Justin Jefferson is keeping his eye on the competition
Justin Jefferson is keeping his eye on the competition
Vikings' second-year receiver is a junkie for studying opposing corners
By Matthew Coller
EAGAN — Not to sound too much like Jon Gruden here but… Justin Jefferson is going to face some National Football League corners this year, man.
The Minnesota Vikings will match up with six of the top 10 graded coverage units by Pro Football Focus from 2020 and that list surprisingly includes their Week 1 opponent, the Cincinnati Bengals, who graded ninth. It also features the No. 1 and 1A corners in the NFL, Jaire Alexander and Jalen Ramsey.
Jefferson has spent the offseason preparing for a league that’s far more prepared for him than it was last year. Part of the equation in counteracting the extra attention is studying the players that spent all offseason getting ready for him.
“I follow all the veteran [cornerbacks] in the league, and definitely keep in tune with the younger guys coming in the league that we face,” Jefferson said. “Pretty much every team we face this year, I know the corner that I’ll most likely go up against.”
In 2020, Jefferson produced one of the best rookie seasons in NFL history with 1,400 receiving yards, breaking the modern-era record held by Anquan Boldin. He topped Boldin’s 1,377 mark in 40 fewer targets.
When opponents tried to cover Jefferson man-to-man, he ate them up. Per PFF, Jefferson caught 76.2% of passes and averaged 18.0 yards per reception against man coverage. Only Davante Adams and Stefon Diggs had higher completion percentages and Houston’s Brandin Cooks was the only receiver with a higher yards per reception figure.
But to be great in the NFL, you have to go do it again. Randy Moss had more catches and more yards in Year 2. Michael Clayton did not.
Kirk Cousins, who has played with numerous Pro Bowl receivers, from Santana Moss to DeSean Jackson to Stefon Diggs and Adam Thielen, said that the receivers who perform year after year are always seeking ways to learn more.
“It's important to always kind of be a football junkie and study the game and if you look at the great players, the great receivers through the years, the ones who had sustained success, not just one or two good years but a decade of success, that's the way they tend to operate and they really study it and try to learn the game to the next level,” Cousins said.
From nearly Day 1 of OTAs, Jefferson started looking for knowledge from future Hall of Famer Patrick Peterson, who signed with the Vikings in free agency. That came in the form of reps in practice or breaking things down at Peterson’s place.
“He has helped me a lot,” Jefferson said. “Just over by his house the other day, just picking his brain, seeing what things that he uses against me to see when I be able to break or whenever I come out of my routes, what things he look for, honestly. To hear his answer and to give me feedback on what I should and should not do, it’s very, very good to have a veteran cornerback that plays me at practice.”
While it’s helpful to have resources to break down opposing corners, Adam Thielen said that he has developed a work-smarter-not-harder mentality to studying the competition.
“Sometimes I feel like I've maybe done too much or looked too deep into certain things, and sometimes maybe I didn't do enough in certain areas,” Thielen said. “Just trying to find that balance of, 'OK, what am I looking at, why am I looking at it.' You never want to get into the habit of just looking to look, to watch film just to watch. So that's been probably my process the most is just trying to figure out what actually helps me on Sundays, so what's going to make me feel more confident.”
The Pro Bowl veteran has reduced the amount of time that he spends trying to guess which coverages the opponent is going to run in different situations and put much more into how they play a particular coverage when it is called.
“Early on it was like, ‘OK, I have to have this written down, I have to be really dialed in,’ but at the end of the day I need to know how they are going to play it,” Thielen said. “If I see it’s Cover-3, how are they going to play that Cover-3? What kind of technique is the corner going to use on man-to-man? Instead of knowing like, third-and-short they are going to play Cover-1, it’s like, OK I don’t really need to know that. I need to know when they play that, how are they going to play it.”
Now, about beating those cornerbacks and coverages…
Jerome McGee Jr. can help us with that.
McGee Jr., known as “Mighty Mouse,” is a former D-I and Indoor Football League receiver who now trains receivers for his own company, Rome Training, located in Sacramento, California. Part of his “Route School” is helping receivers understand what cornerbacks are trying to do against them and how to formulate a plan. McGee Jr. has studied Jefferson and uses his routes as examples for his pupils.
McGee Jr. explains that before you can use any of the preparation to beat a cornerback, you have to identify what type of defense the opponent is playing. He teaches a “coverage triangle,” in which the receiver first identifies the leverage of the cornerback (whether he’s playing press coverage or off, inside or outside of the receiver) and then checking whether there’s one or two safeties deep and then looking for linebackers and/or nickel corners who might be help in the middle.
