When teams hire new offensive coordinators, fantasy football analysts instantly try to make sense of how the existing skill position players will fit into the new offensive scheme. Some will copy and paste, believing that talented players won’t skip a beat and they’re just plug-and-play from previous seasons. Others know that offensive coordinators are like tigers — they don’t change their stripes.
The Seattle Seahawks fired OC Ryan Grubb after one season and brought in former Saints OC Klint Kubiak to replace him. Grubb and Kubiak have vastly different styles as play callers. And as a result, there’s a clear question that needs to be asked heading into 2025: How will Jaxon Smith-Njigba follow up his breakout 2024?
History might tell us JSN is in for an interesting 2025.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba 2025 Fantasy Football Outlook
Klint Kubiak’s Offense
If the Kubiak name sounds familiar, it should. Klint’s father, Gary, served as an offensive coordinator and head coach in the NFL for 23 seasons. Gary coached with Mike Shanahan for 11 years. Klint coached on his father’s staff twice, in 2016 with Denver and in 2020 in Minnesota. Klint also spent time with Shanahan’s son, Kyle, as the Pass Game Coordinator for the 49ers in 2023.
Much of the Shanahan/Kubiak system is built around the zone-running game. One-cut and go is a style that has bred leading rushers since the 90s. It also utilizes a fullback as a lead blocker, meaning most of the personnel sets feature two WRs or fewer.
During Gary’s final season as a play caller, 2020 in Minnesota, 61.5% of his play calls had two or fewer WRs on the field. His leading receivers had 125 (WR9) and 108 (WR11) targets. The WR3 on the team had 30 targets. His starting RB had 356 touches and scored 17 TDs (RB2).
Kyle Shanahan has a similar track record with RBs and two WR sets. The last three seasons, his 49ers have finished 1st, 2nd, and 2nd in the NFL in 21 personnel (2 RBs, 2 WRs). He’s also finished 28th, 31st, and 30th in 11 personnel (1 RB, 3 WRs).
Klint Kubiak, coming from this same coaching tree, was an anomaly in his first year as a play caller. He was blessed with Justin Jefferson’s 2nd season in the NFL. He called roughly 60% of his plays with three or more WRs on the field. But after getting fired along with HC Mike Zimmer, he spent a year regressing with Nathaniel Hackett in Denver before landing with Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco. That season brought him back to the Shanahan/Kubiak way of calling plays.
Kubiak’s 2024 with the Saints mirrored that approach. Roughly 66% of his play calls featured two or fewer WRs on the field. The only player with more than 40 targets who ran out of the slot more than 40% of the time was TE Juwan Johnson.
Why is all of this important? Because WRs who typically run out of the slot get left behind in these types of personnel groupings. Which should make you question how Jaxon Smith-Njigba will fit within this scheme.
Is JSN just a slot receiver?
When players are in college, there’s a good bit of projection that coaches and executives do with players. I still remember when some people thought Justin Jefferson was merely a slot receiver because that’s all he played at LSU. Turns out, he’s just good at football.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba, on the other hand, hasn’t been provided an opportunity to transition to a predominantly boundary WR. Over the first two seasons of his career, JSN has run 69% and 83.9% of his routes out of the slot. That was in line with his college production, where he ran 83% of his routes from the slot.
As the WR3 in the Seahawks’ 2023 offense, running out of the slot made sense. Last year, there was an opportunity to become a top-two target and be more featured as an outside receiver with Tyler Lockett getting up there in age. But those opportunities never came. When they did, though, it made us realize why he sticks to the slot.
Per Derek Brown from FantasyPros, JSN’s route win rate was a full 1% lower when running his routes outside. And considering he ranked 88th out of 112 qualifying receivers in this metric overall, his numbers suggest he was productive simply because he saw volume versus being efficient in any way.
And when an offense runs a majority of their personnel with two or fewer WRs on the field, they’re not likely to give a WR an opportunity for 150 or more targets.
We broke down the Seahawks in our latest episode.
Target Competition
The signing of Cooper Kupp this offseason made little to no sense, given how Kupp’s game in recent seasons is eerily similar to Smith-Njigba’s. Two wide receivers who predominantly run out of the slot are forced to run routes in an offense that’s unlikely to feature many routes from the slot. What could go wrong?
We know JSN struggles with winning his routes. We also know he struggles to win routes while running on the outside. His WR9 finish in fantasy last year was buoyed by the number of injuries better WRs suffered. (He finished as the WR20 in PPG.) Can he win routes while running opposite a better wide receiver?
Cooper Kupp has seen his skills diminish as he’s gotten older, but he still moves the chains. He’s averaged over 59 yards per game the last two years, but has missed 10 games combined over those two seasons.
The Seahawks also brought in former Saints WR Marquez Valdes-Scantling this offseason. While not a huge target earner, he scored four TDs in a three-game stretch and stretches the field the way JSN and Kupp don’t.
