Is Justin Jefferson a must-start WR going forward?

Chris Allen from 4for4.com joins Fantasy Football Live's Matt Harmon to break down the Minnesota Vikings receiver outlook for the rest of the season.

Video Transcript

MATT HARMON: Justin Jefferson, Chris. When you look at pretty much any efficiency metric, he's right up there around the top. Yards per route run, yards after the catch, whatever. I think this guy is a verifiable baller.

He's in a great spot this week against Seattle's defense that has allowed like 500 more yards to wide receivers than pretty much any team in the league. How high are we on Justin Jefferson going forward? Should he even be a guy that we're talking about as a start/sit player on a weekly basis?

CHRIS ALLEN: I think so. I'm definitely on that page with you. Because if we look at, again, the matchup up against Seattle, I mean, we saw a number of receivers go off against them over the past few weeks. I mean, Kirk Cousins is looking like a decent streamer from the quarterback position.

But now let's focus on Justin Jefferson. I mean, you being the wide receiver prognosticator in chief, I mean, you looked at Justin Jefferson over the offseason. You saw what he was capable of doing coming out of LSU. And while I know a lot of folks were looking at him, seeing him as primarily a slot receiver and thinking that, well, they've already got Adam Thielen. What do you need another slot receiver for?

But that's not the case. I mean, if you look at his ADOT and what he's shown over the past couple of weeks, I mean, he is definitely more than just a slot receiver. I mean, go back and tell people to watch the tape. But looking at what he was capable of doing against Houston this past week, there was a fourth quarter pass, a hitch-and-go route that he ran. I believe it was either against Lonnie Johnson or Phillip Gaines. I forget which one it was.

But you can see that on that specific route-- I mean, I know that that was one of many of the highlight-reel catches that he was able to do. But that hitch-and-go route right there, that was a back shoulder throw that Kirk Cousins hit him on. And you can see Kirk Cousins threw that ball at the hitch part of that route. I mean, that shows trust on a receiver that was running with the second team towards the late end of the offseason.

Now if Kirk Cousins has already established that level of trust with that rookie wide receiver that I would say that a lot of folks left for dead throughout the offseason-- because everybody was infatuated with Jalen Reagor, Brandon Aiyuk, I mean, Tee Higgins even to some degree. I mean, Justin Jefferson was off everybody's radar.

And now a couple weeks into the season, we're now we're seeing him convert a lot of those deep passes. I mean, Kirk Cousins already is at fourth or fifth in the league in terms of deep pass attempts for yards of 15-plus air yards or more. I mean, I can see this as now-- well, it's kind of weird to think of Kirk Cousins supporting two wide receivers in such a low volume offense. But still with his ADOT, with his depth of target, I can still definitely see Justin Jefferson being a weekly fantasy option moving forward.