Jaxson Smith-Njigba on HISTORIC Pace 👀 | Seahawks vs Titans Review

Jaxson Smith-Njigba on HISTORIC Pace 👀 | Seahawks vs Titans Review

Hey guys, real quick. Only 40% of our viewers are actually subscribed. So, let’s change that right now. Hit that subscribe button right below. Let’s go. Seattle Seahawks 30, Tennessee Titans 24. Seahawks got up. Um, I don’t know if this is fully indicative of the scoreboard. Some late touchdowns by Tennessee, but I love the way they fought. It was 23-3 and then 30-10 at one point. Titans tacked on a couple late touchdowns in there. Um, but they did a nice job fighting and I know from a Tennessee perspective, I thought maybe the best game again from Cam Ward, I think he’s stacking good games against good defenses against Houston last week and against Seattle this week. I mentioned, you know, just talking about Houston earlier, they’re the type of defense that has you questioning all your offensive decisions the next morning. We didn’t have that necessarily from Cam Ward and the Titans last week. So, I think there’s something to build on there. Um, and then I want to have the uh JSN appreciation hour and go through everything that he’s that he’s done. Eight catches for 167 and two touchdowns. He had 167 of the 244 passing yards from Sam Darnold. Yeah, I’m not going to lie, I kind of stopped paying attention to this game once it seemed fairly clear that Seattle because early uh Tennessee, I think, took the lead, right? Weren’t they the first team to score? They’re up three nothing. Yeah, I think they’re up three nothing every week. It took a little while for the Seahawks to sort of claw to get back and and establish some dominance, but then by halftime they were like what 163 up. Uh and it’s like all right, they’re rolling now cuz my real interest in this game was that despite it being a 12 point line, I still picked the Seahawks to cover and in fact it was my my lock of the week. So once it became clear that actually they’ve now taken the lead again, they’re they’re getting they’re establishing dominance and they’re they’re going away. Kind of stopped paying attention to the game and then looked up at the end. It’s like what? It was a one-sore game. What the hell? What was my luck? There was no way I uh I Your luck was one of the game it was one of the late games. So I didn’t know what yours was. Uh by the time I was done paying attention to lock of the week, yours was still up in the air and I never circled back to see if it it was good or not. Chances are it lost. Um but so I was I was annoyed to find out that Tennessee had actually ended up scoring late and come back and made it closer than it was. But yeah, like Cam Ward talked after the game about how that classic the old cliche, right? The game is slowing down for him. And you can see it. It is he’s starting to be more comfortable. He’s no longer just trying to survive and stay above water. He’s actually making some instinctive plays. You’re seeing a bit more of the college version of Cam Ward of the ad liibbing, the scrambling, the scramble to make a throw, the just all the the natural playmaking that like he was so just scrambling to survive and I was mentally scrambling to survive up until now that you hadn’t seen any of the sort of instinctive playmaking ability come out. Now, I mean, it’s still not, you know, great, but you’re seeing that week on week, you’re getting a little bit more of natural playmaking ability from Cam Ward. And remember, like, he still has no receivers to work with. Like, this is still a bad situation, but and against this defense in particular. Yeah, definitely encouraging. That That’s what I’m saying. So, Cam Ward’s statline 28 to 42 for 256 and a late touchdown. But you’re you’re throwing to James Proche, Jamra DK, Gunnar Helm, Chica Quanquo. They did activate Xavier Restrepo and he had two catches for 26 yards, both for first downs. Maybe that’ll unlock him. By the way, undrafted free agent Restreo. I mean, again, it’s like it can’t hurt. Yeah. But at a high level, watching Cam Ward, watching him be a little bit more comfortable against good defenses with a less than supporting cast in a game where there’s no run game and Cam Ward’s the leading rusher in this game. U I’m impressed with Cam Ward these last couple weeks. I think earlier in the year it’s like, yeah, here’s a throw. Here’s here’s another throw, but you know, too many negative plays, sacks, inconsistency. I think he’s stacking up good weeks and I think that’d be encouraging or should be encouraging for Tennessee. It has coincided with Cam Ward using his legs. Once again, they had a designed run where he goes over the top for a touchdown and um another really nice scramble. So, he had 37 yards on six carries and normally with young quarterbacks I am