The most interesting Vikings players of the past and future
For our five-year anniversary, a look back and forward at players who carried the most intrigue and who will be fascinating going forward
By Matthew Coller
Continuing the week of looking back at the first five years of Purple Insider, I wanted to look back at some of the players that have been the most fascinating to write and talk about along with others who I expect to captivate us going forward.
Let’s dive in….
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The most interesting players 2020-2024
Justin Jefferson
I remember back in 2020 somebody leaving a comment on one of my podcasts that said something like, “all you talk about every show is Justin Jefferson.” Obviously there wasn’t a lot else going on that was positive for the Vikings in 2020 but from the outset of his career, Jefferson was so spectacular that it was almost hard to believe. How could they trade away Stefon Diggs and upgrade? How could the NFL not draft this guy in the top 10? Was there some other shoe that was going to drop or secret weakness the league was going to reveal that would make him stop Moss’ing everybody?
So the story alone of the league (especially the Eagles) misidentifying a guy who instantly turned into the best receiver in the league is fascinating enough. What happened? How did they not see this, especially after he dominated college football? Late in his rookie season, I asked him what he thought happened in the draft.
“Not being able to play outside receiver, get off press, a lot of questions were me being a fast guy, a deep threat guy,” Jefferson said. “So now this year, I have been doing all of those things.”
Five years later, I don’t think the league would make the same mistake again. Jefferson was just slightly ahead of his time by playing in the slot all the time. Now we see all sorts of elite wide receivers moving inside to get away from press coverage and create easy releases. Even over the last five years, the increase in pre-snap motion because of the success that McVay had with it has caused copycatters to look closer at inside receiver types.
The other thing the league couldn’t have predicted was Jefferson’s drive for greatness. When you first meet him, he seems happy-go-lucky. He isn’t intense off the field. He’s friendly and jokes around a lot. Maybe people in those draft rooms took that for being aloof or not taking the process seriously. I was told a story about Christian Darrisaw that he was so quiet and chill that teams thought he wasn’t viscous enough to be a top left tackle. Misreading somebody based on a 15-minute meeting happens all the time.
When I asked Gary Kubiak about Jefferson’s personality, he nailed it perfectly: “There’s no substitute for loving to play, and this kid loves to play.”
That’s Part 1 to Jefferson as an interesting player. It comes in a lot of forms with someone of his stature. The ways in which his excellence shows itself on the field are fascinating. He is fast but not the fastest. He jumps high but not the highest. He’s strong but not the strongest. He’s a good route runner but not the best route runner. Why does it work so freaking well?
A few theories: 1) If you are 80th-90th percentile in everything, you have no glaring weakness to exploit 2) His long strides really seem to mess with DBs. Stephon Gilmore told me that corners can’t really get an obvious tell on where he’s going to take a route 3) Keenan McCardell told me that ball tracking is his No. 1 trait with wide receivers and there are only about five guys in the last 30 years who track it like Jefferson (Moss, DeSean Jackson, Larry Fitz etc.). 4) Effort, effort, effort. If you are playing basketball and your opponent drives hard to the hoop over and over and over, it’s going to wear you down.
Part 3 of Jefferson as an interesting character is that he arrived when the Vikings’ organization was in peril. After losing in 2019, they were trying to rebuild on the fly around Kirk Cousins and it was not working. Jefferson went from winning a national championship to a drama and tension-filled NFL environment with a team that couldn’t escape the middle. He was definitely frustrated at times. Zimmer had to tell him at one point in 2021 to avoid getting too upset because they were going to get him the ball (to Zim’s credit, they mostly did). But the moment that Zim’s career in Minnesota had to be over was when he refused to get Jefferson the single-season receiving record in Week 18. That was terrible. (Though Kirk could have changed the play to get the ball to him).
In 2021, Jefferson won our Korey Stringer Media Good Guy award. At such a young age, the way he handled a weekly barrage of questions during a tumultuous season was remarkable. Even more so because he didn’t know any of the reporters personally yet. In 2020 and 2021, locker rooms weren’t open and we couldn’t really get to know players, so we were just masked faces shouting words at him.
If the Vikings hadn’t gone to Kevin O’Connell, maybe Jefferson goes in a different direction. I don’t think it’s in his DNA to be a “diva” type but frustration definitely would have mounted. Zim proved that leadership creates environment and nobody is immune to being impacted by environment.
KOC designing the offense around Jefferson was smart. Him getting close with Jefferson to the point they can be open with each other was smarter. That seemed to play into the way Jefferson dealt with his contract. No leaks. No drama. Just got the deal done. And then last year when the offense was struggling with pre-snap penalties, Jefferson told KOC to simplify things and play faster and the HC listened to him. That type of dialogue is super valuable between superstar and coach.
