Exclusive betting insights only at USA TODAY.<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cThe only thing better than one Super Bowl is two.\u201d<\/p>\n
Macdonald told an interesting story of Smith-Njigba\u2019s breakout from his perspective on the practice fields last season. When asked if he knew \u201che was in for a really big year here\u201d, answered:<\/p>\n
\u201cYes. It was pretty early. There\u2019s never just one play because of the constant growth that\u2019s required, but I thought our defense was playing at a high level throughout camp and throughout the off-season program, and we had a really hard time covering him. And to Jax\u2019s credit, his ability to not just stand in one place, and only be able to do one thing, to be able to move him around, understand how to run the whole route tree, the chemistry that\u2019s required with Sam [Darnold]- that\u2019s a lot of work that takes, and you could see it coming to life every day, and that was really exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most people think of Smith-Njigba\u2019s rare ability as talent, but this framework better represents how he, his coach, and his general manager see his uniqueness. The sentiment of the \u201cwork\u201d echoed throughout the entire interview, and that\u2019s an excellent sign for someone who just got paid the way he did and the organization that\u2019s writing the checks.<\/p>\n
He also gave the rare mention to \u201cthe third floor\u201d of an NFL organization, saying it feels great to feel confidence coming from them along with his teammates and coaches. That refers to the executive offices which house the operations and scouting departments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 26, 2026, 12:31 p.m. PT As the Seattle Seahawks held a press conference today to announce Jaxon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":835500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2081],"tags":[95878,7,6,238,237,261,2635,96186,96187,95882,96812,95896,95888,96684,95906,95883,95881],"class_list":{"0":"post-835499","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-seahawks","8":"tag-accessfree","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-seahawks","12":"tag-seattle","13":"tag-seattle-seahawks","14":"tag-seattleseahawks","15":"tag-sstssportsnflseahawks","16":"tag-sstsnseahawks","17":"tag-tagamerican-football","18":"tag-tagjaxon-smith-njigba","19":"tag-tagnational-sports","20":"tag-tagnfl","21":"tag-tagnfl-scouting-combine","22":"tag-tagoverall-positive","23":"tag-tagsports-news","24":"tag-typestory"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116297411455413399","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=835499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/835500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}