

Jaxon Smith-Njigba is ranked 48th in routes run but has 250 more receiving yards than second place. I guarantee that Calvin Johnson ran the most routes in 2012 — he was targeted 204 times, the fourth-most in NFL history — and he only started lapping the field after the Lions tailspun to lose their last 8 games of the season.

In fact, 11 games into the season Johnson was barely ahead of a field that included six other 1,000-yard receivers at the time, most of whom had to worry about the playoffs:

Now compare this to JSN’s field:

One other 1,000-yard receiver and JSN has him beat by almost 260 yards. The NFL has changed a lot (look at their catch%) but JSN has evolved into the best of both worlds:

• His 12.3 yards per target isn’t just the best now, it would’ve bested Johnson by over 2 yards

• He leads the NFL with 16.4 yards per catch

• He has 8 more catches than Johnson to this point, on 17 fewer targets, but without sacrificing distance: In fact, JSN is the best deep threat in the league

Smith-Njigba is like the answer to the question: “What if you combined Calvin Johnson and Cooper Kupp into one player?”

So just remember that if we get to Week 16 or so and people start saying that JSN “need this in this many games” to break the record or “it’s not real if he doesn’t do it in 16 games” and so forth, Calvin Johnson had to be targeted NINETY-SEVEN TIMES in Detroit’s last SIX games in order to break the previous record held by Jerry Rice.

That’s 25 more targets than any other player had over the last six games of the 2012 season.

With all those targets, Johnson averaged 8.7 yards per target in the last six games, which ranked 23rd among all qualified players. He scored 2 times, which ranked 29th. And he caught 58.8% of his targets, which ranked 56th.

Compare that to JSN’s most recent six games:

• 64 targets (4th)

• 46 catches (3rd)

• 779 yards (1st)

• 12.2 yards per target (2nd)

• 5 touchdowns (3rd)

• 71.9% catch rate

In his last six games, Smith-Njigba has 779 yards on 64 targets. In Johnson’s last six games en route to the record, he had 847 yards on 97 targets.

Smith-Njigba gets far less routes, meaning he has to get open a lot more often. Johnson was pretty much never open. Which was also his greatest skill, but that’s a lot of wasted routes and pass attempts.

If the Seahawks could waste attempts on Jaxon Smith-Njigba, he might already be at 2,000 yards. Since the team isn’t as bad as the ones Megatron played with, JSN might have to settle for 1,800+ and fans knowing that in many ways his season warrants little comparison to any other receiver before him.

Every week I open up the floor to questions from Super Joes subscribers. If you want in on the next one, upgrade today by clicking here:

zezinhom400: I’m starting to consider JSN’s possibility of breaking Megatron’s 2012 record. He now needs to average 130.2/game to do it in 16 games (which is the real record) Or is it? I saw a stat the other day that says JSN has sat out 4 quarters now (or the 17th game?) given Seattle’s big leads in several games. Am curious as to the comparisons with Megatron beyond just yards — things like minutes played, targets, run/pass mix in the respective offenses, etc. Some of the nuances when comparing these two amazing receiving years.

I think there’s a lot to be said for targets and routes and situation. It still won’t matter in the landscape of people talking about “records” and “how many games?” but it does matter to us and you can use these numbers for your next “JSN vs.” debate:

• The Lions were 1st in passing attempts in 2012 when Calvin Johnson had 122 catches for 1,964 yards on 204 targets

• The Seahawks are 31st in passing attempts and Jaxon Smith-Njigba is on pace for 165 targets

He’s on pace for 165 targets in 17 games. But he would only be on pace for 156 targets in 16 games. That means that JSN is on pace for 2,029 yards on 165 targets (12.3 yards per target) or 1,910 yards on 156 targets if he only had 16 games. His 16-game pace falls shy of Johnson, but Johnson only averaged 9.6 yards per target.

Also, through Johnson’s 11th game he had 1,257 yards. Not as many as JSN’s 1,313. Johnson only had 5 touchdowns all season compared to the 7 that JSN has already scored.

When the Lions decided to drop everything for Calvin Johnson, Matthew Stafford targeted him 97 times in the last six games. 97 times! That’s 16 targets per game. JSN is on a historic pace and he’s only targeted 9.7 times per game.

If JSN maintained his 12 yards per target average and was targeted 16 times, he would put up almost 200 yards. We’ve seen several times this season when JSN probably should have had 200 yards but either Darnold didn’t see him or there was a penalty.

