How will Justin Jefferson approach an extension with the Vikings?
The Minnesota Vikings have not been shy about their desire to sign Justin Jefferson to a long-term contract extension this offseason, which is his first eligible year to ink a mega deal. Of course, there is no use trying to hide their intentions considering Jefferson elevated his status last year to the undisputed best receiver in the NFL.
“I don’t want to be the Vikings GM without this guy on our team, so it’s a priority,” GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah said at the NFL Combine.
Over the first three years of Jefferson’s career, he’s played every game and racked up 4,825 yards, nearly 400 more than the next best receiver. He averages more yards per target than any other receiver with at least 100 targets since 2020 and Kirk Cousins has a 112.6 QB rating when targeting Jefferson (per PFF). He won offensive player of the year and even managed to make his way into the MVP conversation, which is nearly impossible for non-QBs.
“He’s trying to put the Minnesota Vikings on his back and wants to win a championship,” Adofo-Mensah said. “When you have guys like that in your building, try everything you can to not let them out.”
The Vikings’ GM was candid about the value of Jefferson to the future of the franchise, saying that the team’s brass is willing to keep him in the loop when it comes to their decision-making process. Just like the MVP voting, that’s usually exclusive to QBs.
“Justin Jefferson has, you could argue, as high an impact as some quarterbacks in this league, just the way they force teams to play us,” Adofo-Mensah said. “So for certain, he’s someone we’ll keep in all of our conversations.”
Certainly massive contract extensions are complex but the difference between Jefferson’s situation almost every other player in the NFL is that there isn’t much debate about the price tag. Jefferson is going to receive the largest contract by any receiver in NFL history. He’s going to top Tyreek Hill’s $30 million per year. They know it. He knows it.
Whether Jefferson signs is almost entirely dependent on his desire to remain a Viking. Whether he wants to lock himself into the Vikings this summer, however, is unclear at the moment. Adofo-Mensah said before the draft that they have been in contact with Jefferson’s side but no reports of movement on a deal have emerged. In his Combine comments, Adofo-Mensah described an interesting interaction that he had with JJ when he first took the GM job.
“When I met him, the first time I met him actually, we walk in the building and I made a joke about something else that was happening at the wide receiver position at the time and about their contracts and just laughed and said ‘we won’t have any issues,’” Adofo-Mensah said. “He said ‘I just want to put wins on the board.’ Didn’t smile and wasn’t really like ‘haha’. The way he said it.”
If Jefferson’s main motivation is putting wins on the board, the Vikings certainly did a lot of that last year during the regular season, though they left him watching the divisional round and beyond from home, where he’s been for three straight years. So the question is whether Jefferson’s decision ultimately comes down to buying into the Adofo-Mensah/O’Connell direction for the franchise and if he believes they can put together teams that will go deeper in the playoffs than they have since 2017.
If that is what his decision hinges on, he could wait until the end of 2023 and decide if he thinks they have the right answers and then make the call. Most notably, he could wait and see what they are going to do at quarterback. Kirk Cousins is entering the final year of his contract.
From a business perspective, the NFL has rigged the game for teams to keep the superstars they draft. If Jefferson does not agree to an extension, the team can exercise his fifth-year option and then franchise tag him. If he decides to take this thing to the end, it could be 2026 before he actually hits the market.
Certainly fifth-year options and franchise tags pay well but they do not have the type of security of an extension that comes along with many millions guaranteed at signing. There’s significant risk to waiting in a sport where injuries can impact anyone’s career.
There is an in-between option that might be favorable to Jefferson: The D.K. Metcalf model. He signed a three-year contract for $72 million, making him the sixth highest paid receiver in the league and gave him an opportunity to sign another massive contract in short order, allowing him to hit the lottery twice. Jefferson could aim for a three-year, $100 million deal that would get him guaranteed money and some future flexibility.
The Vikings are in a position that they have to roll with any type of extension that Jefferson’s side wants. He’s holding the cards. So while a short-term deal could act as middle ground, the call still rests on whether JJ wants to be a Viking.
And while the Vikings could fight tooth and nail for him to remain in Minnesota through 2026 if he doesn’t sign, they would have to consider trading him if the superstar receiver makes it clear that he wasn’t going to sign. He would be worth at least as much as the Chiefs got for Tyreek Hill (a first-round pick, second, two fourths and a sixth) — probably more.
At some point the math adds up. One of the benefits of an extension is spreading out the cap hits. AJ Brown, for example, has hits under $13 million for through 2024. If he plays on the fifth-year option, OverTheCap.com projects a $19 million hit that the Vikings can’t alter.
We can’t get inside Jefferson’s head to know whether he’s leaning toward staying in purple forever or thinking about letting it play out. How did he feel about veteran players leaving and the roster looking competitive-rebuild-ish? Does he want Cousins to stay via an extension or the Vikings to look for a QB in the draft? Does he need the team to be a Super Bowl contender in 2023 or does he have a longer-term vision for where he sees this all going? How important is the culture and NFLPA survey?
These are things we may find out soon. The Vikings have a tendency to announce extensions early in training camp. Or the subject of JJ’s extension may linger and tension may build the longer he goes without one.
