Justin Jefferson: In search of greatness
Vikings young star receiver is emerging as one of the best in the NFL -- what's driving his success?
By Matthew Coller
EAGAN/MINNEAPOLIS — If anybody else other than Justin Jefferson wore a Randy Moss shirt in pregame warm-ups and then said after the game that they are trying to be a legend like Randy, we would have hurt our skulls rolling our eyes so hard.
It’s audacious for any receiver to compare themselves to Moss, who is fourth all-time in receiving yards, second in touchdowns and is responsible for single-handedly changing the way the universe views the receiver position.
Yet when Jefferson said that he’s trying to follow in Moss’s footsteps, everyone nodded. OK, yeah, that’s not crazy. Jefferson’s trajectory through 26 NFL games makes his declaration legitimate.
The Vikings’ second-year receiver has the same number of 100-plus yard games as Moss at the same point of their career. Last year, he broke Moss’s rookie receiving record. Since 2000, only Odell Beckham Jr. had more than 1,300 receiving yards in each of his first two seasons. Jefferson gained 1,400 yards as a rookie and he’s currently out-pacing 2020 in yards per game. He’s also graded as PFF’s fourth best receiver. Last year he finished second.
And he’s the third-youngest player on the Vikings.
Jefferson has been so good, he’s convinced head coach Mike Zimmer to push for more downfield throws. Not even Stefon Diggs could do that.
In a league with an ever-rising number of great receivers, Jefferson is standing way out.
How is he doing it?
Why has Jefferson been able to sustain his excellence in a football world marred by quick rises and falls?
Physically speaking, it’s the things you would think: He’s fast, strong and has an unexplainable instinct for finding the football and bringing it in that belongs to all the best receivers. There truly aren’t many players who have his physical makeup. The website Relative Athletic Scores puts him in the 97th percentile athlete based on NFL Combine scores.
But that’s just enough to get a foot in the door of greatness. The rest is a longer story.
It starts with a drive to continue improving.
After a marvelous rookie campaign, Jefferson knew that his opponents were going to pay more attention to him this year. The only way to counteract an increase in safeties on his side of the field and shutdown corners tracking him was by being better than he was in Year 1. Jefferson wanted to beat corners faster and create more separation, so he spent last offseason working with a balance coach to focus on those specific parts of his game and add to his rolodex.
“Working on my explosion, that was one of the main focuses that I wanted to work on, being explosive off the line of scrimmage,” Jefferson said. “Working on my releases, winning my one-on-one battles. I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job with that so far. And working on my balance…making sure I'm getting in and out of my breaks, having balance during my routes.”
Athletes are always trying to work on their strengths and shore up weaknesses but Dr. Justin Anderson, the founder of Premier Sport Psychology who works with several pro and college teams, said that players who shine right away in their careers don’t always have a growth mindset.
“Especially if they've had success and they're on top, they are usually like, 'I'm good,'“ Anderson said. “A guy who had an incredible first year and wants to take it to another level, that's Jerry Rice-ish.”
Jerry Rice once said in an interview about why he became the GOAT was that he never felt like he’d “arrived” and always spent time searching for anything that could make him better.
Man, it’s hard to not feel like you’ve “arrived” when the football world is always looking to crown its next prince.
No sport comes close to the amount of attention paid to every player and every game under the bright lights. When you do it once, the entire world talks about it and expects to see it again.
“I don’t think any of this [attention] bothers him,” Mike Zimmer said. “He thinks he’s a great player, and he is a great player. He really doesn’t have any primadonna in him as far as not working in practice or being late or anything like that. He just goes about his business. I think he just loves to go play and loves to practice.”
While Jefferson “enjoys the limelight,” according to his coach and has become an A-list interview for national outlets, sat courtside next to LeBron James at a Lakers game during the bye week and wore a jacket to a press conference whose price tag is equal to a mortgage payment on a small house, he’s only increased his effectiveness on the field. Last year Kirk Cousins had a 116.4 QB rating when targeting his top receiver. In Year 2, that number has increased to 129.2.
