Seahawks WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba’s Game and Fame are Growing ... but Not His Ego

Jaxon Smith-Njigba leads the NFL in receiving yards, he is the reigning Offensive Player of the Year, and he owns a Super Bowl ring. Rich opened the conversation by noting that the receiver right behind him on that yardage list is also a Buckeye, then insisted several times that he was "fine with it" because "these are facts and I'm fine with facts."

Smith-Njigba, for his part, sounded like a man who has no interest in the noise that comes with any of those titles.

Rich asked how life is different from Week 3 of last season to Week 3 of this one. The answer was not about money or status. It was about the cameras.

"I would say just the media attention," Smith-Njigba said. "You have the Hard Knocks, you have people just wanting to understand how we're so good and why we're so good. The ins and outs, kind of the behind the scenes. So really just managing that."

Beyond that, he described a life that sounds almost aggressively ordinary for the best receiver in football right now.

"I keep it pretty simple," he said. "Show up to work, do my job, go home, chill with friends and family when I get a chance, or I'm resting. Pretty locked in right now. So try to keep it the same."

That is the ego check in a sentence. The game and the fame are growing. The routine is not.

Rich wanted to know when the game slowed down for him. Smith-Njigba said it has happened every year, but the jump from his first season to his second was the big one.

"The progression that I made from my first year to second year was tremendous for me," he said, "and definitely saw the game just slowing down."

He credited a second year alongside Sam Darnold in the offense for that same feeling carrying into this season. "I definitely feel that again this year," he said. "Just want to build off that and continue to grow."

Rich laid out why this start should have been jarring. The Seahawks lost their starting quarterback almost immediately, and there is a new offensive coordinator with a new system on top of it. Yet Seattle is 2-0.

Smith-Njigba pointed straight at the backup. "Thankfully we do have Drew Lock, as they say, the best backup in the NFL right now," he said.

What impressed him was that nothing about Lock changed when he became the starter. "His preparation through these last two weeks of being a starter hasn't changed, and we see it every day with Drew, the consistency and the playmaking ability out there on the practice field and the eagerness to go out there and play on Sundays," he said. "It's not like he doesn't want to play. So we all see that and we feed off that and we have each other's backs and we want Drew to shine. And that's definitely what he did."

On the new system under offensive coordinator Brian Fleury, Smith-Njigba addressed the question of how he keeps avoiding double teams. The answer starts with the ground game.

"From the first meeting, it's, we're going to run the ball. That's where our ego and pride lays," he said. "I think teams have to respect that."

The rest is movement. "He's done a great job of putting me in motions, being able to line up everywhere on the field," Smith-Njigba said. "Like the first game I lined up at tackle. Never lined up at tackle in my life."

His point was that the variety creates its own problems for defenses. The mix of run game and alignment, he said, is "allowing me to run every route in the book at any spot on the field. I mean, it's hard for a defense to account for that."

Rich walked him back through the first touchdown of his season, a tie game, fourth-and-inches, on a drive set up by the defense's first takeaway of the year. Rich called it the first electric play of the entire NFL season.

Smith-Njigba said the defense showed a blitz zone, so his job was to find the soft spot. Lock found him. From there, the priority was simple. "Get as much as I can get and protect the ball," he said, noting that it was the fourth quarter in a crucial area of the field.

He knew it was a touchdown the moment he made the first defender miss. "As soon as I made the first person miss, the safety coming down, and I saw the lane," he said. "I saw the shining light and the big tight ends in front of me leading the way. I knew we could make it six."

Yards after the catch, he added, is something he has focused on every year, "and I think this will be my best year yet."

Smith-Njigba followed that game with three touchdowns the next week. Asked how he feels entering Week 3, he described staying in a groove.

"The mind and body feels good and I just want to continue to be in that groove, kind of that flow state," he said. "The days kind of for me look the same. So if I just kind of stay on that wave, that flow, I feel pretty good. And you know, we get to have Sam Darnold back. So I'm excited to show out."

Rich pressed him on whether Darnold was returning this week. Smith-Njigba kept it measured, but he did not exactly hedge. "He looks good. He looks good out there. I'll say that," he said. "He looks really good."

For the record, Rich noted, he was interviewing a Seahawk. Asked whether that flow comes from meditation or yoga, Smith-Njigba allowed "a little bit" of meditation, "nothing crazy," and mostly credited pinpoint focus on the process. "I can definitely feel my team on the same wavelength," he said. "We're just ready to defend what we have and push forward."

Does a champion still have something to prove? Smith-Njigba drew a clear line.

"To the outside, to the media, to people that have judgment on what I do, I don't think I have anything to prove to them," he said. "But to myself, to my teammates, the people that I love and respect that I see every single day, I want to prove something to them each and every day."

What he wants to prove to himself is how close he can get to perfect. "Just aim for that perfection. No mistakes allowed. That's just where I put my goals at," he said. "I'm never going to be perfect, but just reaching for that and gunning for that is something I just want to challenge myself on. I'm super competitive. I want to win every single rep."

He broke perfection down into what he called his ABCs. How quick can he line up. How quick are his reads. Did he block well. On every catchable pass, did he catch it and do something with it or protect it. He admitted he has not reached perfection in a game yet.

Rich asked, half joking and then seriously, whether he ever thinks about starting in Columbus and ending in Canton. Smith-Njigba said not on a day-to-day basis, and that it is not what drives him.

"Just staying in the moment I think is very key for me," he said. "It allows me to just focus and nail down the things that I want to nail down. And then I'll look up later and I think I'll be happy with where I'm at."

The conversation closed back in Columbus. Jeremiah Smith is already the all-time leading receiver in Ohio State history with a full season still to play, and Rich asked Smith-Njigba how good he can be.

"With the tools that he has, his physical ability, his mindset, just understanding the kid and talking to him and knowing the kind of the things he wants to reach, he has the opportunity and chance to be the best," Smith-Njigba said.

He added that where Smith gets drafted and who surrounds him in the NFL will matter, but that any team would be lucky to build around a kid who loves ball, is super competitive, and will do anything for his teammates. He sees his own mindset in him. "He's done it at all three levels," Smith-Njigba said. "Like, I've done it in high school, I've done it in college, why can't I do it in the league? And I think he has the same mindset as well."

Rich noted that Smith needs six more touchdowns to pass Chris Olave's school record for scoring receptions and 22 more catches to get Emeka Egbuka's record, and suggested Smith may get them all. Smith-Njigba agreed. "I think so," he said.