The moment Jordan Addison put his name on the map
Moments before Jordan Addison was catapulted into the Biletnikoff Award conversation and put himself on the radar as a future first-round pick, he went to his position coach and asked what he wanted him to do.
“Do the same f—ing s— you’ve been doing all year, make a f—ing play,” former Pitt receivers coach Brennan Marion, who is now the UNLV offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, told him.
Man alive, did Addison make a f—ing play.
Here’s the situation: It’s November 20, 2021 and Addison’s Pitt Panthers are ahead 41-38 against the Virginia Cavaliers. If Pitt wins this game, they earn a spot in the ACC Championship game. The game has been bonkers, having been tied at 7-7, 14-14, 24-24 and 31-31. Early in the fourth quarter the Panthers took a 10-point lead, only to see Cavs QB Brennan Armstrong respond 30 seconds later with a 39-yard touchdown pass to bring the game within three.
With 2:10 remaining, Pitt has the ball at their own 38-yard line and it’s third-and-5. They are one first down away from winning the game and solidifying 2021 as the best Pitt football season in 40 years. That isn’t hyperbole. The Panthers won 11 games in 1981 and then didn’t post double-digit victories again until 2009. Beating Virginia would give them a shot at the best season since ‘81.
“It was one of those games where we were preparing for it all season,” former Pitt receiver Tre Tipton said over the phone. “When we got to Virginia, it was like, ‘Look man, it’s now or never.’”
Before the game, Marion told Addison that this was one of those spotlight games where the best players shine.
“I told him, ‘Hey man, if you want us to go to the conference championship and you want to get all these goals you got, this is going to be the game you prove it, you gotta do it,’” Marion said.
With the game in the balance, Pitt runs out two tight ends and a fullback and Addison is the only receiver on the field. It’s part of a strategy they have deployed all year. Because Pitt was long known for its run-heavy, ground-and-pound offense, Marion and offensive coordinator Mark Whipple used running situations to take shots to Addison.
“We know it’s going to be 0-coverage,” Marion said. “Our defense was struggling and it was like, how do we close out this game? We have a one-man route and we’re like 22 personnel and we know Jordan can make the play.”
Addison lines up on quarterback Kenny Pickett’s right side. When Pickett takes the snap, Virginia’s defenders come flying up field expecting a run. The Pitt QB senses interior pressure and scrambles out to his right. Realizing that he doesn’t have enough space to run for the first down, he floats the ball in Addison’s direction.
“He threw it and we were like, ‘F—, it’s an interception,” Tipton said.
The ball doesn’t have enough gas on it. Virginia corner Darrius Bratton looks like he’s the intended target instead of Addison. He extends his hands to grab the ball and then it disappears into thin air. From behind Bratton, Addison jumps forward and snatched the ball away. Bratton tries to grab his foot in desperation but Addison keeps his balance, turns around and sees nobody ahead of him. He scampers to a 62-yard touchdown. Ballgame.
“We ran all the way down to the end zone and everybody’s going crazy and he said, ‘I called f—ing game,” Marion said. “F—ing game’s over, we’re going to the championship.’ That was his moment. That’s when everybody knew. Everybody knew he would be a great player but that was like, this is the best guy in the country right here.”
The Panthers won 48-38 and went on to tie the ‘81 team’s mark of 11 wins. Addison finished the game with a preposterous 14 catches for 202 yards and four touchdowns. He ultimately earned consensus All-American honors and won the Biletnikoff Award as the nation’s best receiver.
But the dagger touchdown against Virginia was the tip of the iceberg. You can’t tell the story of that iconic moment without looking at how Addison put himself in position to be there to swipe Pickett’s pass out of the air and run it into the end zone.
Put him wherever you want him
Coming out of high school, Jordan Addison had a chance to attend more fabled college football programs than Pitt but something his brother told him stuck in his mind: The ball should be in his hands. Pitt gave him the opportunity to play receiver, a position he had grown obsessed with after studying fellow Maryland native Stefon Diggs.
As a true freshman, Addison showed that he made the right choice, catching 60 passes for 666 yards and scoring four touchdowns. That offseason Pitt hired receivers coach Brennan Marion, whose football journey had taken him from a standout at Tulsa as a player to nine different colleges or high schools as a position coach before landing with the Panthers.
