Schneider's best first round pick is only 22

The Seahawks can build around Jaxon Smith-Njigba

If Jaxon Smith-Njigba had not missed almost his entire junior season at Ohio State, he probably ends up as a top-10 pick in the 2023 draft and signs a contract worth up to $30 million instead of the $15 million he got as the 20th overall pick to the Seahawks. A millionaire not being more of a millionaire when he’s still on track to becoming a hundred-millionaire is not a sob story on the level of a Thai insurance commercial, but JSN’s $15 million loss turned out to be Seattle’s biggest first round gain in over a decade.

It’s not a very crowded competition, but Devon Witherspoon and Smith-Njigba represent the Seahawks best first round picks since Russell Okung and Earl Thomas in 2010. With all due respect to Okung and Witherspoon, given how JSN has played recently there’s an increasingly likely chance that John Schneider’s entire body of work in the first round will boil down to two initialized names at the top:

• ET (7 Pro Bowls, 3 All-Pros)

• JSN (???, ???)

And Schneider had a lot more influence on the Smith-Njigba pick than he did while he was squarely pressed under the thumb of Pete Carroll for the Thomas pick as a first-year GM. JSN could be the first Seahawks first round pick since Thomas to be named as an All-Pro, and even if that doesn’t happen as soon as this season, there isn’t much left separating him from Justin Jefferson or Ja’Marr Chase.

Jaxon Smith-Njigba is 11th in receiving yards today, but he could be THIRD by next week.

Here’s how close he is and why he could be a second-team All-Pro and top-5 in receiving yards by next week: