The NFL got exposed by Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba on Tuesday. The wideout was the league's Offensive Player of the Year after having 1,793 receiving yards. Yet, when his trophy arrived, it had a glaring misspelling.
An Instagram post by the receiver appeared to show that the award read "Defensive Player of the Year." To be fair, after the NFL's poor explanation of the issue, the "D" could have been an "O."
That's because league spokesperson Brian McCarthy told The Athletic that the NFL made a mistake, but... "The league made the mistake. We sincerely apologize to Jaxon for the error and are in the process of creating and shipping him a new trophy. Of course, like the teams he played against this year, we know how great an offensive player he is. We just had a problem spelling it."
NFL doubles down on disrespect for the Seattle Seahawks and Jaxon Smith-Njigba
Let's assume the trophy does read, "Oeffensive," that is still not good. This is the NFL we are discussing. The league makes billions of dollars a year, and there is a real issue if it can't even get the spelling correct on an award. That implies the NFL only cares about the big picture of making money, and not how it treats the players who do the small print well.
Or maybe Smith-Njigba is the only player the misspelling dilemma has occurred with. That's just further disrespect to both the player and to the Seattle Seahawks overall. Being in the Pacific Northwest, the organization gets overlooked compared to the Northeast teams or even the Los Angeles teams.
And let's be real: People in LA don't care about the NFL. They care about the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Rams and Chargers were forced upon them. Still, the league wants teams there because of the size of the market. It's all about the dollar bills.
Not that this comes into play in terms of Jaxon Smith-Njigba getting his award correctly. Of course, the league is going to quickly send him a replacement. Not doing so is just ridiculous. That isn't news; it's the expectation.
Not that the NFL would admit to their mistake without JSN taking to social media to expose the truth. Had he not done so, the league would have sent him a new trophy and hid from its embarrassment. The league is good at that, the opposite of the way it handles off-field punishments. That's further embarrassing.
Which is a good time to remind people that the Seattle Seahawks will start their season against the New England Patriots. The same Pats who employ Mike Vrabel as their head coach, even though he has caused the league to have a black eye with his situation with reporter Dianna Russini. The NFL is fine with that so far. And they are fine with sending JSN a misspelled award.
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