against, you know, unlock, you know, use his legs. I’d rather you sit there and develop as a passer knowing that you can use your legs when needed. But I feel like Cam Ward needed this. I feel like he was almost too hesitant early in the year. So, I kept harping on it and I don’t want him to run 15 times a game to finish the season. I still want to develop as a passer. Yeah. But like you can see him using even just his scramble ability, right? Like even just what he does outside the pocket I think has been cleaner in recent weeks here there. Yeah. There’s there’s a tricky balance to be struck between, you know, using an athletic quarterback’s ability to run and leaning too heavily on on that and getting him killed, right? Like, but the reason you know those athletic quarterbacks are, it buys you time and it buys you extra downs. Like, it extends drives. And that’s the thing. If you’re not good enough as a passer yet or the situation around you is bad enough that the offense is just inefficient, you lose out on all these reps. Like, every now and again, if if Cam Ward can just scramble, buy himself a little bit of time, and find a pass that wasn’t there as the play developed, this is a good thing. as long as he’s not doing it so much that he’s, you know, developing bad habits or putting himself at risk. I think the balance is tipping more in the right direction. Now, yeah, I don’t want him scrambling constantly, you know, nothing but scrambling, but if he can scramble just a little bit more than he was earlier in the season, he can extend some drives and things can continue to move in the right direction. Now, for Seattle, I want to talk JSN a little bit. Jackson Smith and Jigba. Yeah. 167 yards on eight catches, 63 yard touchdown in there. I’m uh I mean I was a big JSN fan coming out, huge fan. But as I tweeted yesterday, I had no idea, even the biggest JSN fan probably had no idea that he would be, you know, Tyreek Hill. Well, he’s done the Justin Jefferson thing. It’s like you’ve got this slot player at the college level and it’s like, oh, can he play outside? Blah blah blah. And that was the sort of big question coming out. Well, not only is he now, can he play outside? I mean, he’s just dominating in every facet of the game. And he’s currently on pace for that 2,000 yard season that is kind of amazing that nobody’s actually achieved it yet from a receiving standpoint, but everyone threatens it every now and again. He’s on pace for it as things stand in a low volume passing attack. Yeah. Right. This is a team. This is Sam Darnold threw the ball 26 times yesterday. That’s what’s amazing. 167 yards of the 244. Um a 63 y had another bomb. Had an easy touchdown. just making everything look easy. Well, he’s doing that college thing that you don’t really see at the NFL level, which is you’re accounting for like 60% of your team’s passing offense at all times. That happens in college. Like Trey McBride was the basically the only receiver in his college offense and despite that was still able to do that week on week on week. If generally in the NFL when you have an offense that’s so predicated on one individual player, teams are able to take those guys away and they you can’t have sustained success that way. Somehow the Seahawks are making it work with JSN where 244 passing yards, 167 of which went towards JSN. And for the last couple of weeks, like every week he’s now setting some new record and some of them are in some of them fall into the category of the records that don’t really impress me generally. like the one he had for the last couple of weeks was like, “Oh, he’s the first receiver in NFL history to have had 75 receiving yards in like 10 straight games or something. Now it’s 11.” Yeah. Yeah. And it’s like I those I don’t generally I’m not impressed by records where if you stack a sequence of relatively unimpressive things together, at some point you decide they become impressive just because nobody’s ever done it before. Mike Evans, like the Mike Evans record. It’s like a thousand yards in a season is not that impressive. So, how many of them do you need to put together before you’re like, “Now it’s impressive.” It wasn’t impressive in any individual season, but now it’s impressive. All right, Mr. unimpressed. So, 75 pass 75 receiving yards in an individual game is not particularly impressive, but you know, you stack them together, it’s like, well, now nobody’s ever done it before, so it’s impressive. However, he now has the single uh season receiving record for the Seattle Seahawks franchise, which includes a Hall of Fame receiver um like the entirety of a Hall of Fame receivers’s career after 11 games. That’s impressive. Steve Larent. Yes. By the way, who by the way, they showed the list of that uh and Steve Larent is like