Entering his third season in the NFL. Seattle Seahawks’ wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba was averaging 51.7 yards per game. That’s a very respectable number for a young player. It placed him in a tie for tenth on the franchise’s all-time list with Koren Robinson.
Considering that for most of his brief tenure, JSN was not considered Seattle’s WR1, that number looks even better. His job was to be a reliable option out of the slot while established stars like DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett handled most of the downfield plays.
This year, with both Metcalf and Lockett gone, the hope was that JSN could elevate his game and become a more complete player. Through the first nine games of 2025, it has become obvious that the former Ohio State star wasn’t content with merely taking a step or two forward.
Seattle Seahawks' Jaxon Smith-Njigba continues his historic run with another big game
He appears to be on a non-stop diet of Pac-Man power pills, which have turned him into the best receiver in the entire league.
His performance in Seattle’s dismantling of NFC West rival Arizona on Sunday continued the remarkable roll. Early in the game, Smith-Njigba surpassed 1,000 receiving yards for the season, setting a new Seahawks record in the process.
The stats are right out of Backyard Football. Remember where he stood on the franchise receiving-yards-per-game list when the season began? 51.7 yards and in tenth place.
After just nine games in 2025, JSN has raised that average to 65.1 yards per game and moved into fourth place on the all-time list. In the process, he has soared past names like Baldwin and Lockett, Houshmandzadeh and Galloway. He now sits just one-tenth of a yard behind Metcalf and three-tenths behind Hall of Famer Steve Largent. Darrell Jackson is just two yards ahead.
Of course, yards per game could go down with a run of bad games. That does not seem likely. JSN has not had a single game this season without at least one catch of 25 yards or more. In six of his nine games, he has had a catch of at least 40 yards.
Compare that to other elite receivers like Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson. They aren’t even close to that level of consistency. They all have games in which opposing defenses slow them down.
But JSN, running patterns in Jake Peetz’s passing attack and catching balls from Sam Darnold, shows no signs of slowing down. In his two games against the Cardinals this year, he has caught nine of eleven targets for 172 yards and a touchdown. That works out to better than 19 yards per catch.
And, at least based on total yardage, those are his two worst games of the year.
He has gone for over 100 yards in every other game except the blowout win over New Orleans in Week 3. He wasn’t targeted often in that game and had to settle for just 96 yards and a touchdown.
That kind of consistency is what got him to 1,000 yards so quickly this year, the fastest in franchise history. As a point of reference, no other receiver in 2025 has reached 900 yards. Chase is second with 831. Only two other receivers have topped 700 yards this season. JSN is averaging over 115 yards per game, almost 20 yards clear of Puka Nacua in second place.
And none of that is the most remarkable thing about what Jaxon Smith-Njigba is doing through the first half of 2025. This is what is truly astonishing.
JSN is catching more than 74% of his targets. That may not seem so amazing. There are a lot of receivers who match or surpass that number. But no one combines the yardage that JSN piles up with that kind of efficiency. Deep threats never have high completion percentages. It’s simply the nature of the game. It is easier to complete short passes.
Slot receivers – or if you prefer – possession receivers post numbers in the 70s. Deep threats are usually down in the 50s. JSN's catch percentage is similar to Cooper Kupp’s this year. It’s on a par with elite tight ends like Brock Bowers and Tyler Warren. It’s just a few points off the king of this kind of stat, Amon-Ra St. Brown.
In other words, JSN has become one of the best downfield threats in the NFL without sacrificing any of the efficiency he had established as one of the better young slot receivers during his first couple of seasons.
Actually, I’m underselling this point. JSN hasn’t merely maintained the excellent completion rate of his first two years. He has improved on it. Despite all the deep balls, he is actually catching a higher percentage of targets than he ever has before. That simply defies explanation.
Opposing defenses will begin devoting more and more attention to slowing down JSN’s remarkable run and that should only open up the field for Seattle’s deep corps of talented pass catchers (now featuring Rashid Shaheed).
But JSN is in the process of proving just how hard it is to keep him under wraps. He is currently on pace to break Calvin Johnson’s record for receiving yards in a season.
If he wants the record, he cannot slow down. His current pace puts him just two yards ahead of Megatron (who achieved his mark in just 16 games back in 2012). But I wouldn’t bet against JSN at this point. He hasn’t just lived up to expectations in 2025. He has blown those expectations out of the water.