A wide receiver has never won the league’s top regular-season award but the impact these two stars have had on their quarterbacks and teams could snap that streak.
The Vikings’ chaotic 33–30 overtime win over the Bills on Sunday was a boot heel to the NFL anthill, sending perceived structure and order into disarray. Consider, just in the moments following the game, what kind of real damage was done to everything we believed heading into the weekend.
• The Dolphins (7–3) are now leading the AFC East.
• The Bills (6–3), for the first time this season, have less than a 50% chance of winning their division, according to FiveThirtyEight. Their odds to win the Super Bowl have been almost cut in half in a matter of weeks.
• The Vikings (8–1) are making a legitimate case as the second-best team in their conference, and next week’s game against the Cowboys could be one of the most significant games remaining on the 2022 schedule.
• Josh Allen looks fallible (two red zone interceptions), and Stefon Diggs, following the game, talked about the Bills starting to “blink” in pressure situations.
Gregory Fisher/USA TODAY Sports (Jefferson); Sam Navarro/USA TODAY Sports (Hill)
But one race we’re here to discuss more thoroughly is the legitimate emergence of not one, but two legitimate MVP candidates who have had their credentials bolstered by the results of this game. Both play wide receiver. And a wide receiver, in case you may have forgotten, has never won the MVP award.
We cannot discuss Bills-Vikings without discussing Justin Jefferson, who finished the game with 10 catches for 194 yards and a touchdown. NFL’s NextGenStats noted that nine of his 10 catches had less than a 50% chance of being caught, the best single game in that regard the service has recorded. Jefferson has a catch percentage more than a full percentage point above expectation. He’s already catching nearly 70% of his targets as defenses scramble each week to stop him. His own coach, Kevin O’Connell, admitted earlier this season there are about eight or nine snaps a game in which Jefferson is not subjected to a double team. His fourth-quarter catch against the Bills on fourth-and-18—which had him with a single arm raised posted up against a defensive back like some bygone era NBA center—was perhaps the greatest single play of the season. It swung the Bills’ potential win percentage from 92.9% all the way down to 50%. One single play, which could not have been made by any other person on the field, in that stadium, in that state, and perhaps in that entire geographical region, did that.
His touchdown catch, the Vikings’ first score of the game, was thrown a bit behind him toward his back shoulder, and he still managed to adjust his route, vice-grip the football and score unbothered. Truly, in that moment, the only thing that seemed to cause him any distress was a celebration so raucous that he was unable to complete his trademark post-score “Griddy” celebration.
A highlight reel of this game would be nearly a half-hour long, and Jefferson would factor into almost 25 of those minutes.
Thanks to Jefferson, the Dolphins are also firmly in the NFL’s upper crust. They have almost a 50% chance of winning the AFC East and currently hold a tiebreaker over the Bills. Off the field, we can certainly credit their own emergence to a coaching change and a wide-open embrace of the team’s personnel quirks from head coach Mike McDaniel and offensive coordinator Frank Smith. On the field, most of this progress requires Tyreek Hill as a conduit.
Hill “only” had five catches for 44 yards and a touchdown on six targets Sunday. In terms of offensive output, it was one of his worst games of the season (Hill has games of 12 catches for 188 yards, 12 catches for 177 yards, 10 catches for 160 yards and 11 catches for 190 yards).
Hill plays in an offshoot of a traditional Kyle Shanahan offense, while Jefferson plays in something more flavored by Sean McVay, two systems that are far more different than described.
But the similarity, and the important one as it pertains to this piece, is how vital a single receiver can be to generating all the efficiency we see on the field. Cooper Kupp and the Rams is a prime example. Julio Jones and the Falcons during their Super Bowl run is another. Davante Adams and the Packers was a third, which is becoming more glaringly obvious by the week. If you remove any of them from the scheme, the entire thing unravels like a toddler’s shoelace. The threat of Hill’s speed, for example, is the foundation on which all of Miami’s sweeps, misdirections and route concepts are built. A team’s fear of the Dolphins is rooted in Hill.
The intrigue in both Minnesota and Miami is that we don’t have Matthew Stafford, Matt Ryan or Aaron Rodgers at quarterback. We have two players, Kirk Cousins and Tua Tagovailoa, who, even the most optimistic fan, would consider limited in some respect. Cousins is maddeningly productive and accurate, but has a firm ceiling. Tagovailoa, prior to this year, was inconsistent, jumpy and scattershot with the football. We’re seeing more of a direct elevation, one that we cannot responsibly attribute to a quarterback alone.
Five days ago, you could have wagered $100 on Jefferson to win the MVP award and netted more than $12,000 at most major sportsbooks. Hill, meanwhile, would net a $6,600 return. Both of them trailed Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith in that regard.
That won’t be the case next week. At least it shouldn’t be. The more that we accept the Vikings and Dolphins will be a major part of the 2022 NFL story, the more we cannot ignore how much Jefferson and Hill have been directly responsible for the development. Sunday made sure we can’t ignore it any longer.
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