Jaxon Smith-Njigba did everything a receiver can do in 2025 to silence the doubters. He led the NFL in receiving yards, became the engine of a Super Bowl-winning offense, and pushed himself to the top tier of the league’s pass-catchers. And yet the old questions are still hanging around.
ESPN’s ranking of the NFL’s top 10 wide receivers, voted on by coaches, scouts and executives, put Smith-Njigba at No. 3.
That’s a perfectly reasonable spot after the season he just put together. But the list also included one voter who left him outside the top 10 entirely, along with an anonymous coordinator who said, "He's not the elite outside player those top guys are."
Jeremy Fowler added that "That was a common refrain from voters: When game-planning, Smith-Njigba doesn't strike fear in coaches like some others do."
That line says more about the voters than it does about Smith-Njigba. The same old label has followed him since before the draft, when scouts stamped him as a "slot-only" receiver and questioned whether he could handle life on the outside. That doubt helped push him to the back half of the first round in the 2023 NFL Draft.
The criticism hasn’t gone away, but it also hasn’t matched what he’s done on the field. NFL offenses are using more condensed formations than they used to, and the old boundaries between receiver roles are getting blurrier. The classic "X" receiver isn’t the same must-have piece it once was.
Smith-Njigba has already shown he can win outside anyway. In 2025, he lined up on the outside on 73.6% of his pass snaps, according to Pro Football Focus (subscription required). Wherever Seattle put him, he found ways to separate and keep the offense moving.
That’s the part the league keeps missing. His route running is smooth, his production is steady, and his impact on the Seahawks’ offense is impossible to ignore.
Calling him the third-best receiver in football is fair. Still insisting he can’t do it outside?
That one doesn’t hold up.
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