Druski Roasted For Butchering Jaxon Smith-Njigba’s Name

Druski’s online skits are usually met with thousands of likes, retweets, and crying laughing emojis, but his latest attempt at a joke fell flat.

On Thursday night, Druski was at the NFL Honors and took the stage to co-present the award for the NFL’s Offensive Player of the Year with Hall of Famer Barry Sanders. The nominees included Drake Maye, Puka Nacua, Christian McCaffrey, Tetairoa McMillan, and Jaxon Smith-Njigba.

Druski leaned into a comedic bit with Sanders, claiming the legend was stealing his lines off the prompter, only to royally screw up when it was time to announce the winner, Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba.

First, he said that Smith-Njigba “decided not to show up tonight,” negating the fact that he’s playing in the Super Bowl this weekend, then proceeded to pronounce his name wrong.

“Nuh jig-ba… n-gga-buh, n-gga-buh. Nuh-jee-buh,” Druski said.

A stone-faced Sanders correctly pronounced Njigba, but in the end, Druski just yelled out his initials, JSN.

The award show moved on quickly to his pre-taped acceptance speech, where Smith-Njigba first thanked his teammates before moving on to his family’s support on his journey.

“I want to give this award to my father. Going into my last year, he told me to pray for wisdom, and I did,” he said while holding the trophy. “Before going into that season, I wanted to be a top-five draft choice. I wanted to be a Heisman candidate, a bunch of things. Ultimately, I wasn’t able to play, and I think with that time I grew wise and figured out a lot about myself. Who I wanted to be, and who I wanted to do it for. Ultimately, I dropped to the 20th draft pick, where I was selected by the Seattle Seahawks. I can’t thank everyone involved enough.”

Druski eventually took to Instagram with a clip of the mispronunciation, captioning the post, “NOBODY TOLD ME HOW TO PRONOUNCE ‘Jaxon Smith-Njigba’ CONGRATS THOUGH !”

With no apology in sight, social media immediately called out the disrespect, and even his teammate, linebacker Uchenna Nwosu, called Druski a “lame.”

The Seahawks’ PR team then stepped in to tweet, “Hall of Famer Barry Sanders drew the short straw, getting stuck with @druski’s big whiff tonight. Put some respect on @Seahawks WR @jaxon_smith1’s name.”

It’s true. Smith-Njigba has earned his respect this season, leading the league with 1,793 yards on 119 receptions, recording 10 touchdowns. In Seattle’s NFC Championship win over the Rams, he ran another 153 yards and looks to build on that postseason success during the Super Bowl against the Patriots on Sunday.

See how social media is roasting Druski’s terrible comedic timing below.