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Rodney Webb was in Texas watching Ohio State’s 2020 season opener against Nebraska. The former head coach at Rockwall High School just outside of Dallas was hoping to get a glimpse of one of his former players, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, playing in his first college game. Webb, now the head coach at Denton Guyer, watched for a bit and then had to head out to scout a future opponent that Saturday afternoon.

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“I drove to the stadium and all of the sudden my phone started buzzing like crazy,” Webb said. “I didn’t see the texts or Twitter messages, but my phone was blowing up. So I knew he did something. I wasn’t surprised when I pulled my phone out and saw it.”

It was Smith-Njigba, one of the most productive receivers in the history of Texas high school football, doing the kind of thing that became commonplace at Rockwall — making an absurd catch that for almost anyone else would be the first clip on their career highlight reel. For Smith-Njigba, this spectacular grab was somehow … normal.

Anyone who watched Smith-Njigba in high school had seen similar plays before.

According to the record books at Dave Campbell’s Texas Football, Smith-Njigba is No. 3 in state history with 5,414 receiving yards. His 34 touchdowns as a senior in 2019 are the third most in a single season. There’s a reason some considered Smith-Njigba the best receiver in a 2020 Ohio State recruiting class that also included Julian Fleming, another five-star prospect ranked as the No. 1 player at the position in 247Sports Composite.

Smith-Njigba was the No. 5 receiver despite establishing himself as one of the best to ever play the position in the football-crazed state of Texas, routinely making plays like the one above and generally dominating almost every team he faced even though everyone knew the ball was coming his way.

Smith-Njigba was targeted only 13 times as a freshman in 2020, catching 10 passes for 49 yards and that memorable touchdown against the Cornhuskers. In 2021, he figures to be a bigger part of the offense as a starter in the slot alongside stalwarts Chris Olave and Garrett Wilson.

To better understand how Smith-Njigba could impact Ohio State’s offense this year, The Athletic spoke with those who had a front-row seat to his prolific high school career — his coaches and quarterbacks at Rockwall as well as some coaches tasked with finding a way to slow down the star receiver.

Webb: I knew about him, but I didn’t know him. He had gone to middle school in a different feeder pattern, so we didn’t necessarily watch him play middle school football.

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The Rockwall staff got its first look at Smith-Njigba during a summer camp before his freshman year of high school. 

Webb: I’ll never forget watching him run around catching footballs, and I’m making eye contact with our offensive coordinator from across the field like, “What in the world is going on here?”

Trey Brooks (former Rockwall offensive coordinator, now the head coach): Toward the end of the camp, we do one-on-ones just to kind of make it fun for the kids. It’s very limited. We teach them a slant, a go and a hitch. There’s not a whole lot to it. Well, we figured out real quick that Jaxon knew all of the routes, knew how to run them already. He’d get out there and run a post-corner, then we just started making stuff up. I was sending videos to my buddies that follow us like, “Look at this kid.” I’ll never forget seeing him run double-move routes. We’re giving him whatever we can think of, and he was able to do it so easily as an eighth-grader. And at that age, it wasn’t just that he was bigger, stronger and faster than everyone else. He could just play. He’s a natural route runner. That’s what made him stand out. He wasn’t this huge, physical freak.

Webb: There wasn’t a particularly crazy catch that he made, but watching him that early, his ball skills and ability to track it set him apart from everybody else. He has an ability to be completely aware of everything around him when he’s going to catch a ball — this unbelievable awareness of where the defender is, where the ball is, where the sideline is, where his foot has to go. It’s uncanny. That really popped early.

Webb put Smith-Njigba on the varsity roster as a freshman. He didn’t have a prolific season, only eight catches for 105 yards and no touchdowns in eight games. But everyone had a sense of what was coming based on what they’d seen in his freshman year.

That includes one of his future starting quarterbacks, Jacob Clark, who transferred to Rockwall after moving from Kansas before Smith-Njigba’s sophomore season.

Clark (now at the University of Minnesota): I came to a couple Rockwall games and saw Jaxon as a freshman before I went to school there. Some of the things he was doing, getting a bunch of touches, I remember him being the punt returner, and him doing things most 14-year-olds aren’t able to do. It was a playoff game and he probably had four punt returns for around 100 yards. I knew he was gonna be a special player watching him at that age. When I got to Rockwall, he was still super young, and I was playing Texas high school football for the first time. His ability to create separation stood out. He’s obviously very fast, but what sets him apart is his ability to get in and out of breaks to create separation from people. And obviously, he has tremendous hands. Anything that’s in his area, he’s able to go get.

Clark started for two seasons at Rockwall before signing with Minnesota as a three-star prospect in the Class of 2019. He and Smith-Njigba connected for some memorable plays during the course of those two seasons. But for as many highlight-reel catches as Smith-Njigba made in games — stuff that actually got caught on film — there were plenty more that happened behind closed doors on the practice field at Rockwall when cameras often weren’t rolling.

