Getty Jaire Alexander asked to cover Justin Jefferson for the Packers in Week 1.
The Green Bay Packers were struggling for answers defensively against star wide receiver Justin Jefferson in their season-opening loss to the Minnesota Vikings and their star cornerback is making no secret about what he wishes they would have done to contain him in Week 1.
Jefferson caught nine passes for a career-high 184 yards and two touchdowns in the Packers’ 23-7 loss at the Vikings on Sunday, finding ways to get wide open against a secondary that was touted as one of the best in the league coming into the 2022 season. Part of the problem was Green Bay stayed committed to playing heavy zone defense instead of dropping into man and having its best guy — Alexander — shadow Jefferson.
And it was a matchup that Alexander wanted badly.
“All week, [I was] asking for that matchup,” Alexander said in Sunday’s postgame, via Matt Schneidman of The Athletic. “But it ain’t about me. It’s about the team. It ain’t about me. If it was my way, you know what I would be doing.”
Jaire Alexander to me and @RobDemovsky postgame on coaches not having him shadow Justin Jefferson: “All week, (I was) asking for that matchup. But it ain’t about me. It’s about the team. It ain’t about me. If it was my way, you know what I would be doing.”
LaFleur Commends Vikings for Keeping Jefferson Moving
Of the Packers that covered Jefferson on Sunday, nearly all of them got cooked. Eric Stokes was burned a number of times by Jefferson in a performance that he called “embarrassing” after the game, but the Packers also had safeties Adrian Amos and Darnell Savage Jr. and linebackers Quay Walker and Preston Smith drop into coverage against the Vikings’ elite playmaker — and fail all the same.
So, the question is a good one: Why didn’t the Packers make a greater effort to put their best coverage player on Jefferson, especially after he got going early against their defense and became an obvious go-to guy for quarterback Kirk Cousins?
“It doesn’t necessarily always work that way,” Packers head coach Matt LaFleur said in the postgame. “If you just commit to playing man coverage the whole game, sure, you could do it, but they do a nice job of putting him in different positions whether it’s in the slot, whether it’s motioning. It seemed like he was in motion quite a bit, just moving him all over the place. And you’ve got to give them credit. They put him in premier spots and attacked our coverage well. And certainly, we had a couple of blown coverages as well where we’re cutting him loose and, if there’s anybody you don’t want to cut loose, it’s No. 18. We’ll go back and look at the tape, but again, we’ve got to coach so much better.”
Jefferson Averaged 4.0 Yards of Separation vs. Packers
The numbers behind Jefferson’s success against the Packers were even more demoralizing than his raw production. According to ESPN’s Kevin Seifert, he averaged 4.0 yards of separation on his 11 passing targets and had no defender “within 10 yards of him” when he caught his 64-yarder toward the end of the first half that helped set up the Vikings for a field goal before halftime.
Jefferson’s open looks weren’t exactly the result of the Vikings spreading the ball out downfield, either. In fact, Cousins completed nine passes to other receivers in the first half, but only one of those receptions went for more than 10 yards with Jefferson accounting for 90.9% of the offense’s air yards in the first two quarters, according to Next Gen Stats for the game.
Kirk Cousins & Justin Jefferson (36-yd TD)
Through the first half, Jefferson has accounted for 90.9% of the offense’s air yards, which would rank as the 2nd-highest in a game in the NGS era.
💡 Jefferson led the NFL in AY share in 2021 (45.2%).