Justin Jefferson has played for too many quarterbacks. The Minnesota Vikings receiver is hoping that ends soon.
Jefferson appeared on “Good Morning Football” on Friday and was asked what he wanted to see from the Vikings’ quarterback battle this season. His answer was honest. He wants the competition to produce a winner who actually keeps the job for more than one year.
“I want that, for sure,” Jefferson said. “It’s definitely difficult for those types of things to happen. But just like me being with Kirk Cousins for those first four years of my career, just building on that connection, building on that relationship, that’s something that’s unbroken. That’s something that you just don’t find anywhere.”
“It definitely would be great to have a quarterback, the same quarterback, for these next couple years going down the line. But we already know that’s something that’s very difficult to do in this league.”
Read between the lines. Jefferson is frustrated. He has been one of the best receivers in football for five years and he has been catching passes from a revolving door. If Kyler Murray wins the job in Minnesota, Jefferson will be on his fourth quarterback in as many seasons. That is a lot of timing routes to relearn.
The numbers somehow have stayed elite anyway. Jefferson barely cracked the 1,000-yard mark last season, which would be a career year for almost any other receiver and was a disappointment for him. He is the kind of player who makes everyone around him better, and yet he has not been afforded the consistency of a single trustworthy passer since Cousins left.
The Vikings have been on a treadmill at the position. The hope was that the next answer would be the long-term answer. So far, none of them have stuck.
Murray represents the latest swing. He is a former first overall pick. He has shown flashes of MVP-level play. He has also been injured, inconsistent, and the subject of more than a few “is he the guy?” debates over the course of his career. Minnesota is betting that a change of scenery and an offensive system built around his strengths will unlock the player Arizona could not.
For Jefferson, the system matters less than the stability. He has shown he can produce with anyone throwing him the ball. What he wants now is the chance to build something. The Cousins years were the closest he came to that. Five seasons in, he is still searching for the next version of it.
The other piece worth noting is how Jefferson is handling this publicly. He could be loud about it. He could push for a trade. He could use his media platform to apply pressure. Instead, he is doing the responsible veteran thing and saying the right words while making it perfectly clear that he wants the franchise to figure it out.
If the Vikings cannot solve the quarterback question this year, Jefferson is going to have a decision to make about his future at some point. He is too good to spend his prime catching passes from a different guy every year. Minnesota knows it. The quarterback competition is more than just a depth chart battle. It is a referendum on whether the Vikings can build a contender around the best receiver in the league.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
