It's not a Finals, it's a Beginnings
The Seahawks don't have to choose between Sam Darnold and Jaxon Smith-Njigba, but you can if you want to
There are 91 players on the Seahawks roster, and 89 of them stood little chance to reach the final of our Tournament of THE Champions. Who is the most important Seahawk?
Well, maybe it’s you. If you weren’t having this experience right now, what would it all be for?
It’s not you though. It’s either Sam Darnold or Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
In the semi-finals, Darnold beat Charles Cross with 92% of the vote. Smith-Njigba beat Byron Murphy with 71%. It sure looks like Darnold is going to win, which was always expected, and I’m not going to try and sway your vote before you click.
But let me say one more thing on JSN’s behalf first.
When I wrote that JSN could join Jerry Rice as the only two-time Offensive Player of the Year receivers, and also become the first multiple-time winner as a skill player since Marshall Faulk over 25 years ago, I didn’t just mean in the sense that he could be lucky or be in a fortunate situation for production.
There are great players who win awards because they had a career season.
But then there are a special few who will invite awards consideration every season because they were destined for great careers.
Think of Matt Ryan winning MVP in 2016 or Stephon Gilmore winning Defensive Player of the Year in 2019. I’m not putting down their seasons or careers, there’s just an obvious difference between Gilmore and Aaron Donald, as there is between Ryan and Aaron Rodgers.
Thurman Thomas is a Hall of Famer who won MVP and Offensive Player of the Year in 1991. He’s not Marshall Faulk.
Terrell Owens is a Hall of Famer who made five first-team All-Pro lists, tied for the fifth-most of all-time. He’s not Jerry Rice. (Rice had 10 All-Pro nods.)
Rice and Faulk are two of the 10 best skill players in NFL history. Why am I telling you this? I believe Jaxon Smith-Njigba has the potential to join them.
It’s as if people have been waiting since his high school days for JSN to prove that he’s a fraud, but instead he keeps proving that his skeptics are the ones who deserve to be discredited.
Despite a historic Texas high school career, Smith-Njigba wasn’t even the highest-rated receiver in his own Ohio State recruiting class. Then he averaged almost 200 yards per game over the last five games of 2021, including 347 yards in the Rose Bowl.
And while most draft experts agreed that JSN would be a very good receiver in the NFL, they also said that he was “too slow” and “too small” to warrant comparisons to Ja’Marr Chase or Justin Jefferson, and that he would be “limited to the slot position”.
Getting drafted 20th and as the first receiver off the board was considered a good outcome for Smith-Njigba—”he shouldn’t go any higher than that!” they said—going after many players who will playing for a different team in a year or two. (16th overall pick Emmanuel Forbes was cut by Washington after only a year and a half.)
Then when Smith-Njigba failed to get more than 63 yards in any game during his rookie season, some called an indictment of the pick and proof that he didn’t have a high ceiling. Specifically, ESPN’s Bill Barnwell called him out for not doing enough as a rookie to warrant his draft status. FootballOutsiders was optimistic about his future, but called the pick “perplexing” for Seattle and JSN’s rookie season “lackluster”.
Still playing in an offense with DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett at the time, few national analysts could see him as anything other than a slot. Lance Zierlein’s comp—Jarvis Landry—was a backhanded compliment.
To be fair, JSN’s second season was in line with that comparison (100 catches, 1,130 yards), but last year he was given the assignment that would prove if doubters were right or wrong about his ceiling: a) could he be a number one without DK and Lockett in the way, and b) could he play outside?
A) JSN won Offensive Player of the Year
B) He had 125 targets from a wide alignment (4x as many as he had out of slot) and led the NFL with 88 catches for 1,378 yards and eight touchdowns on those passes
Yeah, I’d say he proved them wrong.
“Dane Brugler makes it a clean sweep on scouts that foresee JSN playing out of the slot in the NFL.”
A clean sweep!
Just 23 years old last season, JSN had 14 games with at least 90 yards (including playoffs), tied for the second-most in history. Teammate Cooper Kupp had a phenomenal 19 such games with the Rams in 2021.
Great player. Perfect storm of a season.
But Kupp is not Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
From 2021 to 2025, JSN has been the perfect storm of a receiver, a player only held back by injuries in 2022 and an adjustment period to the NFL in 2023, while Seattle was also still comfortable at the position when he arrived.
However, I don’t think this will be the last time that I compare JSN to Faulk. Because the scariest part for other teams right now is that 2025 is probably not even going to be JSN’s best career season. It might not rank in the top-three when all is said and done.
—Over Faulk’s first five seasons, he was a great player.
—Over Faulk’s next three seasons after being traded to the Rams, he was doing things that nobody in the league had ever done before; he even had a game in 1999 where he caught 12 passes for over 200 yards!
We don’t know how much more JSN is capable of because the Seahawks didn’t need him to do that much compared to his peers. He was a more productive outside receiver than George Pickens—the “prototypical” height/speed player—despite Pickens running 180 more routes from a wide alignment.
Pickens was the only receiver in the league even close to JSN’s production from outside.
What would happen in a season where the Seahawks needed to throw the ball to JSN over 200 times?
Of course I want to find out. But the team is so good right now that we probably won’t need to find out.
Which brings us back to the original question, while also kind of making Sam Darnold’s point for him without even needing to expand on the quarterback’s value with nearly the same amount of enthusiastic support.
Who is more important to the 2026 Seahawks? The race car or the race car driver?
Darnold is not the best quarterback in the NFL, like JSN has a great argument as the best receiver, but he is the quarterback nonetheless and he’s a lot better than Drew Lock and Jalen Milroe.
Thank you for voting, whether you enjoyed picking a player or not. And if you didn’t vote because you can’t pick between them, that’s okay too. The Seahawks don’t have to choose, they get to have them both.
You know why?
Because it’s your experience.
And what else is this all for?