Jaxon Smith-Njigba came so close to doing something on Sunday that no Seattle Seahawks receiver has ever managed. Not Largent or Lockett. Not Baldwin or Blades. By gaining 96 yards through the air, JSN came up just four yards short of becoming the first Seahawk receiver to begin a season with three consecutive 100 yard receiving games.
He joins his former teammate DK Metcalf in coming so close. Back in 2020, Seattle’s prior WR1 missed by just 13 total yards, opening with games of 95, 92, and 110. Smith-Njigba came even closer.
JSN opened the 2025 season with nine catches for 124 yards against San Francisco. He followed it up in Week Two with eight more catches for 103 yards. Against New Orleans, he finished with five catches and 96 yards.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba is becoming the elite playmaker Seahawks fans were hoping for
There’s a lot more to the former Ohio State Buckeye’s emergence than simple yardage totals.
Smith-Njigba’s development from his rookie to season to his second year in the league was exceptional. However, questions remained as he entered his third season – his first as the undisputed WR1 on the Seahawks’ roster. He had already established himself as an excellent possession receiver. But could he make downfield plays? Game-changing plays?
Every team needs reliable targets who can get seven yards on third & six. But to be a true alpha dog in the receiver room, you have to break plays of greater than 20 yards on a routine basis. You need to show a defense that if they drop their guard, you can score from anywhere on the field. That was the only part of JSN’s game that was lacking.
Entering this season, Smith-Njigba had caught a total of 163 balls for 1,758 yards. That works out to an average of 10.8 yards per catch. Or 7.6 yards per target. Those are solid numbers. But they are not special.
Through his first two games of 2025, JSN had elevated those numbers to 13.4 yards per catch and 9.9 yards per target. That’s excellent territory for a high-volume receiver. That’s Ja’Marr Chase and Terry McLaurin's yards-per-catch territory. His yards-per-target figure would have placed him in the top 15 in the league last year. And he improved on those numbers in Week Three.
When Seattle decided to part company with downfield threats like Metcalf and Tyler Lockett, they knew they would need someone to step into that role. They signed a quality possession guy in Cooper Kupp over the offseason. They have a collection of talented tight ends. But new QB Sam Darnold throws a good deep ball, so he would need deep threats to make the offense sing.
Against New Orleans, JSN wasted no time showing off his new WR1 skills. He caught Darnold’s first pass, a 29-yard deep shot down the left side. Then he finished the drive with his first touchdown catch of the season.
Later in the first half, with Seattle beginning to step on the gas, he began another drive with the longest play of the day, a 45-yard bomb that led to Seattle’s fifth first-half touchdown.
If Seahawks’ fans have been asking whether JSN has that big play potential in his arsenal, their top receiver seems intent on putting all such questions to bed. He may have come up just short of creating franchise history, but he sure looks like he intends to set other kinds of records for this franchise in the future.