Jaxon Smith-Njigba's first 39 games

Seahawks better get out their erasers, someone is re-writing history

Seaside Joe doesn’t try to give players “extra credit” just because they happen to become Seahawks, so that why it means more when Seaside Joe writes as glowingly as he did about Jaxon Smith-Njigba during his first summer with the team.

That June, Seaside Joe wrote that JSN could “soon be the best receiver on the team”, an opinion formed a month after those deep dive origin story pieces on his record-setting Texas high school and Ohio State college careers. Nobody gets drafted in the first round by accicent, but JSN’s statistical resume is among the best in the history of amateur football.

His reputation as a receiver who would be limited due to a lack of straightline speed and essentially only playing one year at Ohio State was just the kind of good luck that the Seahawks needed for a top-5 prospect to fall into their laps at 20. And then another familiar narrative emerged, which was that JSN wouldn’t find work in Seattle next to 2 “better” receivers and then when those receivers left that he wouldn’t be able to produce the same numbers.

This was written about JSN at Ohio State when the Buckeyes didn’t have Garrett Wilson and Chris Olave for the Rose Bowl:

“I thought he’d struggle some in a game without Wilson and Olave by his side. There was some sentiment that he was the benefactor of less attention with those two also on the field throughout the year. Nope.”

Smith-Njigba’s final stat line in a single game without Olave and Wilson: 15 catches for 347 yards and 3 TDs. 339 of those yards came after the first quarter.

(So absurd was that Ohio State receivers room that even when Olave and Wilson were out, the Buckeyes had JSN, Marvin Harrison Jr., and Emeka Egbuka.)

We observers can only make our best guesses of which players will succeed in the NFL and which ones won’t and far be it from Seaside Joe to think that this little daily newsletter can outpace 32 teams that spend millions of dollars on draft work every year, but the last thing I could have ever imagined after just a half-day of researching JSN was that he’d be a bust.

JSN didn’t need to run a 4.29 to be the best receiver at OHIO STATE, and in fact better speed might have made him a worse player. It reminds Seaside Joe of Russell Wilson’s height because that really was not his issue—it was his motivation to outwork the quarterbacks who had “prototypical” size.

JSN is not a slow receiver by any means, he’s just not among the fastest receivers. To what degree did this motivate Smith-Njigba to become a better route runner with better hands and quicker short area speed than everyone else in his recruiting class? JSN’s 6.57 3-cone and 3.93 20-yard shuttle were historically good times.

Even last year, when JSN was in the middle of a 100-catch (tying franchise record), 1,130 yard season, there was a lot of chatter that “the Seahawks could not afford to trade DK Metcalf because his presence is far too valuable to Smith-Njigba”. An exact repeat of the narrative that JSN would not succeed at Ohio State without Wilson and Olave pulling attention away from him, only for JSN to then set multiple receiving records at a school known for receivers.

Comments like these ones were after JSN had posted 13 catches for 249 yards and 2 TDs in two games without Metcalf on the field.

Once an idea gets in someone’s head, it’s hard to extract it, especially if they just really want to believe that everyone on the Seahawks is important to keep. (Not all of the players on the Seahawks are important to keep.)

Now five games into his first season without Metcalf or Lockett, Smith-Njigba is in the familiar territory of setting franchise records or being on track to set franchise records. With all due respect to Cooper Kupp and Tory Horton and A.J. Barner, nobody can claim that Smith-Njigba isn’t the biggest attention magnet on the offense and yet he’s just as unstoppable for Seattle’s sake as players like Justin Jefferson, Ja’Marr Chase, and Puka Nacua are for their own teams.

First let’s just encapsulate JSN’s 2025 season:

• 34 catches (5th)

• 534 yards (2nd)

• 12.4 yards per target (1st)

• 15.7 yards per catch (9th)

• 60.5% success rate

• 106.8 yards per game

• 79.1% catch rate (5th among qualified WRs)

• 2 TD

(I’ll be kicking myself if I fail to mention that Metcalf’s 15 catches for 261 yards in four games is neither bad nor worth $33 million per season.)

This is going to be a tricky situation for the Seahawks to navigate next year because they have JSN under contract through 2027 (fifth-year option) and they don’t negotiate with players until their contract year. But keep in mind that he’s a top-5 receiver in the league and he’s 55th in salary ($3.9m). He makes less than Tyler Lockett ($4m).

But Jefferson and Chase waited through four years so it could be fine.

There are also some analytics that put JSN in a single tier at the top with Puka Nacua, but I’m going to stick with some of the traditional numbers today.

Let’s look at JSN’s first 39 games with the Seahawks and where he ranks among all players in franchise history’s first 39 games:

• 197 catches (1st)

• 2,292 yards (3rd)

• 8.4 yards per target (5th)

• 110 first downs (3rd)

• 12 touchdowns (7th)

The only receivers with more yards were Metcalf (2,783 yards) and Joey Galloway (2,639 yards), both of whom also scored a lot more touchdowns. However, it’s worth adding that DK’s second season had a strong spike (1,303 yards) followed by a dip (967 yards) in year three, which was the start of the downfall of Wilson.

By comparison, JSN has gotten better every year. Is it then more likely that JSN will continue to get better and soon surpass all of these receivers in due time?

Another interesting aspect to the changing of time and of the league is JSN’s 72.2% career catch rate*, which is almost 10 percentage points higher than Metcalf (63.2% through 39 games) and almost 25% points higher than Galloway (48.7%). That’s another thing that makes it difficult to compare receivers and quarterbacks from different eras (the completion percentage of QBs today is just absurd to their counterparts of 30 years ago or even 10 years ago), but it is all we have to work with.

*Steve Largent played before targets were counted so unfortunately we won’t have complete numbers for him.

JSN catches most of his targets because of the state of the NFL, no doubt, but also because he’s just really, really good and better than almost anyone who has come before him, at least in franchise history.

What JSN can accomplish this year with Seahawks

Right now, JSN has 197 catches for 2,292 yards. Here’s what he would need over the rest of the season to set new franchise records for most catches and yards through a receivers first three years in Seattle:

• 20 more catches (Metcalf had 216)

• 879 more yards (Metcalf had 3,170)

Obviously a healthy JSN will crush the Seahawks current franchise record for catches through three seasons. He will have work to do to catch Metcalf at 3,170 yards but that’s not that crazy right now either: On his current pace, Smith-Njigba will have 1,282 yards over the next 12 games alone.

Do we think that JSN will continue to average 107 yards per game? It’s hard to say that he will, but maybe just as difficult to say that he won’t. JSN has been an “unprecedented” type of receiver during his entire football career and there is no obvious reason for Sam Darnold and Klint Kubiak to change course with what’s been working so far.

JSN has posted 100+ yards in 3 of 5 games, he’s posted 79 and 96 yards in the other two, and he has 8+ catches in 3 games.

All 8 of JSN’s career 90-yard games have come since last season and 4 of his 6 career 100-yard games came when he didn’t share with DK Metcalf. In JSN’s last 14 games, he had 91 catches for 1,276 yards and 7 touchdowns. He’s gone from averaging 9.6 yards per catch and 41 yards per game before DK’s midseason injury in 2024 to 14 yards per catch and 91 yards per game since then.

JSN’s 8 career games with at least 90 yards is tied with Largent for the most in franchise history through a player’s first 39 games, behind 12 of Metcalf, 11 of Galloway, and 9 of Koren Robinson. But we have to remember something: For the first two years of his career, JSN may have had a teammate who was…holding him back.

Seaside Joe 2412