Webb: In practice, spring football, summer drills, fall camp — every day for four years, he made some of the most unbelievable catches. Almost all of it isn’t on video. It almost falls into the category of like, lore, you know? We’ll tell stories forever about the time he caught the 50-yard post with one hand behind his head.

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Clark: There was definitely a post that was a little bit behind him, and instead of opening up his body to try to catch it with two hands, he just kept in stride and snagged it with one hand.

Webb: You’re not talking about a 5-yard hitch route. He’s running full speed and the ball is in the air forever. He reached back with one hand behind his head and caught it completely one-handed. It was like, “There’s no way that happened. That’s not humanly possible.” But it happened.

Clark: One time we were just messing around before or after practice. He wanted me to throw him a ball. I was gonna throw it at his chest but missed a little bit low. He was walking, and it might be kind of hard to envision, but he took a step where his back was now facing me and then put both hands down in between his legs and caught the ball like it was nothing. I was like, “Why did you do that? First of all. And then how did you do it?”

Those feats in practice made the times he did it in games somehow feel ordinary to the people who saw him every day. And when a receiver catches nearly 300 balls for more than 5,300 yards and 82 touchdowns in his career, the receptions tend to blur together. But that doesn’t mean people don’t have their favorites. 

Asked for their favorite catch of Smith-Njigba’s, both Webb and Brooks said the first touchdown he scored against perennial state powerhouse Allen High School in a playoff game his senior year at AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys. 

Webb: He has that competitive greatness in him. Over and over he has played his best games against the best competition. That was true every year in high school.

In two career playoff games against Allen, Smith-Njigba totaled 29 catches for 525 yards and eight touchdowns. As a senior, he had five touchdown receptions and a rushing touchdown in a classic 60-59 win. Four of the touchdowns came in the first quarter, including the one that sticks out to Webb and Brooks as their favorite among Smith-Njigba’s catalog of crazy catches. 

The play was a designed run-pass option in which quarterback Braedyn Locke had the choice to hand it off or throw a fade to the back of the end zone based on the coverage. Smith-Njigba was single-covered. Locke threw the fade, and this happened:

Jaxon Smith-Njigba (@jaxon_smith1) doing absolutely insane things two minutes into the game, giving Rockwall a 7-0 lead over Allen after the first drive. @SportsDayHS #txhsfb pic.twitter.com/aOiYuKZxSw

— Callie Caplan (@CallieCaplan) November 23, 2019

Webb: Considering the moment, the stakes, that one always stands out to me.

Terry Gambill (former Allen head coach, now retired): Man, he’s one of the best I’ve ever seen at catching the football one-handed.

Smith-Njigba’s final stat line in that game is the stuff of legend: 15 catches, 258 yards, five touchdowns; plus three rushing attempts for 7 yards and another score.

Locke (current Rockwall QB, committed to Mississippi State): That Allen game was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever been a part of. We lost to them in 2018 and it felt like everything we did that year was leading up to that moment. You could tell when we finally got there, nobody wanted it more than Jaxon did. I don’t really know how to describe it. It still gives me chills now. I just felt like there was no way we were gonna lose that game. I felt like I owed it to him and everybody on the team to find a way to win. To come out with the victory in the fashion that we did is indescribable.

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And that was a cool thing about Jaxon. I was a sophomore, we’re playing in the Cowboys’ stadium, there are thousands of people there, bright lights and all that. But there was never a moment where Jaxon didn’t believe that I was the guy to get the job done. That meant the most to me about him. He was committed to Ohio State. He was already who he was. He had every reason to just kind of sit back and let things happen. But he believed in me and we were able to do something really special.

Gambill: We coached against him twice and tried numerous things. It seemed like they had all the answers. If he could get his hands on the football, he was going to catch it. We tried doubling him, everything, you name it. The thing that impressed me on film and in person was how well he understood the game, how to run his routes. If he was getting a certain look, he had the answer. A lot of high school kids think they have the answers, but they don’t. You could tell that he was one of the best high school receivers in the history of the state of Texas.

Gambill was hardly the only frustrated coach that Smith-Njigba left in his wake. 

Jeff Fleener (former head coach at Mesquite High School, now the head coach at Forney High School): His junior year, we did a really good job on him.

His senior year, we did a really good job on him … and it didn’t matter.

Fleener’s Mesquite teams actually had a modicum of success against Smith-Njigba, though Rockwall went 4-0 against the Skeeters in Smith-Njigba’s four seasons. In the first three meetings, the receiver totaled seven catches, 168 yards and two touchdowns. As a senior against Mesquite, Smith-Njigba had nine catches for 327 yards and four touchdowns. 

Fleener: The senior year game he went off against us. He made an unbelievable one-handed catch. As it hit his hand, he took one step and hit the pylon. I went to the ends of the earth, almost got a flag saying there was no way he was in bounds and caught that. Then over the course of the next day I watched it on video … and the officials finally got one right.

His ability to control his body near the sideline, near the back of the end zone, in tight spaces — he has such a great feel for where he is on the field.

Jaxon Smith-Njigba (@jaxon_smith1) is ridiculous, Part II.

