{"id":491062,"date":"2026-02-19T22:24:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T22:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/491062\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T22:24:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T22:24:07","slug":"druski-responds-to-backlash-after-mispronouncing-jaxon-smith-njigba-at-nfl-honors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/491062\/","title":{"rendered":"Druski Responds to Backlash After Mispronouncing Jaxon Smith-Njigba at NFL Honors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"inline-text-0\" class=\"mt-[18px] md:mt-0 mb-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6t\">Comedian, influencer, and actor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.seattletimes.com\/sports\/seahawks\/comedian-druski-draws-criticism-for-mispronouncing-jsns-name-at-super-bowl-honors-show\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Druski drew plenty of criticism<\/a> for his mispronunciation of \u201cJaxon Smith-Njigba\u201d at the NFL Honors during Super Bowl week.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-1\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6w\">While announcing the Seahawks&#8217; wide receiver as the winner of the NFL\u2019s Offensive Player of the Year award for the 2025 season, the well-known social media presence blatantly botched his last name in what was ultimately an insensitive joke that failed to land. JSN has since responded\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/nfl\/seahawks\/onsi\/jaxon-smith-njigba-responds-to-tasteless-joke-by-druski-after-super-bowl-win-01kh1tr892hd\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">telling people to put respect on his name<\/a>\u2014while Druski now seems to be doing some damage control regarding the incident.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-2\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6z\">\u201cI like to mess around,\u201d the comedian said while speaking with Nate Burleson and crew on CBS Mornings. \u201cAnd you know sometimes you can go too far. I even hit him up &#8230; I reached out and [said] congratulations to him, the team, on the Super Bowl. I think that was an amazing thing. I didn\u2019t get no response back, but I did reach out. I tried.\u201d<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Druski says he reached out to JSN after botching his name while presenting the Offensive Player of the Year award at NFL Honors. JSN never responded, Druski says <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/kCDctLFTgC\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/kCDctLFTgC<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Dugar, Michael-Shawn (@MikeDugar) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MikeDugar\/status\/2024563715308437850?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">February 19, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-4\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"75\">\u201cWhen we talk about walking the line of comedy, you know sometimes you do have to take that chance,\u201d he continued. \u201cIt\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. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-5\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"78\">Druski then added, again rather insensitively, that, \u201cif most people pronounce that name, I think they will fumble up,\u201d\u2014even though it&#8217;s pretty clear that he knows he did it on purpose. Sigh.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-6\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"7b\">Smith-Njigba led the NFL in receiving yards (1,793) while hauling in 119 receptions and 10 touchdowns while helping Seattle to a Super Bowl LX win over the Patriots.<\/p>\n<p>More NFL on Sports Illustrated<script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Comedian, influencer, and actor Druski drew plenty of criticism for his mispronunciation of \u201cJaxon Smith-Njigba\u201d at the NFL&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":["post-491062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}