DC Shane Bowen draws Vikings’ Justin Jefferson in Giants debut

Though he missed the game in 2020, Bowen does have experience defending Jefferson. Last year, the Titans traveled to Minnesota for two days of joint practices.

“I got a good taste of him then,” Bowen said.

It couldn’t have been sweet.

The NFL features numerous great receivers, but Jefferson arguably plays on a different level than the rest. If he has a 100-yard game Sunday – or in any game this season – he will tie Hall of Famer Randy Moss for the most career 100+ receiving yards games through a player’s first five seasons. Jefferson, whose 29 such games since 2020 lead the NFL, might obliterate that record.

Last season, Jefferson missed seven games with hamstring and chest injuries but still finished with 1,073 yards, a single season record by player with 10 or fewer games played.

The task of covering him will largely fall to second-year pro Deonte Banks, the Giants’ most skilled cornerback. What Banks noticed first in studying Jefferson was his competitiveness when the ball is in the air.

“He’s a good 50/50 catcher,” Banks said referring to passes that both the receiver and defender have a chance to get their hands on. “He knows how to get 50-50 balls. He’s a great contested catcher. And he’s very quick in and out at the top of his routes.”

The Giants saw Jefferson twice late in the 2022 season. He caught 12 passes for 133 yards and one touchdown in a regular-season game on Dec. 24. In an NFC Wild Card Game three weeks later, Jefferson had seven receptions for 47 yards, with a long catch of just 10 yards.

Jefferson is not a one-man band. Receiver Jordan Addison, the Vikings’ 2023 first-round draft choice, led the team with 10 touchdown catches as a rookie, was second on the team with

70 receptions and third with 911 yards. He has been limited in practice this week with an ankle injury.

“They have two really, really good receivers in my mind that we’ve got to be prepared for and we’ve got to be able to stop,” Bowen said.

Minnesota is missing tight end T.J. Hockenson, who topped the Vikings with 90 catches in 2023 despite tearing his ACL and MCL on Dec. 24. He is currently on the physically unable to perform list. Josh Oliver starts in his place.

The Vikings signed free agent running back Aaron Jones to invigorate a rushing attack that finished 29^th in the NFL with an average of 91.4 yards a game. Jones rushed for 5,940 yards and 45 touchdowns in seven years with Green Bay. He topped 100 rushing yards in each of his final five games in 2023, including two in the playoffs.

Quarterback San Darnold, the third overall selection in the 2018 draft, is with his fourth team and might have won the starting job by default when rookie J.J. McCarthy suffered a season-ending knee injury. Darnold threw only 46 passes last season for San Francisco, but in 2022 he started the season’s final six games for the Carolina Panthers. He won four of them, and during those seven weeks (including Carolina’s bye), Darnold was second in the NFL in yards per attempt (8.2), behind Miami’s Tua Tagovailoa.

“Spent a lot of time with Sam out at USC (before the draft),” Giants coach Brian Daboll said. “Working him out, taking him to dinner, meeting with him on the visits. I’ve got a lot of respect for Sam. He’s an athletic quarterback that has a good head on his shoulders, knows where to go with the football…I’ve always been a big fan of Sam.”

Minnesota’s play caller is head coach Kevin O’Connell.

Like most teams, the Vikings kept most of their best players off the field in the preseason. Jefferson and Jones didn’t take a preseason snap. Darnold and Addison had 12 in the first game.

Bowen said not being able to see their players in action has not affected his preparation.

“Obviously, O’Connell is going to have ways to get his guys open, have ways to run the football,” Bowen said. “It’s a big part of what they do. They’re going to try to get the run established for the play action pass game and everything else that comes with it.

“I think the system is a fit for Darnold coming from San Fran, a very similar structure. So, it’s probably a really good complement from where he’s coming from. We go back and watch stuff from last year just to get an idea. A lot of the players other than Darnold and Aaron Jones were there. You get a good gauge of that and then you go back and you watch those other guys from other places, just to study personnel and their tendencies and how they like to potentially run the ball and where they are in the passing game. You have to merge a little bit, combine, and look at a lot of different things. But schematically, I think it’s going to be pretty similar to what they’ve been.”