Many times in Vikings practices, while the defense is on the field for full-team work, Kirk Cousins walks up to Justin Jefferson and says, "Hey, come over here — let's work that route."
Kirk Cousins-to-Justin Jefferson: How do yards pile up despite the defensive attention?
The receiver has worked with quarterback Kirk Cousins to come up with "complementary cuts" that offer new wrinkles to his routes.
January 6, 2023 at 12:25PM
The side of the team's practice field is a rehearsal space for the game's most prolific quarterback-receiver pairing, to achieve the precision they often need to complete passes with defenses fixed on stopping Jefferson.
The triple-move route Jefferson used to beat Colts Pro Bowl cornerback Stephon Gilmore for a touchdown, during the Vikings' 33-point comeback on Dec. 17, came to the Vikings' playbook courtesy of a happy accident. Cooper Kupp improvised it when a defensive back cut him off during a throwing session with Jared Goff while COVID-19 shuttered NFL facilities in 2020. The two brought it to Kevin O'Connell and Wes Phillips while both were on the Rams staff, and O'Connell and Phillips took it with them to Minnesota.
It showed up in the Vikings' game plan for the first time the week of the Colts game; the first time Cousins and Jefferson drilled it, the quarterback said, "I could use that one more time." The second time, their connection was so clean they walked away satisfied.
"I don't like to talk things to death. So once I feel like, 'OK, I have a good feel for it,' I'll just say, 'We're good,'" Cousins said. "We ran it twice while the defense was going, just one-on- one. To his credit, he did exactly in the game what he did while the defense was practicing."
It has taken bursts of innovation, and Jefferson's on-field perceptiveness, to spring the receiver for a league-high 1,771 receiving yards in a season where defenses have employed all manner of tactics to stop him. The Vikings have answered double teams and bracket coverage with what O'Connell calls "complementary cuts," designed to look familiar to a defense until Jefferson breaks type by changing his leverage on a cornerback or altering his route.
"No matter what they're trying to take away, we're always going to be on the hunt for open grass for him," O'Connell said. "It could be as simple as moving him around the formation, shifting him, snapping the ball in a timely manner so defenses can't get their cleats in the ground. Or, it could just be aligning him in spots where he's run certain routes that they're practicing during the week, and then we build off that route tree."
The Vikings will need it again, after the least productive and perhaps most frustrating day of Jefferson's career Sunday against the Packers.
He met with O'Connell this week to discuss ways the Vikings can counteract the scheme Jefferson saw often in Green Bay, with Jaire Alexander pressing him at the line of scrimmage and a safety providing Alexander with downfield help. The Packers held Jefferson to one catch for 15 yards; Alexander, who had called Jefferson's 184-yard performance on Sept. 11 "a fluke," jammed him forcefully at the snap and snarled trash talk after plays, imitating Jefferson's Griddy dance after one pass breakup.
The Vikings could see it again in the playoffs; Jefferson said they could combat it by moving him before the snap to keep corners from getting a clean shot on him.
"I feel like [it's] motioning me around, putting me in different positions, not keeping me stationary," he said.
It's a tool the Vikings have used plenty this season to counteract opponents' attention on Jefferson. They've had him in the slot on nearly a quarter of his snaps, according to Pro Football Focus, and lined him up in the backfield at times to keep defenses from tracking him.
It only works, Cousins said, because of Jefferson's commitment to mastering the minutiae of several different receiver positions.
"We ask a lot of him from where we asked him to line up," Cousins said. "There's a lot of detail that goes into route depths, alignments, motions, snap counts, and he does a great job handling all that we put on his plate. Part of what gets him open, too, I think is, is his willingness to learn unique things. Because if you couldn't handle that, we would have to simplify it, and now the defenses know where he is and how to take him away. So some of the intangibles matter in his production as much as the tangibles."
The route O'Connell has called Jefferson's best of the year — a 17-yard touchdown catch with three minutes left in the Vikings' win over the Giants — came with cornerback Fabian Moreau lined up to his inside shoulder and safety Jason Pinnock playing over the top of him. Still, Jefferson beat Moreau downfield, snapped off his route short of the goal line and stretched to catch Cousins' pass before Pinnock arrived.
"You can draw that defense up 10 times and not have an answer for what he did on that play," O'Connell said.
The Giants might be back in Minneapolis in the first round of the playoffs, intent on slowing Jefferson in a rematch. The Vikings will see if they can turn him loose a few more times.
"When I don't have a hundred-yard game, people think it's a bad game," Jefferson said. "So I'm kind of hard on myself like that. But I mean, all those double teams, triple teams, [O'Connell has] been putting in different plays to kind of avoid that. He's definitely been doing a great job of game planning and putting me in great situations."
Mike Conley was in Minneapolis, where he sounded the Gjallarhorn at the Vikings game, on Sunday during the robbery.
