Pat McAfee Clarifies Odd Dalvin Cook-Justin Jefferson Comment

McAfee, perhaps unintentionally, claimed this week that Cook's presence was the reason for Jefferson's success.

On Thursday, Pat McAfee made a rather strange claim about the Vikings' offense. While praising ex-Minnesota running back and current free agent Dalvin Cook, the massively popular host seemed to essentially say Cook's presence was the reason for Justin Jefferson having the level of success he's had in his first three seasons.

"Dalvin Cook can absolutely still go," McAfee said on his show. "The fact that he's available right now ... Dalvin Cook was their offense. The reason why I think Justin Jefferson has all the thing is because Dalvin Cook's in the backfield. Now, (Alexander) Mattison's going to have to earn that same type of respect from defenses, and I assume he will. But damn, if you're a team that can pick up that respect in the box from one signing of a guy, that feels like an easy decision."

I get what McAfee was going for, but it just isn't the reality of the Vikings' offense. Last season, Jefferson put up over 1,800 receiving yards and won Offensive Player of the Year despite Cook and the Vikings' running game being extremely inefficient. Minnesota had the league's third-highest pass rate at over 64 percent, so defenses knew what was coming.

Oh, and in six career games without Cook from 2020 to 2021, Jefferson put up 53 catches, 839 yards, and four touchdowns. He averaged 8.8 catches and just shy of 140 yards in those six contests, crossing the century mark in each one. That's not a massive sample size, but it seems like decent evidence that Jefferson is not even remotely a product of defenses focusing on Cook.

McAfee saw plenty of social media reaction from Vikings fans to his comments, which led him to clear things up on Friday's show by making it clear that he's a big fan of Jefferson.

"I have to talk to the Minnesota Vikings fans," McAfee said. "I said while breaking down Dalvin Cook, I said he helps Justin Jefferson. I don't know how I said it, I must've said it in a way — I haven't listened to it back, so that's 100 percent on me. Vikings fans were f—ing attacking me, coming after me. I have massive respect for Justin Jefferson. I never said anything about Justin Jefferson not being incredible. I'm just talking about fundamentally, whenever there is a star missing from the field, that is going to change the way a defense looks at the whole thing."

Again, I get what McAfee was trying to say. He was praising Cook and definitely didn't mean to tear down Jefferson while doing it. It's obviously true that in football, the running game and the passing game complement each other. It's also true that although Cook's advanced metrics were poor last season, he's been one of the league's best running backs in recent years, which defenses had to account for.

I just think the issue some Vikings fans had was with the way McAfee worded this quote: "The reason why I think Justin Jefferson has all the thing is because Dalvin Cook's in the backfield." That's probably just a situation where the sentence didn't come out quite as he intended. It's all a bit of a miscommunication, but credit to McAfee for clarifying what he meant.

It would certainly benefit the Vikings' entire offense this season if Mattison is highly productive and the running game as a whole becomes more efficient. But Jefferson is so absurdly talented — and saw so many double teams last year anyways — that he's going to have another huge season regardless of how well the team is running the football.

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