Marion arrived with plans to take Addison’s game to the next level, which started with helping him learn to be more versatile.
“When I came in, I was like, if you want to be a 1,000-yard guy and have all these goals, you have to be able to move around and play multiple spots,” Marion said. “That was the big emphasis all offseason, being able to move into the slot and outside and even lining up in the backfield a couple times.”
In his breakout game, Addison’s first touchdown came as an outside receiver on Pickett’s right side where he ran a quick slant. His second started in the slot where he went off schedule after Pickett was pressured, his third came on a deep post where he blew away the cornerback and his fourth was a contested catch where he was the only receiver on the field.
Each one of them tells their own story. Talking about the off-schedule touchdown, Marion emphasized the quarterback-receiver relationship. He implored his players to have multiple extra throwing sessions each week and worked with Pickett to get his feedback on where Addison was best suited for each concept.
“My thing with Kenny was: You have to put [Addison] wherever you want him, I’m going to put him as the primary guy and you tell me where you want him on each play and we went through the plays and he’d say, ‘Jordan needs to be here,’” Marion explained. “When they would run routes together, Kenny knew where he was at at all times.”
Pittsburgh Sports Now reporter Alan Saunders was covering the Panthers that season and he observed the growth of the chemistry between Pickett and Addison, saying that it snowballed throughout the season and peaked on the game-ending touchdown.
“That Virginia game is full-on, Addison-is-down-there-somewhere type trust to make a play and it really highlights what is Addison’s best ability, which is that he’s so good at adjusting to the ball in the air,” Saunders said via Zoom. “I can’t really remember a receiver that was so, so good at that and the fourth touchdown and the one that wins the game…That pass should be intercepted, absolutely. Not only does he make the adjustment on the ball, he wrestled it away from the defender and then he turns around and scores a touchdown. Vintage Jordan Addison. The way he did it there showed what he was all about.”
For the season, Pickett’s quarterback rating was 136.7 when targeting Addison, per PFF. But coach Marion didn’t just want him to be on the same page with his quarterback, he wanted him to see the game like a quarterback. They watched film of every defensive back he was set to face and studied opposing defensive coordinators’ tendencies. The two bonded over their love for breaking down the game on tape.
“His love for the game and watching it all day is — the only other players I’ve seen like that are quarterbacks,” Marion said. “Most skill guys don’t sit there and watch. I remember when Jordan was up for the Biletnikoff, coach Narduzzi ran in there and he’s like, ‘You’re in the top three for the Biletnikoff,’ and [Addison] was like, ‘OK cool coach,’ and then we just kept watching the film.”
Following the 2021 season, Marion took a job working at Texas as the pass game coordinator and receivers coach. He remembered Addison paying him a visit and they hung out watching tape all day. Some people’s hobbies are also their careers.
The third touchdown was a display of his route running — and how Addison’s 40 time doesn’t truly represent his play speed. Addison was being given a 10-yard cushion by his defender, yet a stop-and-start move sent the cornerback flying and he cruised to a 34-yard score.
“He controls the game with his pace,” Tipton said. “That DB has no idea what he’s doing because he controls the full pace of which he’s running. There’s not too many people who an do that effectively. You see some guys in the league who can do that. He slows down, speeds up. He speeds up, slows down.”
Those changes of pace don’t happen by accident. Without Moss-like physical gifts, Addison focuses on details. If a step is off by six inches, he’s going to practice it obsessively until it’s right.
“He looks really fast when he plays because he’s playing to perfection,” Marion said. “There isn’t guessing going on. He has a plan. The guy who knows what to do, why he’s doing it and how to do it is always faster.”
Though the fourth touchdown against Virginia looks like Addison just pulled out something out of a magic bag of tricks but the real magic is just the product of putting in more work than anyone would ever expect.
“We practiced contested catch drills all the time and everyone screams at receivers to catch the damn ball but nobody ever practices a defender being draped on him and he catches the ball,” Marion said. “Most of the time you see a receivers coach throwing it to receivers and they are just throwing it on air. We always practiced that.”
