What’s in a name, you say? Bit too much, apparently. Mike Tomlin switched up two letters, and Maria Taylor flagged that live on air. What a way to kick-start the 2026 season for everyone.

The former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach was on his regular-season television debut as an analyst on NBC’s “Football Night in America” ahead of the Super Bowl rematch between the Patriots and Seahawks. Tomlin mistakenly referred to the Seahawks wideout and the 2025 Offensive Player of the Year, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, as “JNS” multiple times before his colleague interrupted to correct him.

“I’m not going to let you do it again,” Taylor joked. Tomlin, caught off guard but acknowledging the error with good humor, moved on to circle back to his analysis of the Seahawks. However, Taylor also mispronounced the WR’s name, struggling with his last name.

To his credit, Tomlin took it well, laughed the whole thing off, and kept rolling with his analysis as if nothing happened. But the debut was clearly not off to a great start.

The different technicalities concerning his role as a broadcaster are skills he’s still learning, and hiccups like these are expected. He began the show not knowing which camera to look at, with his microphone not always near his mouth. Taylor has played a crucial part in all of this, looking out for Tomlin.

NBC has been able to play to the former coach’s strengths by bringing out a segment titled Tomlin’s Theme of the Game where he gets to role-play as a coach addressing his team. It is his first time in an absolutely new realm, after all.

“It’s been a fun process to be a novice at something,” Tomlin said in his recent interview on The Today Show. He admitted that there is some “performance anxiety,” but he “[liked] being a newbie.”

Fans online weren’t nearly as forgiving.

One person wrote, “The most disrespected OPOY of all time. Smh.”

Another didn’t hold back either.

 “They really hire anyone off the street,” the fan wrote.

Someone else joked they were “tired of him already and haven’t even watched a minute of him yet,” while another fan just dropped a GIF captioned “someone getting fired.”

And then there was the reaction that really let loose, with one fan firing off.

 “Tomlin, you [expletive]!!! It’s JSN, not JNS. Put some respect on it!!!!!!!!” the fan commented.

He has had his name mispronounced before, too, when comedian Druski announced the WR as the winner of Offensive Player of the Year. Druski said that he reached out and apologized to the wideout, but he never heard back.

Coincidentally, Smith-Njigba had his name mispronounced soon after winning the Super Bowl, too, by veteran sportscaster Chris ‘Mad Dog’ Russo. His attempt at the WR’s name landed nowhere close to Jaxon Smith-Njigba, but specified that he was “the kid from Ohio State.”

Jaxon Smith-Njigba intentionally added the hyphenated suffix in his name. His grandfather, John Smith, emigrated to the States from Sierra Leone. He did not have Njigba in his name when he moved, but Jaxon brought it back to honor his efforts.

“[He] had to work for everything he had,” Smith-Njigba said after the Super Bowl LX. “Brought a lot of family over here, and he was a leader and took pride in who he was. … I represent him, I represent my family, I represent Sierra Leone. … it’s an honor to say that up here in front of y’all.”

Even with a market-setting contract and the title of Offensive Player of the Year, Jaxon Smith-Njigba still can’t seem to have people pronounce his name correctly.