NFL Preview: JSN, Drake Maye, Caleb Williams & Myles Garrett Before They Were Stars

Long before Jaxon Smith-Njigba was cashing in on a four-year, $168 million contract extension with the Seattle Seahawks, his father had a simpler incentive system in place: a money chart, paying out by the yard in big games against rivals like Highland Park and Longview. The approach fit a player who had already built a reputation at Rockwall High School in Texas for saving his best performances for the highest-stakes moments.

Smith-Njigba's 2025 season validated every bit of that reputation. He led the NFL with 1,793 receiving yards on 119 catches, earned Offensive Player of the Year honors, and helped Seattle claim its first Super Bowl title in 12 years. His coaches at Rockwall had seen it coming—they described being almost underwhelmed on the sidelines when he made spectacular catches, having watched him do it in practice a hundred times before.

The AFC's representative in that Super Bowl was the New England Patriots, quarterbacked by Drake Maye—a player whose family background reads like a sports almanac. Both parents were three-sport athletes, and his siblings include a College World Series champion and an NCAA basketball champion. Maye grew up in the Charlotte area and starred at Myers Park High School, where he posted a state-record completion percentage and an 80-to-8 touchdown-to-interception ratio over two seasons before the COVID shutdown ended his senior year. In just his second NFL season, he threw for more than 4,000 yards and 31 touchdowns, narrowly missing the 2025 MVP award.

Caleb Williams took a different path to prominence. A sophomore at Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C., when he threw a Hail Mary to win a CAC Championship game, Williams entered the 2021 recruiting cycle as the top-ranked quarterback in the country. He arrived in Chicago with stated ambitions of being the first overall pick and breaking records—and in 2025, he delivered the Bears their first division title since 2018 and their first playoff win in 15 years, punctuated by two game-winning touchdown passes against the rival Green Bay Packers.

The offseason's most talked-about transaction sent defensive end Myles Garrett from Cleveland to the Los Angeles Rams. A product of Martin High School in Arlington, Texas, and the No. 2 overall prospect in the 2014 recruiting class, Garrett has accumulated 125.5 career sacks—a top-20 all-time total. A repeat of his 23-sack 2025 season would push him into the all-time top six. With Garrett now in the fold, the Rams enter the year as the betting favorites to win Super Bowl 61.