The Seattle Seahawks, it can be safely said, are pretty happy having taken wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba with the No. 20 pick in the 2023 NFL Draft. In his third season, he led the league in receiving yards with 1,793 and was named Offensive Player of the Year.
The Los Angeles Rams are likely content with the on-field production that wideout Puka Nacua has given them in three seasons. He was a fifth-round selection in the same year JSN was chosen. Twice, Nacua has had at least 1,486 receiving yards in a season.
The question many might ask is which player a team would rather have. Nacua is a great fit in head coach Sean McVay's system, and Smith-Njigba has bloomed ever since his rookie year, when Shane Waldron was failing him as Seattle's offensive coordinator.
Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba should be the choice over the Rams' Puka Nacua
The answer should be Smith-Njigba, but due to off-field reasons as well. The Seahawks receiver offers a quick smile and a respectful attitude to the media and fans. What he doesn't do is cause unnecessary drama for his own team.
The same cannot be said of Nacua, who, while extremely productive catching the ball, has had a couple of major concerns over the last six months, including an accusation of assault and battery by biting. That doesn't mean he is guilty, of course, but the number of issues has had to have raised alarms around Rams headquarters.
12s might be frustrated when these kinds of things aren't taken into account when pundits put together lists of best-of. One recent one, for instance, was produced by Tyler Sullivan of CBS Sports. Sullivan ranked his opinion of who the best players under the age of 25 are, and Nacua was second. Smith-Njigba was fifth.
Oddly, Sullivan writes, "Nacua is a nightmare for opposing secondaries because he consistently finds ways to get open, and he's shown the ability to completely take over games. He has dealt with some off-the-field issues this offseason, but when he's right, he's at the top of his position."
The "when he's right" doesn't truly fit. His off-field issues don't have a direct relation to his on-field production, but they do have a potential effect on how he fits in the locker room and whether he forces his team to examine potential off-field problems.
Plus, Nacua's recent concerns weren't all "offseason" issues. Near the end of last season, he said on a podcast that NFL officials were "the worst" and incorrectly called penalties just to be seen on football broadcasts.
His accusation of biting someone hasn't been fully denied by Nacua's legal team, but the player's attorney described the action as "horseplay." What fans do know is that the incident happened on New Year's Eve, so the season was still underway.
The truth is that both the Seattle Seahawks' Jaxon Smith-Njigba and the Los Angeles Rams' Puka Nacua are likely to be highly productive on the field, but team culture matters too. In that aspect, JSN clearly understands more than Nacua that a positive impact is essential. That is why, if a team could have either Smith-Njigba or Nacua, the answer should be the former.
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