{"id":2291466,"date":"2026-02-20T19:12:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T19:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2291466"},"modified":"2026-02-20T19:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T19:12:13","slug":"druski-reached-out-to-seahawks-jaxon-smith-njigba-following-name-blunder-entertainment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/druski-reached-out-to-seahawks-jaxon-smith-njigba-following-name-blunder-entertainment\/","title":{"rendered":"Druski reached out to Seahawks\u2019 Jaxon Smith-Njigba following name blunder | Entertainment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Druski, the comedian who hosted the NFL Honors show on Feb. 5, said he reached out to Jaxon Smith-Njigba after intentionally butchering the Seahawks star receiver\u2019s name on stage<\/a> while presenting his Offensive Player of the Year award.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to mess around and sometimes you can go too far,\u201d Druski said in an interview on CBS about the incident. \u201cI even hit him up. I reached out \u2026 I didn\u2019t get no response back, but I tried.\u201d<\/p>\n

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After leading the league with 1,793 receiving yards in 17 games, Smith-Njigba was named the 2025 NFL Offensive Player of the Year<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The tribute, however, was quickly overshadowed when Druski, one of the evening\u2019s presenters at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, Calif., mispronounced Smith-Njigba\u2019s last name several times with a smirk, before being corrected by co-presenter and Hall of Famer Barry Sanders.<\/p>\n

\u201cNjigba (en-JIG-buh),\u201d Sanders said, putting a stop to Druski\u2019s inaccuracies on stage.<\/p>\n

\n

Druski quickly came under fire online and from the Seahawks organization itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cHall of Famer Barry Sanders drew the short straw getting stuck with Druski\u2019s big whiff tonight,\u201d Seahawks PR posted that night on X. \u201cPut some respect on Seahawks WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba\u2019s name.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cDruski lame,\u201d Seahawks linebacker Uchenna Nwosu also posted.<\/p>\n

\u201cPut some respect on that man\u2019s name,\u201d Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald added during the Super Bowl trophy ceremony on Feb. 11.<\/p>\n

\n

After admitting to messaging Smith-Njigba, however, Druski then appeared to defend his mispronunciations to CBS Mornings.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we talk about walking the line of comedy, you know, sometimes, you do have to take that chance,\u201d he quickly added. \u201cI think it\u2019s not all going to be a successful hit. Nothing you do in anything when you try to pursue greatness is going to be success, success, success.\u201d<\/p>\n

Up until high school, the star receiver went by Jaxon Smith, as reported by FOX Sports<\/a> in 2022. His grandfather, John, came to the United States from Sierra Leone in the 1970s with the surname Njigba, but adopted the last name of his sponsor and went by John Smith. The next generation also went by Smith.<\/p>\n

When John Smith, with whom Jaxon had a close relationship, died in 2014, Jaxon said he wanted to represent his grandfather\u2019s name correctly, putting Smith-Njigba on the back of his high school football jersey. He has done so ever since.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Druski, the comedian who hosted the NFL Honors show on Feb. 5, said he reached out to Jaxon Smith-Njigba after intentionally butchering the Seahawks star receiver\u2019s name on stage while presenting his Offensive Player of the Year award. \u201cI like to mess around and sometimes you can go too far,\u201d Druski said in an interview […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2291467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741],"class_list":["post-2291466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Druski-reached-out-to-Seahawks-Jaxon-Smith-Njigba-following-name-blunder.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2291466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2291466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2291466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2291468,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2291466\/revisions\/2291468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2291467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2291466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2291466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2291466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}