Seattle Seahawks select Jaxon Smith-Njigba with the 20th pick. Grade: A+
(Syndication: USA TODAY)
The first receiver off the board in the 2023 draft wasn’t my WR1 (that was Boston College’s Zay Flowers), but Smith-Njigba, in a receiver room with D.K. Metcalf and Tyler Lockett, will turn that passing game into a real problem for every defense facing it. One wonders how it’ll all work with Pete Carroll’s preference for offensive balance, but you have to think the Seahawks were doing all kinds of handstands and cartwheels when Smith-Njigba was available here.
Height: 6′ 0⅝” (37th percentile) Weight: 196 (36th)
40-Yard Dash: N/A
10-Yard Split: N/A
Bench Press: N/A
Vertical Jump: 35″ (44th)
Broad Jump: 125″ (75th)
3-Cone Drill: 6.57 (96th)
20-Yard Shuttle: 3.93 (97th)
Wingspan: 75½” (38th)
Arm Length: 30½” (14th)
Hand Size: 9″ (20th)
Bio: Smith-Njigba went to Rockwell High School in Rockwell, Texas, and played receiver on the varsity squad in all four years. The 6A State Player of the Year and Texas Gatorade Player of the Year, Smith-Njigba totaled 5,414 yards and 82 touchdowns in his high school days. That made him a five-star recruit, and Smith-Njigba chose Ohio State over several major schools after visiting the Buckeyes in his junior season. Smith-Njigba had just 10 catches on 13 targets for 49 yards and a touchdown in 2020, but he absolutely blew up in 2021 with 95 catches on 112 targets for 1,595 yards and nine touchdowns. He was limited to just four catches on eight targets for 39 yards last season, as he missed 10 games with a left hamstring injury.
In 2021, his primary season of productivity, Smith-Njigba had 562 snaps in the slot, 80 out wide, two inline, and one in the backfield.
Stat to Know: In 2021, Smith-Njigba caught 13 passes of 20 or more air yards on 18 targets for 424 yards and five touchdowns.
Strengths: Smith-Njigba’s movement skills in short spaces, and the way he uses them to get and stay open, are as good as they are for any receiver in this class. He’s an angular expert who can just eat up press coverage, and do the same to off-coverage cornerbacks when they come up to deal with him. Smith-Njigba can also easily extrapolate those skills to gain yards after the catch. This textbook example against Penn State is particularly enlightening; he put Tariq Castro-Fields in the dryer.
Smith-Njigba also has an excellent sense of how to work zone coverage — whether he’s inside or outside, he’ll find open space. He’s especially effective with this in bunches and stacks, where defenders have to take that extra millisecond to discern where he’s going. That millisecond is all Smith-Njigba needs.
And when you’re facing up to Smith-Njigba in any kind of coverage, you don’t want to get fooled by his feet, because if he turns you around, it’s all over. He’s too quick to allow defenders to recover from missteps most of the time.
All three of these examples have Smith-Njigba winning from more of an outside role, and that’s an important delineation, given the fact that he played so much in the slot at Ohio State. I do not believe that he’s limited to that role at the next level, but all those attributes certainly project well inside, as well. He can make everyone else look as if they’re a step behind all the way through the defense.
Weaknesses: Smith-Njigba cam get on top of defenders with his route awareness and movement skills, but he doesn’t have the kind of pure burner speed that will allow him to consistently get and keep away from those defenders in a straight line at the second and third levels.
And at his size, he’s not going to break tackles with pure power, He’s an exploiter and creator of open space as opposed to a bigger guy who’s just going to crash into people for extra gains.
Conclusion: As long as Smith-Njigba is fully healthy, allowing him to be the player he was in 2021, he’s one of the best receivers in this draft class because he can take a small window and make it bigger for his quarterback. His ability to do so is unusual for a receiver coming into the NFL. Smith-Njigba’s game is as much about refinement as it is about pure athleticism, and he combines those two larger attributes in ways that allow him to won consistently all over the field, from anywhere in the formation.
NFL Comparison: Cooper Kupp. The Rams stole Kupp in the third round of the 2017 draft out of Eastern Washington, and Kupp made it clear pretty quickly that he was going to define Sean McVay’s passing game, regardless of the quarterback, with his route precision, his awareness of defenders around him, and his ability to move away from them despite decent (but not amazing) straight-speed. The NFL team adding Smith-Njigba to its roster will benefit from all of this at a very high level.
