EAGAN, Minn. — It's a look that one can feel.
A style backed by substance.
But most importantly, it can create an edge for the Vikings.
The way Justin Jefferson puts "flavor" on his routes has helped Sam Darnold connect with the receiver time and time again in their first season together.
"Yeah, that's what makes me, me. If I was running it regular, then I wouldn't be me," Jefferson said Thursday. "So it's just, I gotta add on my own little touch to it. I will never do too much; I will never make it out of the ordinary for me to do it and mess up the timing for Sam."
Head Coach Kevin O'Connell has explained equipping Jefferson with "freedom" to modify his routes.
Jefferson and Darnold have connected so far on 92 passes for 1,387 yards and 10 touchdowns.
Their most recent public display of connection was a 39-yard game-winning touchdown at Seattle, helping the Vikings prevail 27-24 and improve to 13-2 on the season.
Jefferson won an inside release against the corner, saw safety Julian Love holding in the middle of the field and took his route smoothly toward the left pylon. Darnold navigated the pocket and pressed the launch code, delivering with arm strength that fired the ball to Jefferson before Love could make it to the spot.
Call it flavor, call it freedom, call it fantastic.
The successes have resulted from quality time on task that has been helped by Jefferson's intensity.
"Anything that I do out here on this [practice] field, I'm gonna most likely imitate it out there on that field to make sure the timing is right, Sam knows exactly where I'm going to be at — the exact time at the exact spot," Jefferson said. "So, I might put that flavor into it, but Sam is going to see that flavor well before Sunday."
Darnold said he appreciates how "game-like" the reps are in practice so he can get the feel of the play unfolding.
"A lot of guys don't necessarily want to run full speed, and they don't want to break necessarily like they would in the game, but for him to be able to come out here and do that in practice, you know, it obviously helps me as a quarterback to be able to feel his body language," Darnold said.
Darnold has been throwing the ball to Jefferson since June, Jordan Addison since May and tight end T.J. Hockenson since late October practices.
"Everyone's different — especially guys like 'Jets,' guys like J.A., really, everyone on our team, T.J.— the way they're able to get in and out of cuts, everyone's different," Darnold said. "It just takes reps to get used to it."
When O'Connell spoke with "Voice of the Vikings" Paul Allen during this week's episode of Xs and Os about permitting the freedom for Jefferson to modify the routes, he explained it's been a way to counteract approaches by defenses.
"At this point in time, if Justin ran the standard stock routes, and what I mean by that is, 'He's got an in-cut. Lined up outside the numbers, I'm going to start down, I'm going to get 12-14 [yards], put my foot down and run an in-cut, there's a good chance that frustration will mount if — 'OK, he's the single receiver. The corner is going to check to a 2-man base coverage just to Justin, so the corner is going to play hard inside leverage and is going to have a safety over the top' — Justin is going to get frustrated," O'Connell said. "So what we've tried to do is build a world where we can have really locked-in, dialed-in concepts for Justin to have some freedom to play off some of those leverages.
"He basically is running variations of option routes where the defense can be right, but they can only be right by population, so if they've got 3 over there, normally that's when T.J., Jordan or Jalen Nailor will come to life on the other side," O'Connell added. "If Justin is aligned with the other Vikings, we're normally putting him in certain spots to dictate the entire vision point for Sam of how the coverage will declare. It's a whole bunch of ways that we've, a lot of times in '22 and parts of '23, we were trying to come up with those on the sideline, but at this point, we've got a lot of mechanisms in our offense to move him everywhere, motion him everywhere, different snap points and ultimately give him the ability to find that open grass and pair it with like concepts so it's not an outlier for Sam if Justin is not going to be the throw."
Vikings receiving targets and Darnold interpret the defense's "coverage intentions" when the offense gets to the line of scrimmage. Other times, O'Connell said, players make post-snap decisions.
"Some of our biggest plays we've hit over the last couple of years were some of those post-snap things where, every single one of our opponents, I could teach them the play, and they would still probably have a hard time stopping the play because of how we attack and whatever the final presentation of the defense is," O'Connell said.
