A year after being left out of ESPN’s annual top-10 wide receiver rankings entirely, Jaxon Smith-Njigba came in at No. 3 in the 2026 edition published Tuesday, behind only Cincinnati’s Ja’Marr Chase and Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson, according to the league executives, coaches and scouts surveyed by ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler.
The Seattle Seahawks star was one of three receivers to appear on every ballot, with votes ranging from first to seventh. His case rested on the heaviest workload share in recent league history: 1,793 receiving yards in 2025 led the NFL and accounted for 44 percent of Seattle’s receiving output, the highest single-player share since Brandon Marshall’s 46 percent for the 2012 Bears, per ESPN. He averaged a league-best 10.9 yards per target with a 0.6 percent drop rate, and he did it while lining up out wide on more than 80 percent of his snaps for the first time in his career.
The comparison voters kept reaching for is a familiar one in the NFC West. “He reminds me so much of Cooper Kupp’s tremendous performance in 2021, only JSN is better on the outside than him,” an NFL coordinator told Fowler. “Love his game. Relentless. Smooth. Competitor.”
That quote carried a caveat — “he’s not the elite outside player those top guys are” — and it explains the two names still ahead of him. Voters see Chase and Jefferson as coverage-warping outside receivers; they see Smith-Njigba as a complete one still proving it. “This is the first year he really played outside,” an AFC executive said. “If he does it again and plays well, he can jump to the top.”
The season that earned the ranking already has a place in history. Smith-Njigba became the fourth player to lead the NFL in receiving yards and win the Super Bowl in the same year, joining Drew Pearson (1977), Jerry Rice (1989 and 1994) and Kupp (2021). At 24, he is the youngest player in this year’s top 10.
Seattle opens training camp July 25 with the defending champions’ No. 1 receiver ranked above everyone they will actually line up against this season — and, by the voters’ own telling, one more season of outside work away from an argument for the top spot.
