Everything we learned about Justin Jefferson from the Netflix 'Receiver' series

Spoiler alert! This story tells you everything about Justin Jefferson from the Netflix series "Receiver."

Sep 24, 2023; Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA; Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson (18) looks on before the game against the Los Angeles Chargers at U.S. Bank Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports / Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports

The highly-anticipated release of Netflix's "Receiver" series arrived at 2 a.m. CT Wednesday and we binged it in its entirety to find out everything we possibly could about Justin Jefferson, who along with Detroit's Amon-Ra St. Brown, Las Vegas' Davante Adams and San Francisco's Deebo Samuel and George Kittle, as followed by cameras for the duration of the 2023-24 season.

Jefferson was featured in six of the eight episodes, revealing details about his hamstring injury, the scary scene in Vegas when he was coughing up blood, contract drama and fascinating in-game moments. Let's dive into everything we learned about Jefferson from the show...

Jewelry is the ticket to "Jets"

Jefferson, who signed a four-year, $140 million contract extension with the Vikings earlier this year, says he's not big on spending money although he does like to splash cash on jewelry – and it's the jewelry that essentially activates his alter ego, "Jets."

"Justin is cool, calm and collected. I’m chill, I play video games and be to myself a majority of the time. But when I start putting these chains on, start putting the teeth in and all of the jewelry and all of that, I mean, then it starts to become Jets," Jefferson told the Netflix crew. "Jets is the most confident. That’s my swagger. Not cocky, but he has the confidence in himself to go out there and perform at the highest ability. I like looking good while I go play.”

Jefferson said he's normally shy, but his alter ego "likes the attention."

"Jets, he likes the attention. He likes showboating, he likes dancing, he likes giving the fans what they want.”

Jefferson loves candy

“I eat candy in the morning. I eat candy at night time," he said. “To be honest, it’s not really my fault. It’s really my mom’s fault. I’m blaming my mom. I’m sorry, mom, I’m really blaming you.”

Jefferson plans to eat junk food "while my body's still young" because he knows the day will come when will body can't handle it as easily. In the meantime, he's hired a personal chef to help with his eating habits.

"I feel like I’m doing a good job of putting better food into my system so I can have a little room for the junk food at the end.”

Goal-line fumble in Philly crushed him

In Week 2 of last season, the game between the Vikings and Eagles took a dramatic shift when Jefferson fumbled the ball out of the end zone late in the first half. Although it may be one of the more controversial rules in football, it sent the Eagles on a run that Minnesota couldn't come back from.

A microphone on the field picked up the audio from Jefferson immediately after he fumbled.

"Damn, that really like, fell out my s***. F***** Eagles. Don’t f****** drop that ball, boy," Jefferson said.

Vikings head coach Kevin O'Connell said the hardest thing for him was "watching how hard" Jefferson took the turnover, while quarterback Kirk Cousins recalled watching Jefferson "agonize over it postgame."

“I ain’t gonna lie. It was a tough feeling. It was a terrible feeling. There’s no one else that I can blame on that play rather than myself," Jefferson said.

The hamstring injury Week 4 against the Chiefs

In a close game against the Chiefs at U.S. Bank Stadium, Jefferson suffered a hamstring injury that would keep him out of the next seven games.

"In that fourth quarter, I had like a double move. I planted the left and when I went to plant the right, my foot slid and felt like a pop," Jefferson recalled. In the blue medical tent on the sideline, a Vikings trainer informed Jefferson that the injury "isn't acting like a cramp" and that it's "more like a pulled hamstring."

"That’s the time where it’s like, ‘OK, I’m really injured. You know, I’m hurt.’ It’s not something that you want to hear," Jefferson said, admitting that he needed stay in the tent to calm down before coming out.

Long, bumpy road to recovery

Tyler Williams, Minnesota's vice president of player health and performance, told Netflix producers that a high-grade hamstring injury typically requires 8-10 weeks of recovery. That comment paved the way to Netflix showing Jefferson receiving treatment on a training table.

"As of now, I’m just trying to get it back strong, get the tissues back strong, so we ain’t gotta worry about this later on in the season," he told the cameras.

Behind the scenes footage showed him riding a stationary bike and running in a pool, with Jefferson saying he had to force a mindset adjustment to "stay in that positive mind space" and "think about it as maybe this happens for a reason."