Part 5 is just greatness itself. Minnesota has been lucky to have Moss, Carter, Mauer, KG, Ant, Maya Moore. At any given time in the last 30 years, somebody her was the best of the best at their craft so we might take it for granted. You shouldn’t. The first five years of Jefferson were in the rarest of air and nothing is more interesting than watching that play out.
Harrison Smith
Speaking of greatness, over the last five years it has been very interesting to see Smith retain his high standard of play despite time taking its toll on his physical skill. From around 2014-2019, there was no better safety in the NFL than Smith. He was darn near the DPOY in 2017 and had four of those six seasons above an 85 grade by PFF (which is elite). Someday Smith might be one of the first players whose argument is made for the Hall of Fame by showing the PFF numbers because they illuminate his gifts much better in terms of usage, QB pressures and QB rating when targeted than the traditional INTs, sacks, tackles.
It was mind-blowing at times to watch him work in his prime but as he has gotten older, retaining a high level of play into an age where he rarely see any NFL player at any position has allowed us to fully understand how much of pro football is mental.
And I don’t mean that just because Hitman sees tendencies from offenses and can make changes to the coverages based on what he has studied on tape. I mean continuing to play this long. The NFL is so mentally taxing. If you are in a position like Smith within a Brian Flores defense, the amount of work it takes to gather all that information, process it and put it into action is like studying for the SATs. The pressure of playing in front of millions of people every week knowing that any mistake is going to get shared all over the internet.
I think about how the pain tolerance and dedication to managing yourself physically takes an extreme mental toll and unfathomable discipline the longer someone goes into their career. Watching Smith climb that mountain year after year into his late 30s is so interesting because we have him become even more and more vital as a leader by example as players like Josh Metellus and Cam Bynum become veteran pros. We have also seen the anguish that he goes through every year to get from start to finish.
The fact that Smith has continued to fight the fight — through good years and bad over the last five seasons and through good cultures and bad — tells you about how much this game means to him on a deeper level than even 99% of NFL players.
Eric Kendricks
The 2020 season really came apart when Kendricks got hurt. Before that he was playing at the highest level, especially as a coverage linebacker. You would be hard pressed to find too many seasons where a LB graded 90.7 in coverage grade, had three INTs and gave up less than 9.0 yards per reception into his coverage. So much of it came from Kendricks being smart and crafty. There was an interception against the Panthers in ‘20 where he hunched down because he was getting lower than the quarterback’s eyesight and then when the throw came his direction he one-hand picked it off. He was always good in coverage but the interesting part was how Kendricks kept getting better and better, sharper and sharper at the highest IQ position. His peak wasn’t long, such is life in the NFL, but it was All-Pro caliber.
For Kendricks, something else happened in 2020 that stood out. We knew that he was a smart dude but he showed his true empathy that year. First, during the pandemic he started making paintings and selling them online to raise money for people who were struggling. He also got involved in a Minneapolis restaurant called All Square that helped people who had been incarcerated get employment and reintegrate into society. There are many skills that make up greatness but empathy and willingness to help others is probably the most overlooked. Kendricks was the Walter Payton Man of the Year nominee for the Vikings in 2020 and also led the conversation during the stress of the murder of George Floyd. Add that with the pandemic and it was a completely unprecedented situation that he handled with strength and grace. Special, special dude.
Patrick Peterson
Before the 2022 season, I did a story with Patrick about why he was continuing to play despite the fact that he had already secured a Hall of Fame resume. Here was part of his answer:
“My wife tells me all the time… ‘You’re probably the only person that I know that still has the same love and passion for the game since I met you as a rookie,’” Peterson said. “It’s how deep the game runs in my blood.”
We all knew who Pat P was when he showed up in Minnesota — his legendary career, the punt return TDs when he first came into the league and his battles with Calvin Johnson — but what I didn’t realize is how much he loved talking about football. Got jazzed up to discuss any technique, any defense, any receiver that he had gone against.
Once I asked him about blitzing as a cornerback and he gave me a long breakdown about how he would study opponent QBs’ cadences and then use it to time his blitz correctly. He was so incredibly open about the X’s and O’s type stuff that anyone covering Pat would get an entire master level class in football just by going to his press conferences. That and his incredible availability at his locker for a HOF-caliber player earned him a Korey Stringer Award from us in 2022.
What’s always interesting to me is when a question that I’ve always had ends up getting answered. In the game against the Arizona Cardinals — after the breakup had been pretty ugly between him and his longtime team — Pat’s through-the-roof competitiveness showed in ways that it hadn’t in any other game. He was mostly a calm guy but that fire burned deep in him and we got a flash of it that day.
