Hit em with The Griddy: How Justin Jefferson became LSUs fun-loving, simply stunning, No

BATON ROUGE, La. — Word had gotten around. The world had seen the dancing, the post-catch celebrations. The SEC knew about Justin Jefferson now.

So during warmups before LSU played Mississippi State, Jefferson saw Bulldog defenders mocking him. They were doing “The Griddy,” Jefferson’s signature dance celebration, in front of him. Nobody knew who he was 14 months ago. Now, his dance moves are being trolled by SEC opponents.

That’s when he decided. He had to hit them with The Griddy.

Jefferson likes to dance. He likes to mess around. He actually enjoys playing football. He’s not nervous before a snap. He’s not tense when he leaps for a ball. Receivers coach Mickey Joseph called him fearless. Former LSU assistant and NFL receiver guru Jerry Sullivan called him tough as nails. But the way several LSU staffers put it is this: Nobody has more fun playing football than Justin Jefferson.

Sometimes he works The Griddy — a move created by a friend in New Orleans who plays at Landry-Walker High — which looks something like hopscotch. “Maybe because it was different,” he said. “Nobody really knows it. Nobody really does it. So I was just like, ‘All right, let me make this into my own little thing in college football.’”

Sometimes he presses his hands together and bows, an ode to Cleveland Browns (and former LSU) receiver Jarvis Landry’s catchphrase to opposing defensive backs: Bless ’em. “So whenever I score sometimes, I’m just gonna bless ’em,’” Jefferson said. “It was just like a little twist.”

Because if you were the least recruited brother in a family of three LSU football players, if you were the lowest-rated player in your signing class who teammates thought was a walk-on, if you didn’t even make it to campus until a week into fall camp because you were almost academically ineligible, you too would make sure never to take it all for granted.

So in a 29-7 game in Starkville, quarterback Joe Burrow looked right, shifted center and fit an 18-yard touchdown pass through the middle to Jefferson. It sealed the game, and Burrow broke the LSU single-season touchdown pass record at 29.

A bit of history for @LSUFootball.

Joe Burrow sets the school's single-season passing TD record with his 29th of the year…and it's only LSU's 7th game. pic.twitter.com/n1ZGdWnM6b

— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) October 19, 2019

Jefferson laid the ball on the ground and hit Starkville with The Griddy.

No more mocking. No more screaming. No more cowbell in Davis Wade Stadium.

Justin Jefferson had arrived.

He remembers the locker: No. 118. It was off away from most of his teammates, away from the majority of his freshman class. They put him with the walk-ons. He had a walk-on number, too, rocking No. 32 as a receiver.

Jefferson arrived several days into fall camp. He was the final addition to LSU’s 2017 class, signing his letter of intent on the third day of camp after a lengthy battle to become academically eligible. He was a Jefferson, the youngest brother of former LSU quarterback Jordan and safety Rickey, but from a football perspective, he was a 175-pound no-name. He was ranked as the nation’s No. 308 receiver in the 247Sports Composite. His only other notable scholarship offers came from Tulane and FCS Nicholls State. And because he arrived late, he was given last choice of numbers and a locker away from the scholarship players.

“People really did think I was a walk-on,” Jefferson told The Athletic.

So why did he arrive so late? He didn’t take care of business in school. The Destrehan native slacked off his first two years and put himself behind. By his senior year, he had to get nearly perfect grades to get back on track. Then, as other LSU prospects arrived on campus in June, Jefferson had to retake a class in the summer and get an A to become eligible.

“I never really was a big school person,” he acknowledges. “But when it comes down to ‘I have to make this type of grade’ or ‘You need to buckle down now,’ that’s when I started to be like, ‘Let me stay focused, let me get into it.’ My freshman year and sophomore year, that’s where it really messed me up because I really wasn’t into it. I wasn’t paying attention. I was just being a child.”

Jeanne Hall — Destrehan High’s office specialist, who also let Hall of Fame safety Ed Reed live with her family when he roamed the Destrehan halls in the 1990s — was the one who got him on track. Hall told Jefferson he’d never be able to play for LSU like his brothers or any other school if he didn’t recover academically.

He caught up and just needed that one A in the summer of 2017. He finished the class six weeks before fall camp. He thought he was all set. But Jefferson said the wrong grade was put in the system. The NCAA said he wouldn’t be eligible.

“We were panicking at this time,” he said. “‘Something’s going wrong. We don’t know what’s going on. What are we gonna do?’”

As Jefferson, Hall and his family fought to get his grade corrected, more time passed. About a week before camp started, his mother, Elaine, came home with news. “Guess what?” she said. “You’re eligible.” They celebrated for a moment, but not too long because, at the end of the day, this was self-inflicted by Jefferson. The sentiment was more: “Don’t put yourself in this situation again.”

Then he finally arrived at LSU practice, the nobody, the lowest-rated player on the roster who teammates thought might be a walk-on. He started making plays as a scout-teamer against the starters. He made one-handed catches and runs after the catch. “’OK, maybe he’s a good walk-on,’” Jefferson jokes now.

LSU receivers coach Mickey Joseph was one of Jefferson’s main advocates, even trying to recruit him when Joseph was an assistant at Louisiana Tech. As Jefferson turned heads those first few months, he was less surprised. “We kind of knew right away,” he told The Athletic in June.

Jefferson made his way into the rotation by the Florida game in that 2017 season, but he touched the ball only once, on a 4-yard jet sweep against Arkansas. Around this time, he also connected with one of the gurus of receiving: Jerry Sullivan.

