Justin Jefferson with a full offseason? Look out.
The traits that allowed Jefferson to emerge as a rookie have people around the Vikings excited for Year 2
By Sam Ekstrom
There was a friendly rivalry brewing during Vikings OTAs between a pair of former LSU Tigers.
On one side of the line of scrimmage, a 10-year veteran star in Patrick Peterson. On the other side, a second-year receiver who is more than ready to embrace his status as the next big thing in Justin Jefferson.
In OTAs and minicamp, the showdowns between the two have apparently already begun. On a recent episode of Peterson’s podcast “All Things Covered,” the brand new Vikings corner talked about Jefferson sending him a message during OTAs.
“He put his helmet on and said, 'Yo Pat, I need you.'“ Peterson recounted. “Justin didn't want to go at no other corner but me. That's my first time I ever got called out.”
For almost nine minutes, Peterson and his co-host Bryant McFadden marveled at Jefferson’s maturity, route-running and overall uniqueness. At one point, Peterson recalled a time where he had to ask Jefferson what route he ran because it was so unorthodox.
“He almost hit like a Eurostep,” Peterson said, referencing the side-to-side hop step that one might see James Harden utilize in an NBA game.
“All his routes are like he’s dribbling a basketball,” McFadden added.
As Jefferson later told reporters, “There’s someone always watching your tape and studying your game, so definitely during this offseason I had to learn some new moves and put some new moves into my inventory.”
If Peterson is getting fooled by Jefferson’s footwork, it could be a long year for defensive backs tasked with slowing Jefferson.
There’s a Year 2 buzz around Jefferson that lands somewhere between Percy Harvin and Randy Moss, the last two Vikings first-round receivers that took the league by storm as rookies.
Those two predecessors played their rookie years on arguably the two best Vikings offenses of the last 25 years, and their ensuing seasons were letdowns by comparison. With Jefferson, however, there’s no sense that he peaked too early. He earned an NFL record 1,400 yards in only 14 starts last year. He wasn’t the featured member of the offense — that would be Dalvin Cook — and he lacked the offseason program that might’ve expedited the learning curve most rookies have around the mental aspect of the game.
“I think part of the reason you didn’t see Justin as much in Weeks 1 and 2 of the season [in 2020],” said quarterback Kirk Cousins, “would partly be due to the fact that the offseason was much shorter, or there really wasn’t an offseason, and all we had was training camp, and even much of training camp early on was walk-throughs. It became difficult to not only evaluate someone, to see what they’re ready to do, but also, just all that we were throwing at him. It’s much easier to learn it when you’re playing football as opposed to just talking about it in a meeting or a walk-through.”
Jefferson’s inability to practice with his teammates until August made his emergence in September all the more impressive. September 27 might be the unofficial birth date of Jefferson’s stardom when he caught seven passes for 175 yards and a touchdown in his first start against Tennessee.
Sorry, Bisi Johnson, but there was no going back at that point.
In fairness to Johnson, who earned the first two starts of the year, he might’ve been the better performer throughout training camp. First-year wide receivers coach Andrew Janocko told Purple Insider that he saw a transformation in Jefferson once the lights turned on.
“When you see stuff in practice, you say, 'Oh wow, this kid's got talent,' and he's doing things that make him special,” Janocko said. “He's doing things that make him a productive player. And then when you get in the game there's just a different level of competitiveness to real good players, and I believe he has that. He has that edge that he plays with that you don't see in practice, and really good players in this league all have that. I think that trait comes out when the lights come on.”
Jefferson said this spring that he was “shy to things” when he first joined the Vikings, but that was never apparent to outside observers. Teddy Bridgewater was shy. Trae Waynes was shy. Jefferson had a clear confidence from the get-go, whether it was dealing with reporters, making fun of Adam Thielen’s Griddy or feeling bold enough to bark at Cousins after an incompletion late in the season.
It’s easy to be confident, too, when you’re coming off a college national championship at one of the most sports-crazed universities in the nation. Jefferson got plenty of NFL prep during his LSU days, whether he realized it or not. Playing with and against fellow NFL prospects has its benefits, like excelling against physical coverage as a rookie. Jefferson was the number one receiver, per Pro Football Focus, against the press.
