Justin Jefferson Will Make History on Sunday
The same song-and-dance has been done by everyone in the media, especially those of us who cover the Minnesota Vikings. Justin Jefferson is the best wide receiver in the NFL and is on pace to break all yardage records for a receiver in NFL history. The song-and-dance is a number that will most likely continue to show face this Sunday in Nashville when the Vikings take on the bottoming-out Titans.
According to Titans team reporter Jim Wyatt and Sports Illustrated, Justin Jefferson (6,730) needs just 55 receiving yards on Sunday at Nissan Stadium to surpass College Football and North Carolina Sports Hall of Famer Torry Holt (6,784) for the most receiving yards by a player in the first five years of their career.
For added context, Jefferson also has to pass Hall of Famer Randy Moss (6,743) on the way to doing so, meaning that on Sunday, Jefferson will likely be leap-frogging two all-time greats as he continues his record-breaking beginning to his NFL career.
Did I mention we’re only on Week 11 of Justin Jefferson’s fifth season?
Making it even more impressive is that while Holt and Moss both took 80 games each to reach their respective marks through the first five years of their careers, Jefferson will overtake them in just his 70th game played for his career. This means it took Torry Holt and Randy Freaking Moss ten more whole games to reach their historical numbers than Jefferson, who was supposed to be “just a slot receiver” at the NFL level. Not too bad.
Jefferson’s per-game average is absolutely unreal. Looking at Holt and Moss, their YPG averages over their first five seasons were 84.8 and 84.3, respectively. Justin Jefferson comes in at a whopping 97.5. If you are to take Jefferson’s average and extrapolate it out over 80 games (the amount of games Moss and Holt played in their first five seasons), Jefferson will total 7,800 receiving yards ‒ that is 1,016 more yards than Torry Holt and 1,057 more than Randy Moss in that time frame.
Just for funsies, that is 1,104 more yards than Jerry Rice’s 80-game extrapolation per his averages over the first five years of his legendary career.
For added fun, let’s extrapolate Justin Jefferson’s current average over the total amount of games played by Jerry Rice. Rice averaged 75.8 yards per game over his 303 total games played. Of course, that number is brought down by the last couple of years of his career in Oakland and Seattle, but what happened happened, and that average over his career brought him to 22,895 total receiving yards.
If you are to take Jefferson’s current average of 97.5 and multiply it by 303 total games, you get 29,543, an almost 7,000-yard difference. Of course, Jefferson won’t average 97.5 yards per game forever, and he may not even play 303 total career games (Rice played for almost 20 years), but even if you put that average out over 235 games, Jefferson still breaks Rice’s all-time receiving record with 22,913 yards.
It’s obviously unlikely that Jefferson (or anyone for that matter) will ever surpass Rice’s accolades, but it’s important to discuss, given the start to Justin’s career, and put into context just how lethal he is.
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