The Seattle Seahawks were the story of the 2025 NFL season, as they successfully navigated the toughest division in the NFL on the way to the No. 1 seed in the NFC, and then went 3-0 in the postseason en route to a Super Bowl LX victory.
The Seahawks couldn’t have hoisted the Lombardi Trophy without their new WR1, Jaxon Smith-Njigba. JSN caught 119 passes for a league-leading 1,793 yards and 10 touchdowns in the regular season, which earned him Offensive Player of the Year honors, plus a record four-year, $168.6 million extension that made him the highest-paid wide receiver in NFL history.
Defenses learned last year they had to respect JSN, but he’s still being disrespected by the league. When his Offensive Player of the Year trophy arrived from the NFL Honors, Smith-Njigba revealed via Instagram that it read DEFENSIVE Player of the Year. In fact, there was no space in between “the” and “year.” So, his trophy read “2025 Defensive Player of theyear.” Yikes.
It’s actually hard to tell if the typo came on the first letter or second letter. The “D” could actually be an “O,” and the “E” should be an “F.” Maybe it reads “Oefensive Player of the Year.” Either way, clearly a mistake was made.
“I really wanna expose them though,” JSN mentioned in his video posted to social media. “It’s getting disrespectful, guys.”
Smith-Njigba also wrote, “Just keep the award at this point. Leave it in the history books tho.”
According to Pro Football Talk, the NFL makes the trophies for these awards, not the Associated Press, who handles the voting.
What’s more is that this was not the first time JSN was disrespected in winning Offensive Player of the Year. When comedian Druski unveiled Smith-Njigba as the winner of the award at NFL Honors, he did not pronounce JSN’s last name correctly, making it sound like something it wasn’t. That something was a racial slur. Druski apologized after the fact.
No mistake on a trophy can take away what Smith-Njigba accomplished last year, as he became the fifth player to lead the league in receiving yards and win the Super Bowl in the same season, joining Drew Pearson, Jerry Rice, who did it twice, and Cooper Kupp. In 20 total games, Smith-Njigba recorded 1,989 yards receiving, which ranked third-most in NFL history.
