The 2024 Minnesota Vikings football season is almost here. After a long offseason filled with questions across the board, we are going to start getting answers on Sunday afternoon at noon CST against the New York Giants.
Quarterback has been the biggest talking point for this team. They selected J.J. McCarthy with the 10th overall pick in April's NFL Draft and he started to look the part. Unfortunately, McCarthy suffered a torn meniscus and will miss the entire season. Sam Darnold is primed to be the guy for 2024 and it leads to a lot of interesting storylines.
Justin Jefferson talks involvement with QB decision
In speaking to the media after practice on Thursday, Jefferson was asked about how much he knew what the team might do with the quarterback position and beyond.
"Pretty much figured by year five, they'll kind of figure it out. They'll kind of understand who the [QB is) doesn't matter, the quarterback or the situation back there. I'm still the player that I am. So, we expect what we expect. We've been watching the film. We've been going back on the last time they played this show. Just like I said, we're excited for the game plan. We feel comfortable about the game plan. We just need to go out there and execute our plays, not, you know, shoot ourselves in the foot like we did a few weeks in the beginning of last season. So that's just something that we're kind of taking into consideration."
Jefferson was right about the Vikings figuring things out at quarterback. They did figure out the position and J.J. McCarthy is primed to take the Vikings into the future beginning in 2025.
The fanbase and national media wanted to believe that Jefferson would want to facilitate a trade but everything he has said contradicts that completely. In an interview with Ben Goessling of The Minneapolis Star Tribune, he said that it wasn't his job to demand a quarterback.
“Whether they were dialed in to me or whether they were not having me in the loop at all didn’t really matter to me,” he said. “Whatever quarterback they go and get, I’m going to make the best out of the situation, and I’m going to give them all the confidence in the world, like he’s the number one quarterback in the league.”
The element of confidence is a key component. Jefferson is the best receiver in the league and can do a lot of things with the ball in his hands. He wants them to have confidence in his abilities to make plays, specifically more confidence than Kirk Cousins had, something he spoke to Goessling about.
”It’s going to be different,” Jefferson said. “But I want it to be the same for them to have the confidence in me to go and make a play, just like Kirk did in those opportunities and those situations. I low-key want them to have more confidence than what Kirk had. Kirk is more comfortable in the system, [with] him running it early on in Washington. It’s just to give them an extra boost and extra confidence; I want to go up and make a play for them whenever they give me the chance.”
This might be the most interesting quote Jefferson has given to us. This isn't Jefferson trying to insult his former quarterback in Cousins, but rather shine a light on what he expects from his quarterback.
One of the best things the Vikings can do is to trust Jefferson. He is a difference-maker in more ways than one and has shown to be quarterback-proof. Last year, his splits with and without Cousins were nearly identical from a yards and catches standpoint. If you trust in Jefferson, good things will happen.
