ESPN take on Seahawks WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba's rookie year misses the mark

The Seattle Seahawks have some extremely talented players at the offensive skill positions going into 2024. Seattle has a dynamic running back in Ken Walker, an underrated tight end in Noah Fant and what might be the very best wide receiver corps in the entire league. 

In a new ranking from Bill Barnwell at ESPN, Seattle's offensive skill group came in at No. 8 in the NFL right now, which feels about right. However, when discussing second-year wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba's role he missed the mark. Here's what Barnwell had to say about JSN's rookie season:

"Nominally, the Seahawks drafted Jaxon Smith-Njigba last year to be the replacement for Lockett in two-wideout sets, but Smith-Njigba had a disappointing start to his career. He failed to top 70 receiving yards in a game even once, dropped six passes and ranked 14th among 2023 draftees in yards per route run. It's too early to be concerned, but he wasn't able to immediately command a large share of the Seattle passing game. If we're still at this level a year from now, it'll be a problem."

The numbers cited here are all accurate, but it's far from JSN's fault that his production in 2023 was lower than expected. Instead, Barnwell should have pointed to the true culprit: former Seahawks offensive coordinator Shane Waldron.

Listen to JSN give this extremely-awkward endorsement of Waldron's playcalling when he was asked about it on a Bears podcast earlier this offseason.

That says a lot and even a cursory glance at Seattle's first five games of the season would show that JSN was extremely misused. Instead of taking advantage of the considerable skill-set that he showed at Ohio State and made him the first wide receiver taken in the draft, Waldron used him like a glorified gadget weapon, rarely targeting JSN beyond the line of scrimmage and almost exclusively doing so on screen passes. It's a wonder he gained a single yard given how bad their screen game was early in the year.

Waldron finally started showing a bit of faith in the rookie around Week 7 against the Cardinals, when JSN scored his first touchdown and posted what turned out to be a season-high 63 receiving yards. Still, his production never got up to the level that it should have as the year went on. That's just one of many reasons why the Seahawks fired Waldron and went in a different direction.

To be fair it's impossible for any analyst to have an in-depth knowledge of all 32 NFL teams and how their seasons went and Barnwell's analysis is usually on-point. This is one point that came out wrong, though. JSN's preseason wrist injury and the poor playcalling were responsible for what happened in 2023, and nothing else. The disappointing start to JSN's career should be nothing but a bitter memory by the time Week 4 comes around.