The Green Bay Packers are a confident bunch. They are flying high, winning three consecutive games to keep their slim playoff hopes alive for a Wild Card spot in the NFC. To keep those hopes alive, they will need to defeat this year’s NFC North champions, the rival Minnesota Vikings.
The Vikings won the first matchup of the season all the way back in Week 1, 23-7. In that game, Justin Jefferson torched the Packers’ secondary, catching nine passes for 184 yards and two touchdowns.
Slowing Jefferson down this season has been a tall task for opponents, as he is having one of the best seasons for a wide receiver in NFL history. Despite that, Packers cornerback Jaire Alexander believes that the first matchup this season was a fluke.
“You’ve just got to be real: He don’t jump in no super suit and get dressed and jump outside, you hear me?” Alexander said Thursday. “I don’t either, sometimes. But he [is] human, is what I’m saying. We ain’t putting too much on nobody.
“He’s a really good receiver. But at the end of the day, I’m a really good corner. We’ve got really good corners. We’ve got really good linebackers, D-line, whatever it is. You don’t want to put too much focus on that one person because it’s like, the first game, that was a fluke.”
While Alexander is correct with most of what he said, that performance in Week 1 was far from a fluke. He has been dominant all season and giving that kind of bulletin board material to an opponent will certainly be some added motivation.
Alexander could also be trying to hype his teammates up for what will be another must-win game. From that perspective, Shannon Sharpe can understand the trash talk. But, on a recent episode of UNDISPUTED on FS1, Sharpe was also critical of Alexander calling Jefferson’s Week 1 performance a fluke.
Sharpe is certainly correct in that case. Jefferson is within reach of breaking Calvin Johnson’s record for receiving yards in a season, needing only 208 yards in the final two games of the season.
Given what Alexander has said ahead of this week’s matchup, Jefferson could try and break the record this week, doing it in 16 games just as Johnson did in 2012 without the added benefit of a 17th regular season game.
