Scouting Notes
- A master of nuance. JSN manipulates the angles like nothing I’ve ever seen and utilizes every trick in the book perfectly.
- YAC ability is great despite no burst or top-end speed. He uses angles and is extremely slippery, making him a very hard tackle.
- The pitter-patter of the feet at the route break or LOS release is a beauty to watch. JSN executes perfectly, taking no extra steps.
- Looked much faster and quicker in 2022 pre-injury, suggesting a potential athleticism rise from a young ascending player.
- Despite not running the 40-yard dash, JSN produces elite agility and quickness numbers at the Combine. His stock has sky-rocketed.
Short Summary
Jaxon Smith-Njigba is easily one of the most nitpicked players of this draft. Every draft has those few, and JSN got his spot early. He is knocked down draft boards due to his lack of speed, or his inability to play on the outside. Not only do I think those notions are false, even if they were true, there is enough special about Smith-Njigba to warrant an early draft selection.
For starters, while the speed is an issue, he isn’t overly slow, just not fast. Additionally, he manipulates angles and chooses lanes so perfectly to make up for his lack of speed.
Secondly, his “inability” to play as a true X or Z receiver is very overstated. Justin Jefferson also played most of his LSU snaps in the slot, and there were concerns about his acclimation to an outside role. That turned out just fine. Additionally, Smith-Njigba played most of his snaps in the slot due to the existence of two outstanding Wide Receivers in the Ohio State WR pipeline playing ahead of him in his last full season – Chris Olave and Garrett Wilson. Both went on to be Top 5 in NFL OROY Award voting, and Wilson is even quoted saying that Smith-Njigba is the best of the trio.
Another concern might be the fact that he missed most of 2022 due to injury, but that is far from being a death knell.
Overall, there is way too much high-end talent to overlook. JSN managed one of the best Wide Receiver seasons in recent memory, breaking records and eclipsing unreal yard-marks, all while sharing targets with 2 future NFL All-Rookies. Jaxon Smith-Njigba is my WR1, and in a relatively weak Wide Receiver class, it’s not close.
Scouting Card Key
- Age refers to the age of the player come draft night, rounded to the nearest half-age.
- Percentage numbers in the Player Info and Combine Stats sections – This refers to the percentile that number belongs to among all players at his position, going back nearly a decade.
- GP – Games Played
- Tgts – Targets
- Drops and Drop Rate – The percentiles of these stats are inverse; the higher the drop rate, the lower the percentile.
- YAC/Rec – Yards After Catch per Reception
- CTT – Targets deemed as contested by PFF Graders and Scouts.
- CTC% – Contested catch rate, or the percentage of the aforementioned targets that were caught
- Y/RR – This is the number of yards the player accumulated for every route he ran. This stat was found to highly correlate to NFL success. It is, in other words, a measure often a player is targeted when they are running a route, along with how much that player gained with each target.
- First Downs – While this one is pretty intuitive, I don’t think it is appreciated enough. This stat shows pretty clearly how often your team relied on you in high-leverage situations. There are first downs accrued in low-leverage situations, but in general, the players who get the most first downs, are the ones most relied on by their team to get first downs.
- Line-Wide% and Line-Slt% – How often a player lined up as the Wide Receiver, and how often as the Slot Receiver, respectively.
Credit
Advanced stats – pff.com
Scouting card template / idea – Jordan Pun @Texans_Thoughts
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