The Seahawks also spent two draft picks on WRs — Tory Horton and Ricky White. While Seattle picked both after the 4th round, both offer a skill set that JSN lacks: they can play on the boundary.
Need to do more than just catch the football
In offenses that focus on running the football, wide receivers are expected to do more than just catch the football. They also need to run block. And that’s something Jaxon Smith-Njigba is terrible at.
Per PFF, JSN’s run block grade hasn’t exceeded 50.0 in two seasons in the NFL. Cooper Kupp, at 60.3, ranked 12th among WRs last season. Marquez Valdes-Scantling ranked 33rd. The two rookies, Horton and White, both had run blocking grades the last two seasons over 66.0.
So either JSN isn’t on the field in two WR sets on running plays, or when he is, the team is likely throwing the football. And offensive coordinators don’t like to seem predictable.
What lies ahead for Jaxon Smith-Njigba?
This season is bound to be a strange year for Smith-Njigba. While he learns yet another new offense, he’s going to be asked to do things on the field that he’s struggled with through two seasons in the NFL. His high catch percentage will play in his favor, but the likelihood he sees over 130 targets this year seems bleak.
With Sam Darnold primed for regression and a greater focus on the running game, JSN needs to stand out and find a way to beat double coverage. His 0.96 yards per route run against double coverage pales in comparison to his 1.91 YPRR when facing single coverage, neither of which are very good.
All of this to say that JSN’s WR16 price tag is insane and isn’t close to where he’s likely to finish in 2025. Unless you think JSN is Year 2 Justin Jefferson. And in that case, draft away.
Looking for your favorite team? This link will take you to the rest of our 2025 Look Inside team previews.
A Look Inside the Seattle Seahawks
Editor’s Note: While this article focuses on Jaxon Smith-Njigba in fantasy football, we don’t want to leave you hanging on the rest of the team. Here is a quick look at the other fantasy-relevant Seahawks from Ryan Weisse.
Sam Darnold
Darnold was very good for fantasy managers for most of 2024. Towards the end, he started to look like the Sam Darnold we all know and hate. It’s pretty easy to look good when you’re throwing to Justin Jefferson. Things might be tougher in Seattle. Darnold is certainly not a top-10 fantasy QB again…and probably falls outside the Top 20. He’s an option in two-QB leagues only.
Kenneth Walker
This offense should be great for fantasy running backs. Kenneth Walker just needs to stay healthy. He finished as the RB27 last season despite missing six games. On a points per game basis, he was a top-15 running back. The unfortunate part of his six-game absence was that Zach Charbonnet looked really good. It’s like that this backfield works towards a 50/50 split, and that makes Walker slightly overpriced and Charbonnet a value. If it’s still 60-40 in favor of Walker, he could pay off at his ADP.
Zach Charbonnet
Charbs was the RB25 last year, mostly on the back of the six games, when he was the lone back in this offense. He scored 61% of his fantasy points in those games. The concerning part was that in the one game in the middle where Walker came back, Charbonnet only saw one carry and two targets. This would be far more concerning if not for an entirely new offense in Seattle. Charbonnet would be the most valuable handcuff in fantasy, but his price puts him more at an RB3 than an insurance policy. He’s a solid Flex option with major upside, considering Walker’s injury history.
Cooper Kupp
If you ask any fantasy manager about Cooper Kupp’s 2024, they will tell you he was a disappointment. This is recency bias at its finest. While Kupp went out with a whimper, he started strong, quite literally. In Week 1, Kupp caught 14 balls for 110 yards and a TD. He sprained his ankle in Week 2 and didn’t come back until Week 8. From Week 8 to Week 14, he was the WR4 in fantasy. That’s fourth-best overall. What a disappointment. Now, from Week 15 on, he was bad. Including the playoffs, he caught just 10 balls in the final five games. Not great, but not the end of the world. He’s far cheaper in fantasy drafts now, and could easily still outplay JSN for parts of the season. He’s worth a middle-round investment.
Marquez Valdes-Scantling
If everyone else is a slot receiver, someone needs to play the deep threat. That’s a role MVS is very familiar with. He played it quite well after New Orleans lost Rashid Shaheed last year. New Orleans, where Klint Kubiak was the OC. With Kubiak now in Seattle, we can likely expect the same role for Valdes-Scantling. He’s a boom-or-bust Flex play, but there is some fantasy value here.
Noah Fant
Kubiak’s offense does keep the tight end active, but it’s hard not to see Fant falling far behind JSN and Kupp for middle-of-the-field targets. Throw in competition from an athletic rookie, and you have a streaming option at best.
Elijah Arroyo
Rookie tight ends take time. Arroyo could have a bright future in Seattle, but for 2025, he’s likely just here to hurt Fant’s value. You’re not drafting Arroyo, but you could see him on my streaming lists if Fant misses time.
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Before you go, see where Jaxon Smith-Njigba and the rest of the Seahawks land in our 2025 Fantasy Football Rankings!
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