If Jordan Addison Isn’t Another WR1, That’s Ok
Second-year pass catcher Jordan Addison is looking to build upon a mostly impressive rookie season as the 2024 NFL season draws closer (but still feels like an eternity away).
From a season-long standpoint, Addison’s production was right in line with what is expected of a WR2 in the modern game of football in 2023. He was a big play machine when Kirk Cousins was healthy, hauling in some sweet touchdowns when being targeted deep. Per Pro Football Reference, he racked up 911 yards on 70 receptions and found pay-dirt ten times, which ended up leading the team. When Minnesota spent the 23rd pick of the 2023 NFL Draft on the USC and Pitt product, it was one of a couple of selections that would be considered a “no-brainer” for where the Vikings roster was at at that time.
He has proven to be a lot to handle for opposing defenses when being targeted downfield on post routes, with that route concept accounting for 10.9% of his total routes run and accruing an 80.6% success rate per Reception Perception. They also explain that Addison is a killer on short flat routes, winning on a whopping 94.1% of flat routes, which only made up a total of 6% of his routes in 2023.
According to Reception Perception’s charting, Addison also excels when put on corner routes, while he struggles a bit on regular out-routes and concepts where he must work back towards the ball. His strength, for the most part, would be his ability on in-breaking routes, where he averages a 77.1% success rate on posts, digs, and slants against coverage.
While Addison is effective enough against zone coverage, where he has a 52.3% success rate and ranks in the 60th percentile of players over the years, he is below league average when working against press coverage and man coverage in general. He would only find success against man coverage 47.7% of the time, well below the average receiver falling into the 29th percentile. Even worse were his struggles when pressed, only winning 23.3% of the time, placing him in the 12th percentile.
This would become very apparent when Justin Jefferson would go down to injury, thrusting Jordan Addison into the WR1 role. In games without Jefferson (including Jefferson’s return against Las Vegas, where he was injured again and taken out of the game), Addison would accumulate 53 or fewer yards in five out of the eight contests.
Addison put up an average of seven targets, five catches, and 58 yards per game in those eight games while accumulating four touchdowns. Of the 464 total yards receiving, 123 came in one game, the high-vibes Monday Night Football showdown where the Vikings defeated the 49ers. That’s not to say putting up that kind of yardage against a team like San Francisco isn’t impressive, but having 26.5% of your total production over an eight-game stretch come in a single game isn’t ideal.
The argument that the Vikings had to endure a rotating door of quarterbacks in the second half of 2023 is a fine one and can definitely be used to combat the overall lack of production in the box score of that eight-game stretch since Kirk Cousins was only there for roughly three games of it. In the games Cousins did play, Addison put up 28 yards against Chicago (giving a pass here is fine, as a divisional rivalry game at Soldier Field is always ugly), 82 yards and a touchdown against Green Bay, and the aforementioned 123 yards and two touchdowns against San Francisco.
With that being said, the aforementioned success rates on route concepts and against types of coverage have nothing to do with who is under center and are completely focused on whether or not the receiver in question is succeeding in creating separation against his assignment.
This isn’t a Jordan Addison hit piece by any means; he was one of the best rookies in the entire league last season and will probably only improve upon what he did in 2023. Is all of this to say Addison can’t develop as a player, significantly develop his abilities against press and man, and skyrocket himself into the top tiers of NFL wideouts? Absolutely not.
However, the sentiment among fans that he was a “second WR1” to Justin Jefferson in 2023 quite simply wasn’t true and may not be true in the future if he doesn’t significantly improve or develop some vital parts of his game. Addison is a very high-floor player who will be a very good WR2 alongside Justin Jefferson for at least the next four years, and that is perfectly fine. He does not need to be viewed as another WR1 for him to be the correct pick.
After all, Jordan Addison has only been in the league for one season and has been turning heads in off-season activities so far in the last couple of weeks. At the end of the day, whether or not Jordan Addison is a “WR1b” holds no bearing on the fact that he and Justin Jefferson are going to be one of the top receiving duos in professional football for a long time.