Jefferson devastated when Cousins tore his Achilles

Not only was he devastated because his good friend was injured, but because the Vikings were forced into a situation where they had to fight on with backup quarterbacks.

"Ooh, that was devastating right there. To have your starting quarterback go down and to now having to rely on the backups and trying to find out who will be our starters is something that no one wants to really go through," Jefferson said.

In the seventh episode of the series, Jefferson admitted that trying to get on the same page with Nick Mullens, Josh Dobbs and Jaren Hall –– the quarterbacks who started after Cousins' injury –– wasn't easy.

“It’s tough, man. It’s tough,” Jefferson said. “This sport has the least amount of opportunities. We only have 17. Just seeing different quarterbacks coming in and out, so it definitely was a tough transition just trying to be on the same page as all of them.”

“It’s like, what more can I do? What else can I do for us to win?”

Coughing up blood in Raiders game

After two months of rehabbing his hamstring injury, Jefferson was taken to a hospital via ambulance when he took a shot to his back in his first game back Week 14 against the Raiders. Netflix captured the moments after the hit that left him coughing on the field.

"So I went to the sideline, but like, I had to cough," Jefferson said. "I don’t know, I had to cough for some reason. So as I’m like coughing, I’m spitting out blood as I’m coughing.”

Trainers were asking him if he'd bit his tongue or lip but when they checked him out in the medical tent they diagnosed him with a pulmonary contusion and warned that it could quickly worsen. That led to him being rushed to a local hospital in an ambulance.

"I don’t ever want to go in the back of an ambulance again. That was my first time ever going in the back of one, so it was a different experience for me. Just leaving the game and going to the hospital, I definitely did not enjoy the experience," Jefferson admitted.

Jefferson was questionable for a game six days later in Cincinnati but he wound up playing through the internal bruising. “I want to push through it regardless and just try to suck it up,” he said. 

Jefferson misses Joe Burrow

Minnesota lost to the Bengals in overtime and after the game the cameras revealed a brief interaction between Jefferson and his former college quarterback Joe Burrow.

“I miss you, man. I miss you, man,” Jefferson told Burrow.

“Love you, buddy,” Burrow responded. 

Trash talk between Jefferson, Detroit cornerback

Sutton, who signed with the Steelers this offseason and is now suspended eight games after a domestic battery arrest, talked trash to Jefferson after Mullens thew an interception early in the Week 16 game between the Vikings and Lions.

"Nobody scoring s*** now,” Sutton said as he passed by Jefferson on the field.

Jefferson responded: "Talk to me! Talk to me! Show me I’m a b****! Show me I’m a b****! Show me I’m a b****!"

Sutton: "I’m here all day!"

Jefferson: "You not! You not. No you not! I ain’t seen no film on you!"

The cameras then show Jefferson on the Vikings bench next to his teammates and he says, "You wanna talk about we ain’t going to score no more. Aight, I got something for you,”

Jefferson wound up scoring a touchdown late in the first half and finished the day with six catches and 141 yards, though Sutton and the Lions won the game to clinch the NFC North title.

O'Connell's message to Jefferson during exit meeting

“This year’s circumstances, I’m hoping were an outlier and unique. I know you know I was trying to go back and think about when’s the last time you missed a football game. So, I know how hard it was on you. And then you have to deal with… you come back, you play 12 plays and you’re in a hospital getting internal scans. And now what we’ve gotta get to is a place where we’re the same team every Sunday. I know you’re the same guy every Sunday, but you’re gonna be a huge help for me getting us to be the same team every Sunday," O'Connell told him.

O'Connell held the exit meeting with Jefferson not knowing how the contract situation would play out. In the end, Netflix had cameras rolling when Jefferson officially signed his $140 million deal.

“This is a lesson," Jefferson said after putting pen to paper, "to setting my family up for generations and finally reach a goal that we are trying to reach.”

Jefferson, by the way, told Netflix while he was injured that he would never consider sitting out games during a losing season because of a contract negotiation.

“No one, no one, no one in this game could ever tell me to not play or to tank the season, or to do any of that other stuff, because I’m not that type of person," Jefferson said. "I wanna play. I love the game of football – I want to be the best. So, in order for that to happen, I gotta be out there on that field. So there’s no.. there’s not prolonging the injury. There’s no, ‘Oh he’s sitting out because of the contract.’ There’s none of that at all.”