You don’t always know what you’re getting with an older, possibly bitter player arriving in his final couple years in the NFL. It couldn’t have been a better experience for the Vikings with Pat P.
Cam Bynum
When the Vikings drafted Bynum, everybody pretty much shrugged. Some cornerback from Cal that they were going to move to safety. Snooze. How many times have we heard that one before? A middle-round guy who needed a position change in the NFL. Good luck with that, dawg. But I asked Mike Zimmer during minicamp what he thought of Bynum and he used the word “brilliant.” As you all know, Mike was not a guy who handed out compliments like candy.
So then in 2021, Harrison Smith gets COVID against the Ravens and Bynum has to come in and play for him. It turns out that Bynum had only been practicing the Anthony Harris role and not Harry’s job but he gets a pick from Lamar Jackson early in the game and plays great. We didn’t see much of him after that and then the new regime drafts Lewis Cine. Naturally we think that Bynum is going to be a backup and special teamer. I said on the podcast that Bynum presented a nice bar for Cine to reach because he was probably good enough to play in the NFL but wasn’t some sort of great player that Cine was going to have to beat out. It turns out that he was a pretty darn great player.
What we didn’t know was that Bynum is a really unique person. It’s not just intelligence and joy for the game that pushes him ahead, it’s a freakish positivity. No matter the circumstances, it seems that he always has the right mindset. A lot of success in the NFL is being able to manage through tough times within a game or a season and Bynum’s cheat code is that he never ever appeared to get down. Harrison Smith seemed to really appreciate that Bynum was always in the right place, right time and always showed up to work with the right attitude. It’s wild sometimes that we’re talking about the highest level of pro sports and stuff that would get you ahead working at Home Depot still applies.
This is my issue with draft analysis. Nobody — NO B O D Y — can ever tell you what a college player is going to be like in an NFL environment. NFL.com rated Bynum as a 7th round/UDFA prospect. He just made $60 million this offseason. That’s what makes football great, my friends.
Bonus interesting players
Aaron Jones — You want to see the toughest dudes on earth get emotional? Ask them about Aaron Jones as a teammate. It’s hard to explain. He connects and communicates with people so well and he’s tough as hell and loves football. I’ve never heard people talk about a football player quite like they talk about Aaron Jones. Last year when I learned that he was the one putting fresh flowers in Khyree Jackson’s locker, it made sense.
Anthony Barr — If this was a 2014-2019 list, Barr might be No. 1. He was such a massively talented dude who had a great career but because 1) he never quite hit expectations in terms of splash plays 2) signed a big contract, it seemed the fans dogged him constantly. Zimmer tried to explain why Barr was so valuable with those Double-A gap looks and the defensive play calling but if you get paid in this town and don’t crush it or win a title, everyone hates you. Ask Joe Mauer. I always thought it was unfair because there’s so much more to that linebacker position and it wasn’t his fault that they paid Kirk all that money or that he got hurt in 2020.
I really wish we could stop playing Big Brain GM sometimes and try to separate players who are very good versus their draft status and cap hits. Barr was a huge part of great defenses for many years. Let’s not overcorrect because we all have OverTheCap.com.
*Cue a bunch of people telling me he’s overrated.*
He was also another guy, like Kendricks, who did a lot for the community that went overlooked.
Josh Metellus — Another guy who can’t get enough football and is super smart. He went from getting cut in his first camp to an absolutely vital part of the Brian Flores defense. That’s been a really cool arc to follow.
Kirk Cousins — I asked myself many times over the years covering him: Is Kirk Cousins interesting? Or was the reality of the Cousins Vikings so straight forward that it was difficult to find different angles to talk about with him?
In 2018 and 2019, he was supposed to captain a team that didn’t ever feel like it belonged to him until the win in New Orleans and then it came apart the next week. After 2020, he was a good QB stuck on a franchise that couldn’t admit that it missed its window.
In 2022 and 2023 because Kirk was so much more at ease with Kevin O’Connell. In big moments, he was way more confident. The team became his over those two years. That was interesting to see come to fruition. Yet there was still a pang of him feeling slighted because of the contract stuff.
Did anybody else think that if Kirk had just taken a little less money and worried about what the “money represents” a little less that his teams would have been better and he might have been happier? Maybe that was just me.
And he was very insightful at the podium and willing to talk about how football really worked for quarterbacks rather than just giving PR-ish answers. He won the Korey Stringer Award in 2023 because of his openness throughout the year and willingness to detail the challenges of his Achilles injury.
It certainly wasn’t interesting that a lot of folks on the internet tried to spin reasoned criticisms of Kirk and the struggles of building around his contract to be “hate.” That was boring.
Oh, here’s the one-on-one article I wrote about Kirk’s relationship with his hometown newspaper — that he took the time to do with me during the middle of the week while his team was 1-4.