But overall the Seahawks are in a far bigger conundrum when it comes to JSN’s road to 2,000: The Lions sucked. The Seahawks are good.

Seattle can’t really sell out for JSN’s record, they have to continue to do what’s best for the team. That means having a balanced offense, maintaining long drives, giving the defense a rest, and sitting JSN whenever possible to rest him for the playoffs. Things that rarely mattered to Stafford in Detroit.

You mentioned snap count comparisons? It’s obscene:

• Johnson played 96% of the snaps (1,151 total) in 2012 and never fell below 80% in a game; he was over 95% 12 times

• JSN is playing 73.4% of the snaps (that’s a pace of 720 for a 16-game season or 765 in 17 games); he’s only hit 90% once (barely) and he’s been under 80% six times

I don’t know if anybody knows how many routes Johnson ran in 2012, but the Lions passed it 727 times (!!!) and Johnson never came off of the field. So…700? Stafford was also sacked 29 times and ran 35 times so the real number might be over 750.

Smith-Njigba has only run 287 routes this season, which is tied with Jauan Jennings for 48th-most in the league.

That’s 26 routes per game or 442 routes in a 17-game season. He could reach the 1,900 mark with less than two-thirds the number of opportunities that Johnson had when he reached the 1,900-yard mark.

When Cooper Kupp reached 1,947 yards with Stafford in 2021, he had 191 targets on an offense that had the 10th-most passing attempts. Kupp ran 612 routes, second-most in the league and 170 more than JSN’s pace.

Even right now JSN has over 250 more yards than George Pickens on almost 100 fewer routes:

Imagine if the situations were reversed and JSN was on a Cowboys team passing the ball almost 40 times per game and never taking him off of the field.

My prediction is that JSN will fall shy of 2,000 yards and the record but only because the Seahawks can’t and won’t put him in a position to break it. However, we don’t need to get to January to ask if JSN’s season is more impressive than 2012 because it already is.

(One more thing: That was Johnson’s SIXTH season. The game has changed a lot since Calvin Johnson so maybe if he was dropped into today’s NFL at age 21 he’d be even better. But he was always riding off of being elite at one or two things; JSN is already a more complete wide receiver than Calvin Johnson and he’s four years younger than Johnson was when he set the record.)

Derek Archer: It seems as if the national media is quick to forgive the “elite” QBs for a bad game or two, while heaping a disproportionate amount of criticism on Darnold’s loses. Is this mostly perception or is there data to suggest Sam’s worst games are worse than the ways Allen, Jackson, Herbert, Mahomes and early MVP candidate Mayfield have struggled this year?

I don’t know if I’ve seen that happen to Sam Darnold disproportionately this season, but I agree that the blame and razzing he took with the Vikings last year was overly critical and it seems like now those people are having cryer’s remorse because Minnesota made such a huge mistake.

The Seahawks have improved from 18th in points to 3rd in points.

The Vikings have fallen from 9th in points to 25th in points.

We could point to several other changes helping Seattle’s offense this season, but the Vikings are basically the same other than quarterback and offensive line upgrades. Keeping Darnold would’ve kept Darnold afloat, but the franchise listened to the blame he got for losing two games, not the credit he got for winning 14.

As for comparisons to other quarterbacks’ struggles, what trust can we really put in the greater media landscape? They watched the same Justin Fields games that I saw and kept saying that he was a top-10 quarterback. It’s become a complete mess online with the reward system that’s in place for saying what you think people want to hear for clicks and subscribers.

By the way, Lamar Jackson had an unusually lopsided TD:INT ratio in 2024 (41:4) and now he’s back to his usual numbers. Shouldn’t this be a cautionary tale for Matthew Stafford’s lopsided TD:INT ratio due for regression?

William T Newman: Assuming seattle doesn’t win the division, what would be the ideal outcome in your mind?

A week ago I would have said that “obviously the Eagles are going to be the 1 or 2 seed” but now they’re tied with the Bears at 8-3. The Bucs were 6-2 but now they’ve lost 3 in a row. It still seems likely that Tampa is the 4-seed because they’ve got the easiest remaining schedule and the Panthers look like dogshit. I rarely swear on Seaside Joe, but they do look like dogshit.

So if the Seahawks get the 5-seed, I think they’re going to Tampa.

But if the Seahawks slip to the 6-seed, it really could be ANYTHING. The 3-seed could be the Eagles, it could be the Bears, it could be the Packers, it could be the Lions. It could even be the 49ers! Probably not, but it’s possible.

The Eagles play the Bears on Friday, a game that does heavy lifting on the playoff standings.