“Honestly, just going to LSU and performing with those guys every single day,” Jefferson said, “going against the top DBs in the country every single day at practice. You kind of get used to that feeling of being competitive and trying to do your best, so those game days, I knew I needed to be determined to go up and catch those 50-50 balls and win those 1-on-1 battles.”
Janocko talked with Jefferson a lot about getting to the line of scrimmage and having a plan. So did Thielen, who Janocko called “monumental” in Jefferson’s development.
The more comfortable Jefferson got in the offense, the easier it became for him to visualize how he would beat defensive backs, allowing him to focus on going after the football.
But a lot of rookies can have a plan and still fail to execute. According to Janocko, Jefferson was uncommonly good in his route-running… and everything after that, too.
“I think just the way he gets in and out of breaks, it starts with that,” Janocko said. “He has an innate ability to go find the football. When the ball's in the air and it's a 50/50 ball, then it's his, and he's going to go up and get that 50/50 ball, and then I think he's really special after the catch. What he does once he catches the ball is something that sets him apart and makes him a different animal.”
Janocko mentions just a handful of the areas where Jefferson was among the league’s best, beyond his excellence against press coverage. Considered the No. 2-graded receiver by Pro Football Focus, Jefferson finished eighth in yards after catch, T-11th in contested catches, 10th in missed tackles forced and first in yards per route run on deep routes and intermediate routes.
Not bad for having practice in a Microsoft Teams chat room last summer.
Players were on the field in the flesh at this spring’s OTAs, where coaches and teammates consistently pointed to Jefferson’s drive as a reason why his second year will be just as successful as his first year. It’s that same trait that contributed to his sensational rookie campaign and why so many other rookies fall short.
“I think just not letting the game be too big for him,” said Adam Thielen. “I think when he started to make plays and have a couple games in a row, sometimes guys tend to get maybe relaxed a little bit or maybe get a little overconfident. He never did that. He just kept getting better and better and better, week after week, and to finish the season like he did on a high note and then be able to come in here and keep continuing to get better, I think that’s impressive and why he’s had such a successful time so far.”
Year 2 will be about avoiding the sophomore slump, which can rear its head more easily after a season of unanticipated success. The second-year receiver has already vowed not to have a drop this year in an offseason YouTube video and hopes to improve his statistics from a year ago, becoming just the 14th player ever to have back-to-back 1,400-yard seasons.
That’s a high bar, but hey, it’s a 17-game season.
Keeping the Jefferson momentum going will depend partly on stats, but also on the intangibles. Fans will always be concerned about keeping their team’s star receiver happy after the Vikings had falling-outs with Moss, Harvin and Stefon Diggs.
Mike Zimmer used the words “talkative,” “excitable” and “very, very confident” to describe Jefferson last month — harmless words that can also be triggering for fans who remember seeing receivers’ big personalities turn sour on the team. But most comments on Jefferson are accompanied by compliments that include references to his high character, intelligence and strong family support.
Peterson might’ve summed Jefferson up well on his podcast when he said, “That Justin, he gets it. … Comes into work, he's a pro. Very efficient in practice. Just a guy that seems like he's been in the league for four, five years.”
There’s an inauspicious group that Jefferson wants to avoid at all costs, rookies who joined the 1,000-yard club and never reached it again: Michael Clayton, Bill Brooks, Ernest Givins and Kelvin Benjamin.
Jefferson is definitely concerned with staying great — that’s evident in the way he discusses his personal goals more openly than other players. But his view of greatness is not what he accomplished in 2020 but what he has yet to accomplish.
“He knows what he’s capable of,” Thielen said. “He knows what this offense is capable of, and he’s just out there, having fun and playing football like he did last year. But he’s just more confident and more relaxed and having fun playing ball. Again, you know, he knew going into last year what he could do, but when you go prove it, now you can kind of come out here, work on the little things and continue to get better, and he’s showing that.”
And handling that extra dose of fame?
“He’s a personality, so that stuff’s good for him,” Thielen said. “He likes it, so he’s a guy that can handle that very well because he’s got a great personality. He’s a fun guy. He doesn’t mind the attention on him. He’s not going to shy away from it.”
As long as Jefferson is calling out future Hall of Fame corners at OTAs, it doesn’t look like he’s shying away from anything.
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Great article Sam