Saunders mentioned that Addison trying to play to perfection meant using the one major home-field advantage that Pitt football has: The Steelers. Both teams practice and play in the same facility, meaning there are opportunities for college players to pick the brains of their NFL co-inhabitants.
“Jordan was one of those guys who was super into his craft and sought out all of those opportunities,” Saunders said. “I remember posting videos of him working with Antonio Brown, working with Deonte Johnson and all the NFL guys now have all these personal private position coaches, you’ll see that where guys would come up and you’d see Jordan Addison over there. It was obvious that he’s very passionate about getting better and maximizing his ability.”
To whom much is given, much is required
There are a couple of moments within Addison’s four-TD performance against Virginia that could be easily overlooked if you were just watching the highlight reel. In the second quarter with Pitt up by seven, he took a punt return 38 yards to put the Panthers in scoring position.
Later in the game, tied at 31 in the third quarter, he lays a block that opens up 21-yard gain by running back Vincent Davis. On the same drive, he tosses a defender to the ground blocking for an underneath pass to receiver Shocky Jacques-Louis for another 20-yard gain that set up a Pitt field goal.
These are things that coach Marion wanted to make sure that Jordan Addison understood.
“I used to tell him: To whom much is given, much is required. You’re the best guy so you have to go above and beyond. You set the model for what the room looks like….I tell the guys that if you want to win you’ll go on special teams and block,” Marion said. “It’ll show the rest of the team how serious you are about winning. You can say, ‘I only want the ball,’ and be a me-receiver or be a guy who wants to show the team you want to win.”
By PFF’s grading system, Addison registered a 71.8 run blocking grade in 2021, which ranked 10th in the country.
“I’m sitting there looking at it like, yo this kid is no bigger than about 170 and he’s crushing people,” Tipton said. “The kid has heart, man. We used to call it, ‘How much you love your brother plays.’ He used to show us how much he loved us every play.”
So where does all of this come from? Certainly he could have become an NFL player without punt returning and blocking.
Everyone you talk with about Addison cites his mother Keisha Blackman. Pitt’s head coach Pat Narduzzi was quoted by TribLive.com saying, “I told his mother, ‘I don’t know what you did (for him) growing up, but you got the master plan on how to raise a son, that’s for sure.”
“He has the greatest mom in the world,” Tipton said. “She’s one of the greatest people that I’ve ever met personally and on top of that he has so many siblings and he’s always been a kid that had to fight for his. There’s not too many people out here anymore that understands what it means to fight for yours.”
“His mom is tough,” Marion said. “His mom is a no-nonsense, get-it-done, no-excuses presence in his life. His brothers always pushed him. The kid just wants to be great and believes that he’s great and I don’t think anybody who can change his mind on that.”
Blackman called coach Marion after Addison was invited to the draft. She told him that Jordan wanted him there in Kansas City in the green room.
When he got picked 23rd overall by the Minnesota Vikings, it was a full-circle moment for Marion.
In college, he had been an NFL prospect as a first-team All-Conference USA receiver who set the NCAA single-season record for yards per catch (31.9). He wasn’t able to participate in the 2009 NFL Combine because of an ACL tear that he suffered on the final play of the Conference USA Championship game and then he tore the same ACL again while in camp with the Miami Dolphins, ending his career.
After going into coaching, Marion hoped that someday he would help mold a first-round receiver.
“To be there, it was amazing,” Marion said. “He earned it, he proved it.”
Of course, even in his best moment, Addison was still competing.
“He was pissed off that he was the third [receiver] drafted,” Marion said. “Now he’s like, ‘I’m going to show everyone that I’m the best guy.’ He wants to play against the best guy and he wants to beat the best guy.”
Addison will have a chance to beat the best guys right away. He will get plenty of opportunities with the Vikings to use his route-running perfectionism, stops-and-starts and ball tracking skills in one-on-one situations as opponents put the majority their efforts on defense toward stopping Justin Jefferson. The rest will be up to him snatching footballs out of the air, the way he did in the waning moments against Virginia in late November 2021.
“There’s not too many people I’ve seen in my entire life that has stopped Jordan from doing what Jordan wants to do,” Tipton said. “He’s electric, bro, he’s electric.”