The Ohio State commit makes this incredible one-handed grab and somehow stays in bounds.

Rockwall down at the Mesquite 1. @SportsDayHS | #txhsfb | @brianhartline pic.twitter.com/o9xfVs1jL8

— Joseph Hoyt (@JoeJHoyt) November 2, 2019

Locke: It was like the No. 2 play on “SportsCenter.” That’s probably the best one he ever made. It was crazy to me because no one would be surprised in those moments. I’m telling you, he would make those catches every day in practice. He would use one hand and catch it behind his back every single day. It just started to feel like another catch. I’ve never been around someone like that.

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Brooks: We all just took it for granted. He’d run down, make a one-handed catch and nothing would happen. If we had a kid make a one-handed catch now, everybody would lose it, run on the field and go crazy. Nothing like that would happen with Jaxon because he did it so often.

Fleener: You try to tell yourself as you’re going through the game, “We’re not gonna let him be the one to beat us.” But he’s just an unbelievable talent and unbelievable competitor with a nose for the ball. There’s no such thing as 50-50 balls with him. It’s probably more about 90-10 if it was going his way.

Some of the catches on Smith-Njigba’s highlight reel require a closer look to truly appreciate the degree of difficulty. 

There was one against Harker Heights High School in a Bi-District playoff game in his senior year. The camera angle isn’t great, but you can see Smith-Njigba never breaking stride as he snags an RPO slant from Locke with one hand before racing to the end zone for a long touchdown. 

Webb: It’s hard to explain how he did it.

Locke: What’s funny about that play is he lined up wrong. I threw it in the window that was open to throw it in. He lined up way too far outside. If he would’ve lined up inside, it would have hit him in stride. He barely got to the ball and then snagged it with one hand. I guess it really didn’t matter that he was lined up wrong.

Naturally, Smith-Njigba saw a lot of attention. So he’d have the freedom to adjust his routes based on coverage, which for him often meant a corner covering him off the line and a safety hanging over the top. 

Locke: You’d have teams that played a certain coverage all year long, then they would come out against us and play two-on-one against Jaxon, man against everybody else and load the box up. You definitely had teams that would game plan for him specifically and do things out of the ordinary that they hadn’t done against anyone else all year.

Clark: A lot of the stuff we would do were choice routes based off where the safety and corner were. You could run a post, a go or a comeback based on where they were. If he beat the corner he’d run a post or a go based on the safety. If the corner was off, he would just run at him like he was gonna go by him and then break down. We always seemed to be on the same page.

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Except the one time they weren’t, and Clark threw a go ball while Smith-Njigba was running a post. 

Clark: I threw it like a go while I was getting hit. He’s running a post and then just veers back outside to catch it over his shoulder like it was the most natural thing ever even though it’s one of the most difficult catches for a receiver to make. I didn’t even realize what happened because I was on the ground. When I saw it the next day I was like. “Holy shit, that dude was running a post.”

Webb: Watch the end zone angle and you see the track of the ball, and his adjustment to get to it. It’s crazy what a great catch that was.

The play is a reminder that Smith-Njigba didn’t become a five-star receiver prospect simply by making one-handed catches. He’s a complete receiver with speed, strong hands, elite ball tracking skills, body control and incredible spatial awareness.

That’s how you put up the kind of numbers he put up at Rockwall. 

It just so happens that he also has a flair for the dramatic. 

Brooks: The most impressive thing about him is that he had all of that ability, and he was the hardest-working guy on our team. He really helped the course of our program and that position because of the guys we have who were able to watch him. Last year, we weren’t overly talented at receiver, didn’t have any Division I guys, but the things those guys saw Jaxon do, it was incredible. We don’t coach guys to do these things, but Jaxon used to do them, and those guys saw that. We’ve had other good players who were hard workers, but he really contributed to the mentality of our guys, and you can still see it.

Locke: Everyone looks at Jaxon and sees all the one-handed catches and the flash, but every single down he does the little things right, and that’s why he’s always open. The term security blanket is used a lot, but he’s about as close to that as you can get. He just always gives you a safe place to go with the ball.

Clark: It just makes you so comfortable as a quarterback, his ability to take something that is extremely hard and make it look effortless. Sometimes you don’t even realize that the throw might have been bad because he makes it look easy. Then you watch the film and realize, “Dang that was a terrible throw, thank God that was to Jaxon.” You know he’s gonna make a play for you when a play needs to be made.

Fleener: I was the offensive coordinator at Allen and coached Kyler Murray, so you’re gonna have a whole lot of trouble getting me to say anybody is better than that kid. But Jaxon is definitely a top-five kid as far as me seeing them live in a football game with the way he can take over a game. The thing that makes him more impressive than anything else is typically when you talk about guys like that, you’re usually talking about a quarterback or running back. You usually don’t see it from a guy that’s a receiver. His ability to take over a game from that position is still one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen.

Locke: It doesn’t matter who’s on him. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing. If he has a chance to catch it, he’s gonna make the catch.

(Top photo: Courtesy of 247Sports)

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