ROCKWALL, Texas — After high school and college careers in which he achieved milestone after milestone, Rockwall native Jaxon Smith-Njigba fittingly snagged himself another notable accomplishment on Thursday night.
He became the first wide receiver off the board in the 2023 NFL Draft when he was selected at No. 20 by the Seattle Seahawks.
That's not exactly a shocker, though. The Ohio State slot receiver was projected by most draftniks to be the top pass-catcher off the board in this year's draft.
Rightly so, too. The six-foot-tall, 198-pound wideout has dominated at every level of competition in the game.
Over the course of his Rockwall High School career, Smith-Njigba had 5,346 career receiving yards and 82 touchdowns across 44 games.
In college, he set the FBS Bowl Game and Ohio State single-game record for most receiving yards by posting 347 receiving yards in the 2022 Rose Bowl. He also holds the Ohio State records for most catches in a single game (15 catches, a feat he accomplished twice) and most most receiving yards in a single season (1,606 yards, which he posted as a sophomore in a 2021 season in which he snagged 95 catches).
Smith-Njigba declared for the NFL Draft after a junior season in which a hamstring injury limited him to only three games played. He also chose to skip participating in the college playoffs in order to continue rehabbing and preparing for the draft.
He comes from a family of athletes -- his older brother Canaan Smith-Njigba plays outfield for the Pittsburgh Pirates and his father Maada Smith-Njigba played linebacker at Stephen F. Austin University -- and seems to have a strong support system around him.
As his mother Jami Smith recently told WFAA as her son was getting in final preparations for the draft, reaching the NFL has always been her son's goal -- and his family was intent on helping him get there. They hired him a skills trainer when Jaxon was a teenager, and a speed coach in recent years to help him get faster.
"There is no Plan B," his mother said.