The most interesting players of the next five years
JJ McCarthy
Captain Obvious Insider here to declare that McCarthy will be interesting to follow.
Allow me to take a slightly different angle on this one. The interesting part about following McCarthy is that we haven’t had a chance to see a young quarterback go through the process of learning the ropes in the NFL in a really long time with the Vikings franchise.
I wasn’t covering the Vikings yet when Teddy Bridgewater came in against the Atlanta Falcons and threw for 317 yards in a 41-28 win and then the next time he played was a three-interception game that they lost 17-3 to Detroit. Seasons in the NFL are always a roller coaster for quarterbacks — even when the team wins 13 or 14 games — but when your team has a young QB with super high expectations it’s a roller coaster with rockets strapped to the back of the car. As Homer Simpson once said, “the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, the creamy middle.” It will be fascinating to see how everybody navigates that, from McCarthy himself to KOC, Justin Jefferson, Ryan Kelly, Aaron Jones and on and on.
It is a new feeling for Vikings fans to feel like they are walking up to the edge of something that could be great. A good percentage of the fans might have felt that way in 2018 but this particular brand of excitement hasn’t been here since the 2016 preseason.
Justin Jefferson
Yes, Jefferson makes the list twice because he is entering the second half of his prime at a moment where the Vikings need him most. He has already established himself as the best receiver in the NFL and a guy who is capable of elevating any quarterback who hucks him the pigskin but this is different territory.
Last year Sam Darnold was still a veteran quarterback with a ton of experience in the league. Kirk Cousins had won many games before ever throwing a pass to Jefferson. Now he is taking on the task of guiding a young quarterback through the ups and downs, which might take some patience and some guidance rather than just doing his job. Jefferson’s evolution could be like a Larry Fitzgerald or Hines Ward when Big Ben first got there.
Jonathan Greenard
When Greenard was with the Texans in 2023, he was very good. Last year he was great. He finished third in the NFL in total QB pressures and led the league in the PFF “STOPS,” which is tackles that are on negative plays for the offense.
Once you have reached this level, there will be expectations that you stay there. In a year, Greenard went from a guy that we figured would help the defense to somebody who now has to perform at the same level as the Myles Garretts and Nick Bosas of the world. That’s a great place to be but it’s also a big role on a defense that is expected to be in the top five.
Greenard is also an interesting guy. He wasn’t the highest recruited player or drafted player but he’s highly intelligent and driven so his viewpoints on the game and the defense are always appreciated.
Dallas Turner
I know I’m the person asking folks to take off their Ernie Accorsi hats sometimes and just judge football players for the way that they impact the team’s ability to win football games in a given year. Dallas Turner might not ever be “worth” what they gave up for him in the same way Anthony Barr didn’t justify his contract but that doesn’t mean that he can’t be a very good contributor.
So the question is: Are we going to be talking about him as a very good contributor or a disappointment or a star? Everything is still on the table. Last year was really tough for him. Coming into the league very young and behind Greenard and Van Ginkel and the fact that he was close with Khyree Jackson.
There is at least some evidence that he was going in the right direction during the second half of the season and this offseason. His snap counts went up and he started to make splash plays. Also his teammates came out in support of his work ethic when they talked at offseason workouts and the front office did not sign any veteran edge rushers.
It’s hard to know what he’s going to be but the arrow should be pointing up going forward. If it isn’t, let the second-guessing begin.
Jordan Addison
There isn’t much question about what Addison can be as a player. He’s a dynamic route runner and one of the best deep contested-catch receivers in the league despite his lack of special height or strength. The main questions are whether he can continue to keep his nose clean off the field, if there is another level to his game and whether he is going to be a long-term part of the team as WR2 or if he will eventually seek an opportunity elsewhere as WR1.
If Addison takes it to another level and doesn’t have any further issues, the Vikings’ claims to the No. 1 spot as having the best duo in the NFL will be almost untouchable outside of Cincinnati. If anything goes wrong or his game stagnates or he becomes frustrated by the shortage of targets as his contract future gets closer.
Bonus
Donovan Jackson — One player can’t change an entire O-line but he sure can reshape it with the right pieces around him. Jackson has that potential.
Blake Cashman — If the Vikings defense is great this year, Cashman may finally get recognized for his impact.
Will Reichard — I don’t have to explain this one.
Tai Felton — His speed and playmaking make him an intriguing prospect going forward.
Great list. I'm going to add to the bonus interesting players: Josh Dobbs. I'm always, always, always going to add Josh Dobbs. I don't care if his time here, and his impact here, was the briefest blink of an eye, but if you want interesting, that guy was INTERESTING. (No bias at all here toward aerospace engineers, says this mom of an aerospace engineering student).