five of the top 10 of those. Like DK Mechaf has one year in there. Um, Corin Robinson as a little bit of a call back has one year in there of,200 plus yards. I forget who the other people were. And then like five seasons from Steve Larin and now JSN through 11 games is ahead of all of those guys. That’s impressive. Can I impress you with a JSN number? Yes. which you did see last night, but old friend Scott Barrett, former colleague when we worked at PFF, has a great stat because it it sums up JSN’s efficiency in a low volume passing attack. Top YPTPA, you can acronym anything these days. Yeah. Receiving yards per team pass attempt. So, yards, okay, per the team’s pass attempt, right? Uhhuh. In NFL history, Yeah. We have the great Jim Benton in 1945, 5.36 yards per team’s pass attempt. Harlon Hill, 1956. JSN 20025 at 4.49 yards per team pass attempt. Don’t you dare leave off Max Speedy. I’m not done yet. Elroy Hirs 45. Lanceworth 1965. The most modern era player in this top six. And then he had to go to a top six because who could forget, as Scott reminds me, who could forget Max Speedy from 1947 averaging 3.87 yards per team pass attempt. Incredible group. JSN is having 1940s to60s level efficiency here in 2025. That’s a great way of describing it. I think like this is I don’t really remember anybody ever using this as a data point ever. However, I think it perfectly sums up what’s happening with JSN, which is, okay, obviously he’s extremely productive. Like, he’s just he’s on pace for 2,000 yards. He’s just set the Seahawks single season franchise receiving record after 11 games. Like, these are all obvious data points. What isn’t as obvious is he’s doing that with a 1940s to50s dynamic of like the sole threat in that offense. That’s what’s weird about this is the other guys on this list are either Hall of Famers or you’ve never heard of them before, right? Like Crazy Legs, Lance Allworth, these are guys you’ve heard of. These are, you know, all-time greats. And then you’ve got a bunch of people from the 40s and the 50s just because the game was weird then and you put up bizarre numbers like that. That’s what’s strange about this JSN thing is obviously he’s dominant, obviously he’s great. What is unusual is he’s he’s the sole source of passing offense. It’s incredible. I mean, that’s that’s why you don’t see this data point because we’re all watching JSN being like, he has 167 out of 244. Like, it’s all all he has 150 out of 220 and then you’re like, we got to dig up some some kind of efficiency number beyond yards per route run. And that’s what that’s what Scott did there. And I think I think it does sum it up extremely well. So, I just wanted a quick JSN appreciation hour. Um, I also got sent I think bet B MGM had a tweet out there showing JSN and his um his efficiency compared to Calvin Johnson in the 2012 season and it’s like it’s it’s it’s on pace. JSN, you know, 17 game schedule though. Yeah. The league’s leading Oh, by the way, everyone on that list that he’s already exceeded was 16 games or fewer. Like even DK Metaf’s year did it in 16 games, you know what I mean? Like he’s Oh yeah. Um so Darnold, JSN, the league’s leading receiver and on pace for 2,000 yards, etc., etc. Darnold’s only sixth in passing yards in the NFL. Like this is, as he said, it’s a relatively low volume passing attack where he’s setting an all-time record season. Just weird. And just to to finish up the JSN discussion, he’s not a 4-3 guy, right? He’s not fast, which is why I said I’m a big fan of his. I didn’t think I thought he could win on the outside. I thought he’d be a very good slot receiver and just had a really good feel for the position and just was very smooth, you know, just getting open and running around the field and just precision wide receiver. And then, but now he is playing like Tyreek Hill without the actual speed, right? He is getting open deep, separating late. Darnold’s thrown some absolute dimes to him this year, too. Like downfield handoffs, but it is incredible how easy JSN’s making it look down the field this year and it hasn’t slowed down. It really hasn’t. So, it’s uh very impressive what he’s doing. Just wanted to make sure he got proper shout outs this morning. Uh not a particularly fast 40 time, but an alltime freaky three cone time. Remember, like he had this 65 something three cone, which was like otherworldly insane. Thanks for watching all the way to the end of the video. Check the Mic is live Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. So, be sure to hit subscribe so you don’t miss a video. You heard the man. 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Steve Palazzolo and Sam Monson react to Sunday’s matchup between the Seahawks and the Titans.

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