On Sunday night, two of the NFL’s best teams will battle it out, with both the NFC North crown and the conference’s No. 1 seed on the line.
Many expected the Detroit Lions to be in a position like this, but the same wasn’t true of the Minnesota Vikings. They’ve taken divergent paths to get to this place, too. One thing each of their paths has in common, though, is the breakout of their No. 2 wide receiver. Both Jameson Williams and Jordan Addison have emerged this season as stars in their own right, and not merely complementary pieces alongside Amon-Ra St. Brown and Justin Jefferson.
Williams has caught 52 passes for 967 yards and seven touchdowns in 14 games played. Addison, in his 14 games, has 62 grabs for 875 yards and nine scores. They are two of only 26 receivers leaguewide with at least 20 receptions of more than 15 yards, and they each rank inside the top 35 in yards per route run among the 140 wideouts who have run 100 routes or more, according to TruMedia.
And over the second half of the season, they’ve been even better.
Since Williams returned from his suspension back in Week 10, he’s caught 35 passes for 606 yards and four touchdowns, putting him on a full-season pace of 74 catches for 1,288 yards and eight touchdowns. In that same timespan, Addison has 43 catches for 602 yards and seven touchdowns, pacing for a 91-1,279-15 full-season receiving line. Williams is 16th and Addison is 19th during that time in adjusted yards per route, which accounts for things like the increased importance first downs and touchdowns compared with catches that don’t gain enough yards to move the chains.
The big thing that Lions want to accomplish with Williams is getting him the ball while he is moving full speed — even if that means throwing it to somebody else. Williams didn’t participate in the NFL combine because he was coming off a torn ACL after his final college season, but he claims he can run the 40-yard dash in under 4.2 seconds. That would make him the fastest man in NFL history, and watching him accelerate past defenders, it’s not exactly hard to see that being the case.
Williams’ specialty is on deep and in-breaking routes. On throws of at least 15 air yards, via TruMedia, he’s caught 11 of 18 passes for 314 yards and two touchdowns during that aforementioned period since his return from suspension. Only six players leaguewide have more receiving yards on those types of passes. (One of them is Addison.) During that same span, he has 243 yards on in-breakers, more than every player in the league except for Tyreek Hill, A.J. Brown and Ja’Marr Chase.
The Vikings ask Addison to do a bit more “pure wide receiver” type stuff than the Vikings do with Williams, but he’s not all that much less explosive. As previously mentioned, he’s one of the very few players with more yards on deep balls over the second half of the season than Williams. He’s able to make that happen due to his combination of speed, ball-tracking and body control.
When you think about the type of player Addison was in college at both Pittsburgh and USC, it’s easy to see why the Vikes have him do the “receiver-y” type of things, too. He’s a route technician, using timing and body fakes and precision to get himself to the right spot at the right time, and then putting his physical gifts to work to make a play on the ball and/or gain yards after the catch.
When these two teams meet on Sunday, (sorry for this upcoming pun) the lion’s share of the attention — from both defenses and interested observers — will likely go to St. Brown and Jefferson. They’re each Pro Bowlers, and likely All-Pros. But they shouldn’t entirely overshadow their running mates, who have become excellent players in their own right.