Sullivan was consulting with LSU in 2017 and would become LSU’s passing game coordinator and co-receivers coach the next year. Sullivan is a master of footwork, having spent 24 years in the NFL. Larry Fitzgerald credits him for the best year of his career. His calling card has been taking undervalued guys and seeing potential, as with Chargers Pro Bowler Tony Martin.

When Sullivan first saw Jefferson, he didn’t care about any ratings. He saw a player.

“I saw something in him,” Sullivan said. “My instincts have gotten me through my career, and my instinct on him was he had really good tools. He had good feet, good quickness, good ball skills. He’s got a good football IQ.”

Jefferson became Sullivan’s guy. In the spring of 2018, as LSU tried to figure out who it could trust in an unproven receivers room with names like Dee Anderson, Drake Davis, Stephen Sullivan and Jonathan Giles, Jefferson stood out. The main reason? He was coachable. The word out of LSU as Jefferson rose up the depth chart: “He listens.”

(Chris Graythen / Getty Images)

“I’m a coachable guy,” Jefferson said. “So whatever a coach says or how he tells me how to run the routes, I actually do it exactly how he says. So he started seeing me — ‘He’s doing exactly as I tell him to do.’”

And to the surprise of many, he became LSU’s star No. 1 receiver and the only guy Burrow and the coaching staff appeared to truly trust. He caught 54 passes for 875 yards and six touchdowns. He was targeted 91 times. Nobody else on the team had more than 43.

As the season progressed, he started getting stopped more around campus. People yelled, “Hey, you’re Justin Jefferson.” He became one of the faces of LSU football.

The world was figuring out who Jefferson was.

It’s one thing to go unrecruited. It’s another to be unnoticed when you’re the little brother of two players who were noticed. You know what’s possible, and you know what you’re not getting. Jefferson saw Jordan become a top-250 recruit and play quarterback for LSU. He saw Rickey choose LSU over a long list of Power 5 schools. Nobody came begging for Justin.

He showed up at Destrehan as a 125-pound freshman. He was a Jefferson, so coaches wanted to give him chances, but he was reduced to the freshman team. Then he broke his elbow as a sophomore. That’s another year gone. So no schools were looking at him his junior year when he broke out, and he was on a roster with now Notre Dame receiver Michael Young and Memphis receiver John Williams. He got his chance, but nobody gave it to him.

“He’s a favorite of mine because I love his fight,” Sullivan said. “I love his heart, his tenacity to be a good player. It’s great for me, even though I’m not there this year, to see him playing at such a high level.”

Jefferson ended 2018 as a clear No. 1 receiver and an established name. The next step was being more consistent. Sullivan got on him because he saw Jefferson step up in massive games with 97 yards at Auburn or 108 against Georgia, but he’d slip in the smaller games. He had one catch for 5 yards against Southeastern Louisiana or two catches for 12 yards against Louisiana Tech. Before Sullivan retired from LSU, he pleaded with Jefferson to bring it every game.

And replacing Sullivan was Joe Brady, a 29-year-old hotshot from the New Orleans Saints with a shiny new scheme that’s elevated LSU to the No. 2 scoring offense in college football. Sullivan receives a great deal of credit for forming the foundations for breakout 2019s by Jefferson, Terrace Marshall Jr. and Ja’Marr Chase, but Brady is the one who took it to the next level. He gave a mandate for 10,000 balls to be caught this offseason and brought funky drills with weird goggles and sliding doors. Jefferson caught passes with his body too often in 2018. He credits Brady for improving his hands.

Now, LSU has one of the best receiving trios in college football. Chase has 35 catches for 625 yards and nine touchdowns. Marshall, in four games, has 20 catches for 304 yards and six scores. And all of this has meant teams can’t focus on Jefferson, so he’s second in the SEC in catches (48), first in receiving yards (759) and tied for the lead in touchdowns (9).

Together with Burrow, the trio of receivers is rewriting the LSU record book, with the Tigers off to their first 7-0 start in eight years.

Jefferson is a jovial guy. Ask anyone around the LSU facilities and they’ll say there’s nobody in a better mood on a day-to-day basis. He spent the summer saying he was excited for other receivers to get targets so he wouldn’t be the only one.

But ask Jefferson if he has a chip on his shoulder from the years of slights. Ask if it sticks in his mind that nobody knew who he was until last September.

“Definitely,” he said. “Like, Terrace and Ja’Marr, they’re big-time recruits. Nike Opening. Highly recruited. I didn’t go through that path, so I didn’t know exactly how that felt until I got here and started playing more. So that attention is just starting to come my way.”

He’s not bitter. He said he’s grateful for this journey but he doesn’t forget. Suddenly he’s the guy LSU often has go on ESPN midweek shows.

That can be a force of motivation to keep working and also more reason to act like Jefferson does. When you’ve taken his route, you’re going to dance when you score. You’re going to smile everywhere you go. You’re going to enjoy it.

Joseph called him fearless because he will go for a ball across the middle and take the hit despite being just 192 pounds. He’s a skilled blocker, with coaches saying he’s one of the most trusted in the trenches. But maybe that fearlessness comes most from having nothing to lose.

“I just love the game, and just being able to go out there and enjoy and have fun with the game instead of being so intense,” he said. “Some people feel that going into a game is all: ‘Stay focused. Mean face.’

“I’m more the type of person to be myself. If I’m a clowning person, if I like joking around, that’s what I’m going to do. Like, before a game, instead of some people that are focused, looking mad or something, I’m not that type of person. I like to enjoy the game. I like to be focused in my own type of way.”

And that’s how Jefferson made it from presumed walk-on to All-American candidate. He didn’t take himself too seriously. He didn’t get down. He was himself.

Because nobody has more fun playing football than Justin Jefferson.

(Photo: John Korduner / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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