EAGAN, Minn. — He absorbs body blows like his muscles are made of Jell-O. Defenders beeline toward him like missiles. Sometimes, Justin Jefferson sees them before they launch. Other times, he pays them no mind. The end result is often the same. He crashes to the turf, springs immediately to his feet and flexes his arms as if he’s pulling an arrow out of a quiver.
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“I feel like it lowers the confidence of the safety that hits me,” Jefferson said recently. “They’re like, ‘Man, he keeps catching it.'”
Becoming one of the NFL’s elite receivers requires multiple ways to separate yourself from defenders. And in Jefferson’s three seasons in the NFL, he has exhibited plenty.
His movement is distinct. He almost resembles a boat, gliding across the waves, leaving defenders in his wake. His contested-catch ability is astounding. At 6-foot-1, he stretches above defenders like a spring-loaded golf ball retriever that expands when you need it to. His route-running acumen is refined. He accelerates and pauses like a video being rewound and fast-forwarded.
And then there is his strength.
Three weeks ago, on Thanksgiving night, Jefferson exploded off the line of scrimmage and sprinted down the left sideline. Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins hurled a pass in his direction. Veteran Patriots safety Devin McCourty darted over and crashed into Jefferson just as the ball dropped from high above. Jefferson held onto the ball.
HE IS HIM 😤😤😤 pic.twitter.com/TZx8WafjOP
— Minnesota Vikings (@Vikings) November 25, 2022
Two weeks ago, against the Jets, Jefferson hopped into action from the line of scrimmage. He jabbed right, crossed over toward the middle of the field and corralled a Cousins pass. Immediately, Jets safety Jordan Whitehead speared him. He climbed to his feet quickly.
Last Sunday, those watching the Vikings’ loss to the Lions focused on whether Jefferson stepped out of bounds. Milliseconds before, however, having hauled in Cousins’ deep throw, Jefferson was rammed by Detroit safety DeShon Elliott. His body sling-shotted toward the sideline upon impact, but he remained on his feet. It was as if, when it needed to, his body added a rubberized coating capable of withstanding almost unlimited force.
You tell me if Justin Jefferson stepped out here because………….. pic.twitter.com/D4CeCvxMZL
— Alec Lewis (@alec_lewis) December 12, 2022
Just like Jefferson’s route running is a byproduct of hours spent with a sensei, his movement and explosion are the results of training. This offseason, he focused specifically on strength and balance. It doesn’t just happen. It’s the result of hours and hours of practice.
GO DEEPER
Justin Jefferson, his WR 'sensei' and the art of running silky-smooth routes
It starts with an assessment.
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The athlete enters the facility, then sits down and converses with the people in charge. A host of tests then take place to judge the athlete’s joint mobility, core strength, hamstring range of motion and balancing ability on each leg.
Pre-workout tests even extend to a player’s cognition at House of Athlete in Weston, Fla., where Jefferson trained this offseason under Mo Wells and Curtis Shannon.
Picture a large television screen. Dots pop up on the screen and then quickly disappear. Jefferson’s task? Recall the pattern of the dots on the screen.
Another example: Jefferson stands close to the screen, which has touchscreen capability. Large targets surface. Jefferson’s task? Reach for the targets as quickly as possible.
“That looked at reaction and accuracy,” Shannon said. “Nowadays, the game is all about timing. As soon as he turns his head, the ball might be right there. He was very good at that. Exceptional, really.”
Throughout his training career, Shannon has specialized in working with NBA players like Carmelo Anthony, James Harden and J.R. Smith. Wells, meanwhile, ran track at LSU and developed a relationship with Jefferson through Justin’s older brother, Rickey. He transformed a graduate assistant opportunity at his alma mater into a career, assisting athletes including Ja Morant.
Together, the two men assessed Jefferson and gathered information about him. Their collective goal centered on one specific area of improvement: maintaining balance, especially when contacted. In other words, body control. Jefferson’s goal was to strengthen his upper body so that he could be more durable but also work on his lower body to create as much stability as possible — especially important given that wide receivers are constantly putting their bodies in unstable positions.
Jefferson’s weeks were built around four days of workouts, which essentially acted as two-a-day sessions. In the morning, Jefferson stressed his body with speed, agility and route-running work. Many of these sessions included curved running. Rather than taking off directly and in a straight line, Wells implemented angled runs, where Jefferson weaved while throttling at full speed.
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“When you do that, your body naturally decelerates and accelerates,” Wells said, “because you can’t run as fast at an angle as you do in a straight line.”
The overall premise was this: The more Jefferson exposed his body to deceleration and acceleration, the more seamless it would be for his body during the season when he was running 20 mph down the field and then had to stop on a dime.
Once the on-field training ended, Jefferson stepped inside the darkened facility for strength training. Typically, Shannon began those sessions with a specified warmup to test Jefferson’s hand-eye coordination.
Shannon set up a few feet from Jefferson with a bucket of multicolored objects. There were neon-green tennis balls, gray lacrosse balls and black rubber balls. The light colors offered an easier vantage point, but the ultimate test was whether Jefferson could snatch the black ones.
From a short distance, Jefferson eyed the balls in Shannon’s hand. Shannon tossed them furiously in random directions. In many instances, Jefferson performed the warmup while balancing on one leg.
Then came the weightlifting sessions. Especially during their first few days of training together, Shannon was wowed by what Jefferson was able to deadlift.
“He’s extremely long and limber,” Shannon said, “but here he was, trap-bar deadlifting somewhere in the 400s. Like, easily.”
The goal, though, was not to increase the amount of weight for the sake of aesthetics. Instead, over a two-month span, Jefferson zeroed in on single-leg exercises.
“We wanted to focus on improving the intrinsic muscles in the feet, ankles, calves and throughout the Achilles,” Shannon said. “We wanted to make sure he was durable.”
By the end of their sessions together, Wells, who has trained Jefferson dating back to before he was drafted in 2020, noticed continued growth. By the end, Jefferson seemed to snatch every ball Shannon tossed in his direction.
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The end result has been on display in front of the entire football world for 13 games.
(Matt Krohn / USA Today)No NFL player has run more routes this season than Jefferson’s 525, according to TruMedia. Only Davante Adams has been targeted as many times as Jefferson (142). Jefferson also leads all NFL receivers in yards after the catch (508), ahead of both Deebo Samuel and Tyreek Hill.
Hearing those metrics, Wells cited Jefferson’s dogged pursuit of excellence.
“Once you get to a certain level,” he said, “a lot of guys think, ‘Oh, I made it. I got here.’ Over the past three years, he’s just increased in his processes of being a pro.”
Shannon only witnessed the most recent chapter of that progression, but his observation is notable.
“He’s got a very vibrant personality,” Shannon said. “There are some guys you train where it’s like, all right, this is work. There are other guys you train and it’s actually enjoyable working alongside them. And he was one of those guys.”
When Shannon explains Jefferson’s athleticism to those who ask, he thinks of a hooper. He thinks of wiry athletes who glide across the court. Long-limbed athletic freaks who can hesitate one way and then explode in the other direction. Deceptively strong guards who slither their way into the lane and absorb contact like their muscles are made of Jell-O.
On Wednesday, when asked about his offseason training, Jefferson mentioned the catch and run in Detroit, where the referee signaled he stepped out of bounds.
“I feel like I would have fallen on that last play that I had before this year’s training,” he said.
Does the 23-year-old feel like he has another level to tap into?
“Uh, yeah!” Jefferson said. “It’s unbelievable to say, ain’t it?”
(Top photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
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