Liquid 💀🙏 ✝️

Jaxon Smith-Njigba write up I feel like a lot of the NFL world is sleeping on the fact that JSN just had the 8th best season in NFL history when it comes to receiving yards. And that he did so on a team that was 29th in the NFL in passing attempts. He did that playing an average of 49 snaps a game which was 42nd amongst all NFL wide receivers. So needless to say, he was unbelievably efficient. Historically efficient even. And that's not because he was force-fed targets necessarily. It's because the talent, and what he puts on tape, demands it. We've all seen it going viral recently, but his superpower is he has no tell with his routes, he doesn't telegraph, he doesn't give it away, there's no indicator of what he's going to do. He doesn't have to change the positioning of his body to break down. You can say that about maybe one other receiver in the league. It's beyond rare. And he's able to do this because of his rare fluidity which shows up across his game. There's no restriction as to what he can do movement wise frankly. He gets into his breaks and out without a sign of stiffness and glides out of his breaks. He is the best WR at running double moves because he's able to cut without losing any momentum. And he's deadly on speed cuts and doesn't lose momentum because of that fluidity and ankle flexion he has. Also, he found another gear last year pushing vertical. He's always had good short area quickness and burst off the line. But he's never been the best at pulling away vertical and being that truly elite deep threat. But he found something last year. He was consistently winning vertical and pulling away from DBs with ease. And he went from a solid deep threat to one of the most dangerous receivers at the third level in the game You combine that fluidity, his stem manipulation, and that new gear he found. And the fact that he is probably the best salesman at the break in the league. And you have the best route runner in the NFL. He has access to the entire route tree, and is essentially elite at all of the core 9 routes. He's borderline unstoppable 1 on 1. And he's also very good against zone coverage. He consistently settles between those tight windows, sits down and shows his eyes quickly to Sam on quick concepts and just has excellent timing and spacial awareness in general. And you could see him and Sam developing chemistry as the year progressed, on those plays. Which makes me believe JSN has not yet hit his ceiling. That and a few other reasons. There's very few gripes about his game. He has some focus drops. Five drops isn't anything bad, but he dropped a couple of layups. But it's not anything egregious. And his YAC is good and looked like it was getting better throughout the year vision wise. But he still shows a habit sometimes of going backwards, and he just doesn't break many tackles after the catch. He can burn angles and pull away from defenders on slants and deep crossers. But I wouldn't count on him to break tackles on a bubble screen or something like that. Before watching his tape in depth I had JSN WR3 in the NFL. But I think he's pretty comfortably WR2 now. I mean the guy just had 1800 yd on 119 catches at 23 years old. That's just absurd. His routes are pure art, he's elite against press man, man coverage and zone coverage. He has great hands, is quite possibly the most clutch WR in the NFL, and he's good after the catch. He's truly a special player and took his game to another level this past year. I don't think it's out of the question for him to break the single season receiving yards record at some point in his career. Super excited to see him and Sam continue to develop that connection and chemistry. Skies the limit for JSN. Thank y'all for reading.