Packer Central

100 Days of Mocks: Packers Pick Pair of Pass-Catchers

With 83 days until the start of the 2023 NFL Draft, the Green Bay Packers picked a receiver and a tight end in a pair of new mock drafts.

Bill Huber

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GREEN BAY, Wis. – The start of the 2023 NFL Draft is 83 days away. Our 100 Days of Mocks series continues with the Green Bay Packers selecting that elusive first-round receiver.

In his first-round mock at Yahoo Sports, Charles McDonald went with Ohio State’s Jaxon Smith-Njigba.

“Smith-Njigba is a smaller wide receiver than the Packers usually add to their team, but they need talent at wideout. Smith-Njigba could be the eventual Randall Cobb replacement for Green Bay,” McDonald wrote.

Listed at 6-foot-1 and 200 pounds by OSU, Smith-Njigba emerged as one of the top receivers in the nation in 2021, when he caught 95 passes for 1,606 yards and nine touchdowns. That was highlighted in the Rose Bowl against Utah, when he caught 15 passes for an FBS-bowl-record 347 yards in a 48-45 victory.

He caught only five passes in 2022 due to a hamstring injury that had ESPN.com’s Todd McShay questioning Smith-Njigba’s desire.

“There are a lot of reports from NFL scouts that I’ve talked to [who] said he’s healthy enough to play and he’s protecting himself for the draft,” McShay said. “I got news for every prospect out there: NFL teams know. They know what you had for lunch last Thursday,” he continued. “They’re gonna know whether you’re healthy or not and if you’re healthy enough to play, you need to be out there with your teammates and play.”

That, in turn, led to a rebuke by Smith-Njigba’s family.

One of the members of his family is older brother Canaan. In June, he made his Major League Baseball debut and cracked a double in his first career at-bat with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

“He’s one of my heroes,” Jaxon Smith-Njigba told Cleveland.com. “He sets the standard for me and tells me how great I am or tells me how bad I am all the time. For him to be in my ear is one of the reasons why I’m here today.”

The boys were driven by their father, who put them through two-a-day workouts from an early age. They sprinted up a big hill behind the local Walmart, boxed and worked on their skills hour after hour, day after day.

"We were competitors," Canaan told Fox Sports. "We didn’t dread it. It was more like, this is the work we put in so when we play other kids in the neighborhood, we’ll be better than everyone.

"... Our best days are when we’re all together, having a good workout. Us competing, running up that hill — and obviously I was bigger, stronger and faster so I was beating Jaxon — playing one-on-one, my dad being the all-time quarterback. Those were the best days."

Smith-Njigba's grandparents are from Sierra Leone. When they arrived in the United States, they scrapped their last name of Njigba and went with Smith, the surname of one of their sponsors. It wasn’t until high school that Jaxon went with the hyphenated name.

"It’s our blood," Jaxon said. "My dad made sure we knew where we came from and our background and how our grandfather had to work for everything and change his name to get jobs. We know things aren’t going to be given to us. We know we have to work for it."

Meanwhile, in a trade-heavy mock at Pro Football Network, Arif Hasan went with a familiar choice with Notre Dame tight end Michael Mayer.

“The Packers have rarely invested in tight end, and it’s not as if Robert Tonyan is a bad player,” Hasan wrote. “But getting a tight end of the future like Michael Mayer to pair with Love, one that can play right away as a blocker and contested-catch receiver, should allow the Packers to win in the air with Tonyan, Christian Watson, Romeo Doubs, or on the ground with their stable of running backs.

Among all tight ends in FBS, Mayer was second with 67 receptions, third with 809 yards and first with nine touchdowns. He’s a sure-handed receiver who “runs … like a Mack truck” and is a strong blocker.

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100 Days of Mocks

Starting Jan. 17, when there were 100 days until the start of the NFL Draft, we started our mock-worthy goal of 100 mock drafts in 100 days. Here’s the 100-day-countdown series.

84 days: Aaron Rodgers traded for extra first-round pick

85 days: PFF picks a pass rusher

86 days: Tight end in NFL Draft Bible Mock

87 days: Packers trade back, get extra second-rounder

88 days: Sorry, vacation day.

89 days: A “Eureka!” moment in two-round mock

90 days: Playmaking cornerback at PFF

91 days: Three defensive backs in seven-round mock

92 days: Kiper takes a tight end

93 days: Safety first for Bucky Brooks in NFL.com mock

94 days: College Football News mocks Mayer

95 days: Two firsts if Rodgers is traded

96 days: NFL.com’s Daniel Jeremiah goes back to Georgia

97 days: This pick would break a long drought

98 days: Stud tight end

99 days: Trading for outside linebacker

100 days: First-round quarterback?

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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.

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