interview with USA Today<\/a> if he has thought about whether it could be the Vikings in the Super Bowl instead of the Seahawks if Darnold were in Minnesota instead of Seattle, Jefferson answered, \u201cYeah, for sure, definitely.\u201d<\/p>\nJefferson added that it was a tough year for the Vikings with J.J. McCarthy, Carson Wentz and Max Brosmer at quarterback, and it could have been different with Darnold, who led the Vikings to a 14-3 record in 2024 but left for Seattle in 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone knows the difficulty of the quarterback position this year, how we were dealt it,\u201d Jefferson said. \u201cBut having a quarterback that already had a season under his belt with us, knew the plays, knew the playbook, knew the players, throwing to me, Jordan Addison, T.J. Hockenson, all these guys, I definitely feel like we would have done better. But it is what it is, it\u2019s on to newer and better things. But I\u2019m definitely happy and proud of him that he is able to reach it this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jefferson said he has mixed emotions seeing Darnold\u2019s success.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely tough. It\u2019s tough to watch,\u201d Jefferson said. \u201cI love that he\u2019s in the Super Bowl. I\u2019m happy for him, I want nothing but the best for him, especially the way his journey was at first, people doubting him and people not giving him the respect. Now they\u2019re giving him the respect. Now they\u2019re seeing that he\u2019s a top-tier quarterback in this league. Of course, selfishly I wish he had done that for us last year, but to see him blossom and bounce back right after last year and make it this year, I\u2019m happy for him and I hope he wins. I\u2019m rooting for Seattle and I think Seattle\u2019s gonna win. I\u2019ll be rooting for him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson wonders what might have been for his team this season if it had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-441615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}