A pair of Minnesota Vikings set records on Thursday afternoon in the team’s 23-10 victory over the Detroit Lions. Since it’s time to talk about the positives that came out of the victory, let’s talk a bit about them now.
The first one is a record that I think a lot of us expected to hear about this season, but that we expected would have happened a long time ago. With his 30 yards receiving against the Lions, Justin Jefferson surpassed Randy Moss for the most receiving yardage by a player in his first six NFL seasons. He now has 8,379 career receiving yards, passing Moss’ mark of 8,375.
Jefferson had put up huge numbers in his first five seasons, but those numbers have dropped this season with the team’s struggles at the quarterback position. At his usual pace, he would have blown the doors off of Moss’ mark by midseason. The fact that he hasn’t started pouting or melting down in the midst of everything that’s happened this year is truly a testament to him and what he brings to the franchise.
Now, the Vikings can hopefully help him get to another record. He needs 53 yards in the regular season finale against Green Bay to join Moss and Mike Evans as the only players in NFL history to record at least 1,000 receiving yards in each of their first six NFL seasons. Evans went on to do it for eleven straight years, while Moss went under 1,000 yards in his seventh year while dealing with a litany of injuries.
The other Viking to set a record on Thursday afternoon put his name into the team record books. That would be the player you could argue has been the team’s most consistent player this season, kicker Will Reichard. With two more field goals from beyond 50 yards, Reichard now has 11 such field goals on the season. He now holds the team record in that category, surpassing the record that Blair Walsh set as a rookie in 2012 when he hit 10 field goals of 50 yards or more. Reichard has now surpassed his point total from his rookie season, as he has put 116 points on the board for the purple this season.
Kudos to Justin Jefferson and Will Reichard for setting some new standards, whether they’re at the NFL level or at the team level, this season.
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