Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson has taken the league by storm. Since being selected No. 22 overall in the 2020 NFL Draft, he has cemented his status as one of the best young players in the league.
The LSU product hit the ground running as a rookie and hasn’t slowed down since. He finished second in the Offensive Rookie of the Year voting behind Justin Herbert, who won the award in a landslide. Justin Jefferson didn’t come away empty-handed, however, earning a spot on the All-Pro Second Team and Pro Bowl.
In that rookie season, he caught 88 passes for 1,400 yards and seven touchdowns. He improved upon those numbers in his sophomore season, catching 108 passes for 1,616 yards and 10 touchdowns. Once again, he earned a spot on the All-Pro Second Team and Pro Bowl rosters.
This past season, Justin Jefferson took his game to yet another level. He led the NFL in receptions and yardage with 128 catches for 1,809 yards, adding eight touchdowns. He finished fifth in the MVP voting while winning the Offensive Player of the Year award, earning a third-straight Pro Bowl and All-Pro First-Team spot for the first time.
If Justin Jefferson keeps up this pace of production, he could rewrite a lot of the wide receiver record books. One team that he especially enjoys terrorizing is the Vikings’ NFC North rivals, the Chicago Bears.
The star receiver has caught 41 passes for 585 yards and two touchdowns in six matchups against them; only the Detroit Lions has he had more receiving yards against in his career. But, there is one statistic that will cause jaws to drop when comparing Justin Jefferson to the Bears.
The all-time leader in receiving yards for the Bears is Johnny Morris with 5,059. Justin Jefferson has already compiled 4,825 yards in his career, meaning he needs only 235 more yards to surpass Chicago’s all-time leader.
Obviously, when Morris was playing football, it was a lot different than the kind of game Justin Jefferson is playing in. But, that is still a shocking stat to see, as Morris played in 121 games to compile his stats. Based on his yards per game average in his career, he will surpass that number in Week 3 this season, Game 53 of his career.
