‘He’s had a great offseason’ - Mike Macdonald praises ‘great player’ Jaxon Smith-Njigba

If there’s any player on the Seattle Seahawks offense who will be watched closely, it’s wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba.

Taken with the 20th overall pick of the 2023 NFL Draft, Smith-Njigba was the Seahawks’ first receiver taken in the first round since Koren Robinson back in 2001. Having overcome a wrist fracture in preseason, Smith-Njigba caught 63 passes for 628 yards and 4 touchdowns in his rookie campaign. Under a new coaching staff and with valuable experience under his belt, expectations are high that JSN will be a huge part of the offense moving forward.

Thus far, JSN has been one of the standouts of the offseason workout program. Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald had nothing but positive things to say about Smith-Njigba’s performances at OTAs and minicamp.

“JSN’s a great player and [we’re] expecting big things out of him,” Macdonald said (via ESPN’s Brady Henderson). “He’s had a great offseason, works his tail off. His practice habits are awesome. Moving ability is pretty elite. I think we got a really cool plan for him.”

While there were ups and downs in terms of performance and targets for Smith-Njigba, he was still a valuable part of Seattle’s passing game. Despite being the third option among Seattle’s wide receiver group, JSN led the Seahawks in 3rd down targets and had 16 third-down conversions, which was second-most on the team behind Tyler Lockett. In fact, only 17 players had more third-down conversions in 2023 than JSN.

“He’s just a hard cover, man,” Macdonald said. “He can play outside, inside, and Grubb does a great job of kind of moving guys around and finding some matchups. His lower body power and flexibility and being able to accelerate and obviously just having great hands and being able to track the ball is pretty impressive.”

Smith-Njigba was reeling in touchdowns for fun in one particular OTA session, and while these are non-contact practices it’s still hard not to get excited about what JSN can do heading into his second season. It’ll be fascinating to see if he supplants Tyler Lockett as one of the top two targets on the team.