We Were All Wrong About Justin Jefferson

Kirby O'Connor   |  

Dec 1, 2020

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When the Minnesota Vikings traded Stefon Diggs to the Buffalo Bills this offseason, the alarm bells were certainly ringing at purpleterritory media HQ. The writing was on the wall for a while with Diggs’ insistence on tweeting and instagraming cryptic, half insults that could maybe be traced back to his team. And of course, his temper tantrum on the sidelines when the team was winning a playoff game.

Despite Diggs’ behavior, most of us as writers and fans were ready to defend Diggs to the death. He was, and always will be, our Minneapolis Miracle Man, but he was certainly a locker room problem. General Manager Rick Spielman worked to get rid of that problem and finally shipped Diggs off to Buffalo for the 22nd overall pick in the 2020 NFL draft.

That pick turned into Justin Jefferson, who has done nothing except prove every single one of us wrong.

The Best Rookie Wide Receiver, NAY, the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year

When the Vikings drafted Jefferson, they made him the fifth wide receiver, of six, taken in the first round of this year’s NFL Draft. At the time, we debated about the decision to take Jefferson versus an offensive lineman and lamented that the Vikings missed out on Jalen Reagor. Well, I lamented that decision.

I was drawn in by the fact that Reagor seemed to be Stefon Diggs-lite. A speedy guy who fought for the ball and could make plays with it in his hands. Of course, I get to eat the most delicious crow on this one. Jefferson is fighting for tops in the NFL for all receivers, not just rookies, and Reagor has just 16 catches for 211 receiving yards and a lone receiving touchdown.

Moving past Reagor, Jefferson was considered to be one of the better players in the second tier of wide receivers available in the first round. Here is how he stacks up against the other three receivers taken in front of him:

Going by the numbers, Jefferson is the best rookie receiver. In fact, the rookie who is statistically closest to him in most of these major categories is Cincinnati’s Tee Higgins with Dallas’ CeeDee Lamb as the third best rookie receiver by stats.

I’ve made a bold claim by calling him the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year, especially with how quarterback-obsessed the league is with awards like this. Far and away, Jefferson’s biggest competition for offensive ROY is Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert.

Herbert’s statline is impressive with him having surpassed 3000 yards passing already, a good touchdown to interception ratio of 23-7, and completing 66.9% of his passes. Actually, it’s a great statline for a rookie and one that will leave some new records on the books. He should pass Baker Mayfield’s 27 passing touchdowns for a rookie, and he has a shot at Andrew Luck’s most passing yards, 4,374, as a rookie.

These are both impressive records to break. However, Jefferson has a chance to break a rookie season record that has stood for 60 years. If Jefferson can rack up 556 receiving yards over the next 5 games, he could break Bill Gorman’s rookie season mark. Sure, Herbert deserves his due, but in a game that has become pass-heavy and quarterback stat heavy, it’s easy for new quarterback records to be rewritten, Jefferson doing this would be something much more special.

Far More Than a One-Trick-Pony

There were two major arguments made against Justin Jefferson coming into the 2020 draft. First, he wasn’t even the best receiver on his college team, and second, he only played out of the slot.

The first argument is a bit non-sensical in my opinion. Just because LSU’s offense was crazy stacked in 2019 and Ja’Marr Chase ended up with more opportunities than Jefferson doesn’t make him a worse player. In fact, one of the reasons that Chase had the season he had was because of Jefferson demanding to be covered; something that has translated well to the NFL in his supporting of Adam Thielen

The second argument had some substance and gave some cause for concern. If Jefferson is a “slot guy”, and you already have Adam Thielen–who also runs his best routes out of the slot–why go after Jefferson?

Luckily for the Vikings, Jefferson is much more than a “slot guy” and only did so much work out of it in 2019 due to his teammates, Ja’Marr Chase being the biggest one, needing opportunities. Looking back at tape from 2018, Jefferson was effective as LSU’s number one option on the outside. 

Diggs’ Replacement, or Perhaps, Upgrade

The catalyst for targeting and drafting Jefferson was of course Diggs. That’s going to draw a comparison between the two players. The prevailing sentiment seemed to be “he’s not Diggs, but he’ll probably be alright,” with some going so far as to say “this is just like Randy Moss and Troy Williamson.”

Jefferson is stacking up incredibly well compared to the former Vikings superstar turned Buffalo Bill. The two statlines look like this:

With less targets and receptions, Jefferson has almost as many receiving yards and has more touchdowns than Diggs. Giving Diggs the benefit of the doubt, he gets those targets  and receptions so he doesn’t have the big splash plays that Jefferson does, but in that case he should be catching more scores and have at least a couple hundred more yards.

Perhaps I’m not being fair to Diggs here. So, let’s take Diggs last season in Minnesota and compare it to Jefferson, assuming he maintains his same pace over the next five games. They’d both be doing similar things and have similar workloads while playing second-option to Thielen.

Jefferson comes at close to or ahead of Diggs in both the current season stats and a 16 game projection of Diggs vs Jefferson in, essentially, the same offense. Also, just because I know Vikings fans are obsessed with contract numbers, Jefferson’s cap hit this season is $2.38 million compared to Diggs’ $13.45 million. A cheaper, better version of Diggs? We will see, but it’s been fun so far!