“What I think happens for guys like this is that they get their routines down pretty well and they figure out what they need to hold their attention to amongst all of the distractions,” Dr. Anderson said. “They are really good at figuring out the task at hand and are much more present-focused and they don't allow the pressure of distractions to be front and center. They're able to compartmentalize. When they get between the lines, they know exactly what they need to attend to. That's really hard to do.”
What Dr. Anderson says he finds interesting about Jefferson’s rise to stardom is that it happened so quickly that there were never any rough patches along the way. He went from national champion to first-round pick to gaining 175 yards in his first start in the NFL and has never look back. The most he’s been through was a bout of frustration not getting the ball enough earlier this year.
“What I tend to see with that is, there's a little bit of naivete where [young stars] don't know how tough it could be if they had gotten off to a rocky start or they had a few errors to begin with,” Dr. Anderson said. “Sometimes that can be really difficult to overcome but these guys, they're stepping into it and they've been incredibly successful and they just continue to perform.”
Running back Dalvin Cook went through a similar rapid rise. Following two seasons that were stop-and-start due to injuries, Cook exploded in 2019, putting himself in the MVP running early in the season and reaching his first Pro Bowl.
“It’s hard being consistent, period, that’s the thing about the NFL,” Cook said. “Last week don’t matter. It’s about what you do next. It’s about him responding to everything they throw at him.”
“It just goes to show the grit and the attitude that he has, of going out there and having that want-to, wanting to win football games, wanting to help us be great as an offensive group,” Cook continued.
Wanting to win football games seems straightforward and obvious but there’s a difference between hoping your team wins and being the player everyone looks toward. Players like Moss, Rice and Jefferson want the ball.
“I do think he's got that mindset of a champion, that's, 'I want to make a play,’” Dr. Anderson said. “It's not, 'I have to' or 'I need to' or 'now that the pressure is on, I have to do it,' it's: 'I want to, I love this. There's joy out there in making plays and I'm to go make it.’”
Statistically speaking, the shoe fits. On third down, Jefferson has caught 23 of 29 passes his way for 21 first downs and an average of 18.5 yards per catch. He’s picking up more yards per reception in the fourth quarter than the first, second or third. And in back-to-back games with the season on the line, he went for 143 and 169 yards as his coach pleaded with his QB to throw him the ball.
“I just love playing the game, love the rivalry and love these intense big games,” Jefferson said.
“That is one thing that I do see -- you saw it in Jordan, you saw it on Montana, you see it in Brady and you see it in a lot of the greatest -- they are unbelievably competitive,” Dr. Anderson said. “It's relentless… It's that pure fire. I'm not going to be denied.”
Another Jerry Rice story for you: The undisputed best receiver ever told Now This that one of the best moments of his career was when fellow receiver John Taylor caught two 80-yard touchdowns against the Los Angeles Rams on Monday Night Football because he was blocking for Taylor on both of them. He said he was happy to show he was a complete player.
Jefferson’s most viral moment this year came in similar fashion when he went flying up the field like a bat out of hell trying to block for Cook on a 66-yard run against Baltimore.
"I was telling Dalvin to come behind me this way,” Jefferson said. “I was looking at Dalvin, and then when I looked back at (Marlon) Humphrey, he went a whole different direction. I was like 'Oh!' trying to get back to him."
Zimmer pointed out after the win in Los Angeles that Jefferson has a tendency to make players around him better.
Not coincidentally, Rice said the same thing about all truly great athletes in his Now This interview.
“I think with Gretzky, Pele, Jordan, the thing that they have is they make players better around them,” Rice said. “That’s the mark of a champion because it could be all about those individuals and that’s it but to win championships, those guys knew they had to bring their teammates along with them.”
The feeling was evident last week when Jefferson caught at 56-yard pass to the 1-yard line and Cook gave him the football after slamming into the end zone.
“We often catch ourselves in the huddle, telling each other how much we love playing with each other,” Cook said.
What we are witnessing in Jefferson is the rare intersection of athletic skill and mental makeup that we have seen shared by some of the greatest athletes to play professional sports. So when he says that he wants to be like Randy Moss, it feels realistic rather than ridiculous.
“Why not carry after him?” Jefferson said.
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