Jaxon Smith-Njigba ‘Getting After It’ Building Rapport With Sam Darnold, Learning Seahawks’ New Offense
RENTON, Wash. - Working out of the slot on the strong side of a twins left formation during a team session in the first padded practice of training camp, Seattle Seahawks receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba made a quick hesitation step at the line of scrimmage off the snap before executing an outside release against cornerback Josh Jobe, who blanketed his face working in press coverage.
After taking two hard steps downfield, Smith-Njigba shot out of his break to his left on a quick out route and turned his head towards quarterback Sam Darnold. As soon as he swiveled back towards the pocket, he only had a split second to react, as the veteran signal caller already had unloaded the football and the pass was halfway to its targeted destination before his eyes even could see No. 14. The receiver plucked the ball out of the air with his soft hands and sprinted along the sideline for an extra 10 yards, taking a quick dump off barely past the line of scrimmage and turning it into a first down reception.
In the midst of his first training camp with a new quarterback after catching passes from Geno Smith in his first two NFL seasons, Smith-Njigba has been hauling in such passes on the regular, benefiting from Darnold’s rapid release and anticipation running routes against the likes of Jobe, Riq Woolen, and Devon Witherspoon and create prime opportunities to utilize his quickness and tackle-breaking capabilities after the catch. Though it hasn’t been seen in true game action yet, these quick strikes have demonstrated a budding chemistry between the duo that looks as if they have been playing together for far longer than only a few short months.
What’s been the key to developing such an ironclad rapport so quickly? For Smith-Njigba, it’s been as simple as spending overtime diving into the details with his new quarterback behind the scenes.
“Just really putting the time in, you know?” Smith-Nijgba said following Monday’s walkthrough. “Putting the time in, being here early, watching film, just having healthy conversations. Every single day we mess up a play, we go over it and we work on it the next day, and we usually get it down. So just coming in with that attitude just to be great and really have healthy conversations and just get after it every day.”
Starting with Darnold supplanting Smith under center, a ton has changed since the end of Smith-Njigba’s breakout sophomore campaign where he tied Tyler Lockett’s team record for receptions (100) in a single season and surpassed the 1,000-yard mark for the first time in his career. Both Lockett and DK Metcalf, two of the most productive wideouts in franchise history, departed in March with the former being a cap casualty and the latter being traded to Pittsburgh, leaving the 2023 first-round pick as the clear No. 1 target moving forward alongside ex-Rams star Cooper Kupp, who returned to his home state in free agency.
Away from the numerous personnel changes, the Seahawks also switched offensive coordinators for the second consecutive offseason, sending Ryan Grubb packing with a pink slip immediately after the season finale in Los Angeles back in January and replacing him with Klint Kubiak. The seasoned play caller brought the tried and true scheme originally conceived by Broncos coach Mike Shanahan with him to the Pacific Northwest after being a coordinator for the Saints in 2024, placing an emphasis on improving a 28th-ranked run game to take pressure off Darnold and his receivers.
With so many new players around him and a new offense to learn for the third straight offseason, nobody would have batted an eye if it took significant time for Smith-Njigba to acclimate to catching passes from Darnold and mesh with a scheme offering substantial differences from the one he thrived in last season. But that hasn’t been the case at all.
While Kubiak’s system places more of an emphasis on the ground game with a zone-centric approach and more multi-running back and multi-tight end sets, Smith-Njigba’s strengths play extremely well with what Seattle will be asking out of its receivers. Known for his off-the-charts agility and lateral quickness coming out of Ohio State, he has always excelled in the short-to-intermediate game while offering the talent to break a tackle or two and rack up big yardage after the catch any time he touches the football, making him an outstanding fit for a timing-based West Coast-style aerial attack.
As evidenced on the aforementioned catch earlier in training camp, Smith-Njigba has a skill set built for snagging quick catches and being on the receiving end of throws that leave the pocket before he’s even turned to find the football. Darnold’s ability to unload the football in rapid-fire fashion and still throw with great anticipation have only accentuated those strengths thus far.
“As a receiver, I love that. I would rather it be that [way],” Smith-Njigba explained. “I would rather the ball be halfway there while I break. He's doing a great job with that, and I think it really knifes the defense and just gets them off balance. So, I think that's a win for us, for sure.”
In addition, Smith-Njigba’s high football IQ has also played into a much more seamless process building chemistry with Darnold while adjusting to a different offense. Before even hitting the practice field for the first time in April, he spent extensive time watching “years and years” of film on receivers who had previously excelled in the Shanahan/Kubiak scheme, including former Vikings wideout Adam Thielen, who produced 726 receiving yards and 10 touchdowns in Kubiak’s offense in 2021, as well as Chris Olave with the Saints last season, among others.
Through those studies, Smith-Njigba took notice of the wide range of receivers who had previously found success in Kubiak’s offense. Thielen and Olave, as just two examples, offer few parallels to one another in regard to athleticism and general play style. Thielen excelled out of the slot and on the boundary with route running prowess and using his body to regularly win contested catches, while Olave offers more of a speed-oriented skill set that allows him to take the top off a defense and create with the ball in his hands after the catch.
In comparison, Smith-Njigba has more in common with Olave, as they have comparable height/weight specs, each posted similar Relative Athletic Scores in the pre-draft process between the 82nd and 85th percentile, and share a lot of strengths as pass catchers capable of doing damage playing outside as well as the slot. This shouldn’t necessarily come as a surprise with them being former teammates at Ohio State who learned from the same renowned coach in Brian Hartline.
Seeing so many different receivers shine in the same system over the years helped inspire confidence from Smith-Njigba and the rest of Seattle’s receiving corps, making it easy to buy into what Kubiak started selling once he arrived and started installing a new playbook in April, easing the acclimation process as a result.
“That's awesome, just to see how schemes and stuff like that have worked for a long time,” Smith-Njigba said. “So, it just gives us the extra confidence to really just go out there and understand what the defense is saying and execute from that.”
Still just 23 years old, Smith-Njigba’s outstanding play last season rightfully vaulted him into the discussion as one of the NFL’s best young receiving talents. When asked where he expected to see the most growth entering year No. 3, while he acknowledged it likely wasn’t the best answer with the reporter hoping he would zero in on one or two aspects in his game, he simply said “you’ll see everything be better” and that he’s got sights on his entire palette leveling up.
Critics may point to the absence of Metcalf and Lockett, who undoubtedly helped create ideal one-on-one matchups for Smith-Njigba by drawing significant attention from opponents, as a development that ultimately hurts his stat line. That viewpoint could wind up having merit if Kupp can’t stay healthy or rookie Tory Horton’s ascent in training camp doesn’t translate to much on-field production in the regular season, as opposing coordinators will be able to focus more of their resources on locking down the rising star with bracket coverage and schemes catered to taking him away.
But at the same time, Smith-Njigba already seemed to elevate himself to No. 1 receiver status in the second half of the 2024 season even with Metcalf and Lockett still on the roster at the time, making it far easier to stomach their departures this offseason. If early signs on the practice field are any indication, with him and Darnold already hitting it off and firing on all cylinders in Kubiak’s system, the sky should be the limit for the dynamic playmaker with the chance to leapfrog into the upper echelon of receivers in the entire league.
