Justin Jefferson and the quest for 2,000 yards

During the offseason, Minnesota Vikings star wide receiver Justin Jefferson stated his goal of becoming the first player in NFL history to put up 2,000 receiving yards in a season. Currently, the league record for receiving yardage in a season is 1,964 by Calvin Johnson in 2012 (in a 16-game season). Cooper Kupp nearly set a new mark last season with 1,947 yards in a 17-game season, but Jefferson had set the goal of passing both of them this season.

In order to go over 2,000 yards in a 17-game season, a receiver would have to average 117.6 yards/game. Is Jefferson on pace for that through the Vikings’ first six games? Unfortunately, he’s a little behind that mark thus far.

Jefferson has 654 yards through the Vikings’ first six games, an average of 109 yards/game. If he were to maintain that pace through a 17-game season, he would finish the year with 1,853 yards, which would be the fourth-highest mark in NFL history.

His average thus far has been weighed down by a couple of less productive games from the first couple of weeks of the year. In Week 2 against Philadelphia, he had just 48 yards receiving and followed that up with just 14 yards the next week against Detroit. In the Vikings’ other four games, he’s averaged 148 yards/game, a pace that would absolutely obliterate every receiving record on the books.

If Jefferson wants to get to 2,000 yards, he’ll have to average 122.4 yards/game the rest of the way. I’m not saying that he can’t do it, but those two tough games he had against Philadelphia and Detroit are going to make it much more difficult for him to do so.