Fox broadcasters Joe Davis (play-by-play) and Daryl Johnston (analyst) were not at a loss for superlatives while describing Justin Jefferson's 12-catch, 192-yard finale Sunday, which pushed the Vikings star over 1,000 yards even though he missed seven games this season.
Justin Jefferson deserves better than this
Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson is a star on a team in transition. How can the Vikings build around him — and how long should he be happy if they can't?
January 8, 2024 at 7:30PM
If anything, they were sort of wondering along with the rest of us exactly why Jefferson was busting his butt like there was a guaranteed playoff spot on the line instead of merely a quickly evaporating 3% chance.
The easy answer, one supposes, is that he's just wired that way. While a few players were making business decisions and a fan base had already turned the page to free agency and the draft, Jefferson was wringing every ounce of competitive football out of the 2023 season.
"I would be a little worried if it wasn't like that, to be honest with you," said head coach Kevin O'Connell, who broached the subject of removing Jefferson from the game and was rebuffed.
The Vikings lost 30-20. Their season is over, and now the real questions emerge. Among them are ongoing discussions about a very expensive extension for Jefferson, as Patrick Reusse and I talked about on Monday's Daily Delivery podcast.
The Vikings will show him the money.
What they must do is show him the roster.
Because if any theme has emerged over the last four years — the final two under a desperate regime trying to hang on and the first two under a regime determined to have it both ways — it is this:
The Vikings largely wasted four inexpensive years of the best wide receiver in football through a combination of bad planning, bad decisions, stubbornness and misfortune, in that order.
That Jefferson hasn't shown any public disgust with all of the mediocrity aside from expressing a desire to win and compete — one winning season, no playoff wins, almost exactly a .500 record when he has played — is a testament to him and not the decision makers around him.
The Vikings are a team in transition, one without a discernible plan or direction. They have neither massive draft capital nor salary cap space. They have neither a bounty of young nor veteran talent.
They are not in a competitive rebuild. It's an uncompetitive non-rebuild.
Jefferson deserves better than this.
Before he becomes the highest paid receiver in the NFL, he deserves some evidence that the next four years of roster building around him will be much better than the first four.
Here are four more things to know today:
*It's a little jarring (in a good way) to see the Gophers men's basketball tied for second in the Big Ten standings. Yeah it's just 3-1. Yeah, the schedule will get harder. But I'm circling Jan. 23 (home vs. ranked Wisconsin) as a must-see game, and I haven't done that with Ben Johnson's team since he arrived.
*Mike McCarthy vs. his old team in the playoffs? Same for Matthew Stafford? The NFC's first round will be worth watching.
*Reusse and I talked about former Twins manager Billy Gardner, who died recently at age 96, on the podcast. But Reusse writing about old time baseball remains undefeated.
*Andrew Krammer and I will take one more look at the film from the Vikings on Tuesday's podcast, this time spanning a whole frustrating season.
When he was hired after the disastrous 2016 season to reshape the Twins, Derek Falvey brought a reputation for identifying and developing pitching talent. It took a while, but the pipeline we were promised is now materializing.