“Everything is in levels,” McGee Jr. said. “Level 1 is having a release, inside or outside and then how you’re going to attack the coverage. Based on film study and the gameplan for the week, you kind of already have an idea of where the ball is going to go, whether you’re the primary target, the secondary guy or the checkdown. That will give you an idea of how much time you have to work to set up your route. After all that study is done, then you look at the guy that’s probably going to be following you.”
Once a receiver understands his role in attacking the opponent’s defense, he can come up with a plan for the individual corner that he’s expected to face. McGee Jr. points out that every receiver should have a “toolbox” of different moves that they can use off the line of scrimmage and they have to pick out which tools will work best against the tendencies of a particular corner.
“Is he aggressive? Does he like to use his hands a lot? Some guys when they jam, they have a hand that they prefer to shoot that hand. Is he a two-hand guy? Does he lock his feet? The little things that you look at kind of say, this is how I can start to formulate my gameplan, my plan of attack,” McGee Jr. said.
“We work on all this stuff in the offseason, all these different releases and all these different drills but realistically you’re not going to be able to use all 18 releases you might have in your toolbox in one game but what you do is pick about two or three of them.”
McGee Jr. reiterates that there can be a tendency to overprepare when it comes to studying the opponent. He mentions that Floyd Mayweather once said that he doesn’t watch his opponent’s previous matches because he wants to do what he does best rather than worrying about the other boxer. It’s a fine balance for receivers as well.
“If you’re really confident in your ability and you know how to maneuver within your toolbox, you don’t have to pull out all of your screw drivers and socket wrenches if all you need is a hammer,” McGee Jr. said. “Just use the hammer, don’t overthink it.”
McGee Jr. notes that there are some tricks within the game to figure out which tools are working, including “stealing a release.” That means trying out a particular release on a run play in order to see how the cornerback reacts.
There’s endless details once a receiver gets into a route. This is where the gameplan part comes into play. Receivers coach Keenan McCardell will give his receivers film to study on opponents that shows how they play against the concepts that the Vikings will have in the gameplan for that week. You might run a comeback route slightly differently against Jalen Ramsey than an average corner, for example.
Of all the work that Jefferson and top NFL receivers put in to studying the players who are paid to shut them down, Thielen said that you can’t lose sight of the most important thing. When the game is on the line, find a way.
“You have to beat man coverage,” Thielen said. “That’s this game. You’re going to get man-press on important downs of football and you gotta win. It’s one-on-one and at the end of the day, you gotta win.”
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Great information, Matthew! This type of data always helps me to understand the complexity of the game and how much effort the truly great players put into their prep work.
I've often wondered if the football community started educating players at a young age, would their transition to the NFL be easier? Perhaps they already do... Grid Kids to the NCAA... game strategy and position technique becoming more complex as the child ages.
When will you have Jeremiah Sirles back to eloquently explain the fine art of neutralizing those Werewolf War Daddys'?
I love the illustration! Not that it needs to be a regular thing, but a very cool and welcome addition.
My main thought throughout this offseason is that the primary fulcrum upon which this season will turn is the OL, but honestly I think that there is a world in which JJ just goes nuclear and he wills us to the playoffs by repeatedly making big time catches and bailing out Kirk, in a manner analogous to Adrian in 2012 (this came to mind during the PI podcast comparing our team to that team and other Vikings "good-not-elite" teams, which was a fun listen). Frankly when you get 1400 yards and average almost 16 yards in your first season as JJ did the realistic expectation has to be regression, but there is a non-zero chance that JJ goes absolutely (CJ) ham and ascends to be one of the (if not *the*) clear alpha WR of the NFL. Something similar to what AB did, where over a 5 year period he *averaged* 116 catches, 10 TDs, and a stupid 1570 yards per year.
Is that likely? Of course not. Even if he does it, is there anything but an infinitesimal chance that that alone could cause a successful season if our OL and defense falters? Nope, sure isn't! Still, it is a fun thing to ponder - basically the entire NFL is collectively assuming that the clear star rookie WR of last year will regress to be merely mortal (even as they assume that most other rookie WRs such as Jeudy and Ceedee and Ruggs from last year will nearly inevitably take steps forward), but if that collective assumption is wrong suddenly our team might have one of the true game-changers of the NFL to work around.
Otherwise, quick caveat - interesting to note that we are currently slated to face 6 of the top 10 corners from last year, but cornerback performance is one of the least sticky in the NFL. Players consistently swing wildly from year to year in their grades. Certainly I still expect Jaire and Ramsey to be elite, but just some food for thought. I was more concerned when we were scheduled to face the top QBs last year - this year our opposition was harder defensively than offensively last year, which is arguably good given how much less consistent defensive performance is year-to-year.
https://www.footballperspective.com/which-positions-are-most-consistent-from-year-to-year/