Overall, I think the Seahawks are either going to win the division or play the Bucs on the road, which I would be totally fine with. Seattle’s pass defense probably isn’t going to play as poorly as it did in Week 5. The Bucs defense is horrible. They won’t have played anyone good since losing to the Rams 34-7 this week.

If the Seahawks slip to the 6, which I don’t think they will, I think the best case scenario is playing the Bears.

Tuesday BONUS Joe: Is this the best defensive line in Seahawks history and other important Week 13 thoughts

Danno: Even if we have to go on the road to play the Rams in the playoffs, we will show them who is the real number one seed, regardless of the seedings assigned to them.

If Mike Macdonald could cross anything off of the list as Seahawks head coach, “Beating the Rams in a big game” would be #1.

Rusty: Is there any head coach/GM combo that comes even close to McDonald/Schneider and to McVay/Snead? It seems like those two teams are head of the class. But I admit to NFC West bias, because I follow those teams so closely.

The Seahawks are lucky to have a general manager who didn’t drive his team into a ditch the way that Terry Fontenot has with the Falcons or countless others, including the search to maintain Seattle’s relatively clean track record of hiring great head coaches. Schneider and Macdonald get great marks from me. That being said, of course I think having won playoffs games and Super Bowls on a resume is still better than waiting for your first playoff win if you’re Macdonald. Or your first Super Bowl in 10 years if you’re Schneider.

How can I not defer respect to Andy Reid and Brett Veach when they’ve not only been to the last SEVEN AFC Championship games (5-2 in those games) with a roster that has to change ever year, but they’re still in it now even when Patrick Mahomes has looked mediocre without weapons?

I think you can hate+respect at the same time.

The Eagles have been to the playoffs in all four years with Nick Sirianni and reached the Super Bowl twice. GM Howie Roseman has built a playoff roster in 7 of the last 8 years with two Super Bowl wins. And you can’t defer that much credit to the quarterbacks they’ve had.

The Lions are in a funk but I’ve loved what Dan Campbell and Brad Holmes have done for a team that has almost forgotten how awful of a franchise that they’ve been for the last 70 years.

And maybe another team on the way up, like the Seahawks, are the Patriots with Mike Vrabel and GM Eliot Wolf. It would make sense: Schneider mentored Wolf in Green Bay.

I would say that in a small group of candidates, either the Seahawks or the Rams could proclaim that they have the best HC/GM combination in the league if they win the Super Bowl. Or at least, get there and compete.

Dewhub: All of our offense runs through JSN. Why are we celebrating the great stats this produces instead of panicking about our ability to play without him. Even a minor injury would be devastating. Tennessee was a great place to spread the ball around and get someone else going. What am I missing??

Well, would the same question have applied to Saquon Barkley last year? He basically produced just as much of Philadelphia’s offense in 2024 as JSN is producing in 2025. All that happened in the playoffs was that Barkley went even crazier, rushing for 124 yards per game with 5 touchdowns.

Just referring back to the opening question, there’s actually not a lot being heaped onto JSN’s plate other than “when you get a chance, make the most of it”. Remember, he’s 48th in routes. He doesn’t even play 90% of the snaps when the game is close. The Seahawks have their best offense in at least 10 years, if not 20.

I think it is more difficult for Seattle to try and be balanced with how they distribute their passes because they’re trying to be the most balanced team in the NFL when it comes to passing and running the ball. That’s probably the most pertinent cause for concern within your issue of distribution: Running the ball better.

Little by little, it does appear that the Seahawks are getting better at running the ball efficiently.

As long as the Seahawks can pair Darnold/JSN with an above-average threat of the run, I actually don’t think Seattle needs to get more out of Kupp, A.J. Barner, Elijah Arroyo, etc.. I mean, Barner had 11 targets against the Rams. He’s already having one of the best receiving seasons by a tight end in franchise history.

The caveat to that is that once Tory Horton returns, that’s an element to the passing offense we already knew was working. If they can also get Rashid Shaheed involved, even better. If Seattle’s cupboard was barren there would be cause for concern, but I still see good skill players on the roster besides JSN.

The “What if?” injury problem applies to every team’s best player and I don’t think JSN is asked to do anything relatively dangerous on a field, largely thanks to Darnold not putting his receivers in harm’s way, and he’s not actually playing that many snaps even though he has so many catches.

I think your concerns are totally valid Dewhub and the Seahawks do need Plan B, C, and D….but I hope we just never have to find out what they are.

Seaside Joe 2459