The NFL Mislabeled Jaxon Smith-Njigba's OPOY Trophy — Twice
The Seahawks star's $168M-contract season earned him AP Offensive Player of the Year. His engraved trophy says Defensive Player. Yes, really.
If you're going to send a man his Player of the Year trophy in the mail, you should probably print the right award on it.
The NFL apparently missed that step.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba posted an Instagram story Monday night showing his AP Offensive Player of the Year trophy — the trophy he won for the most productive receiving season in the league last year — engraved with the phrase "Defensive Player Of The Year." Just for added insult, the plaque ran two words together: "TheYear" instead of "The Year."
His caption was straight to the point: "It's getting disrespectful at this point."
What he actually did to earn the award
Smith-Njigba's 2025 line is the kind of season that gets put on the back of someone's Hall of Fame plaque someday:
- 119 receptions
- 1,793 receiving yards
- 10 receiving touchdowns
- First-team All-Pro
- Super Bowl champion (Seahawks over Patriots)
He added 17 catches for 199 yards and two touchdowns in the playoffs, including a championship game performance that pushed Seattle past New England. The Seahawks then handed him a record $168.6 million contract extension. The math here is simple — he earned the most valuable receiver deal in the league because he was the most valuable receiver in the league.
So how does an NFL trophy get this wrong?
The AP votes on its postseason awards independently from the NFL itself, but the league handles the physical production of the engraved trophies. Someone, somewhere along the assembly chain, hit the wrong template and shipped it. It's the kind of mistake that would be funny if it wasn't, you know, the trophy.
And JSN's frustration is earned, because this isn't the first time. He used the phrase "getting disrespectful" — "getting," not "is" — which suggests this is a pattern. NFL receivers, particularly receivers who aren't in the Justin Jefferson / Ja'Marr Chase tier of name recognition, have complained for years about how the league markets and packages individual awards. JSN appears to have just had enough.
What this says about the marketing machine around individual NFL awards
When you compare it to the NBA's MVP presentation Monday night — Shai Gilgeous-Alexander accepting his trophy at center court in front of a packed Paycom Center, on national television, with custom video tributes — the gap is obvious. The NFL still treats individual awards like an afterthought. The Super Bowl is the marketing machine. Everything else is a press release and a UPS tracking number.
For a sport that produces the most popular individual athletes in American sports, that's a strange choice. And in JSN's case, the choice now costs the league a small embarrassment cycle on a Monday in May, when there's no other football story to drown it out.
What happens next
The Seahawks have not yet commented. The NFL has not yet commented. The trophy almost certainly gets replaced, the engraver almost certainly gets a stern phone call, and JSN almost certainly gets a corrected plaque within a week.
What doesn't get replaced is the small chip on the shoulder. JSN is 24, just signed the richest receiver deal in NFL history, and now has documented evidence that the league couldn't be bothered to spell his award correctly. That's the kind of thing that gets pinned to a locker and quietly fuels a season.
The bottom line
The punchline is that the NFL printed the wrong award on the right player's trophy. The actual story is that one of the most productive receivers in football just publicly told the league he's tired of being treated like a side character. Watch how that plays out in September.