“I’m a Wreck”: Watching Justin Jefferson Bleed Against Raiders, Mom Expresses Biggest Fears as Vikings WR Gets Candid About Injury

A mother’s care for her children will remain! No matter where you are or what you are doing. You have got to let your mama know that everything’s OK. Who better than Minnesota Vikings‘ WR Justin Jefferson and his mom to tell us that? “I’m a wreck, ” she said as captured in the latest Netflix documentary ‘Receiver’. But only she knows what’s going through her mind at the moment her son got injured, again!

After two months of rehabbing his hamstring injury, Jefferson returned in Week 14 against the Las Vegas Raiders. Excited to be on the pitch, the Vikings’ No. 18 secured a high 15-yard pass from Joshua Dobbs. But the Raiders safety Marcus Epps, an ex-Viking, delivered a legal but match-ending blow to Jefferson’s chest. Netflix captured the moments after the blow.

You can see Justin Jefferson coughing and the medical support surrounding him. But his mother wanted only one thing out of him before leaving the field. “All my boys know that if something’s wrong, you gotta let me know… And that’s why he [Justin] passed by and he’s gonna give me the thumbs up to let me know that he’s OK.” That’s some raising up you have got to appreciate.

Somehow mothers have got this ‘sixth sense’, this connection. And Elaine is no different! She sensed something was off despite the thumbs-up from her son. “Seeing his face and, you know, that mom feeling, I knew something wasn’t right.”

Meanwhile, the possibility of returning from one harrowing injury and rehab to possibly another didn’t sit well with her WR son.

Justin Jefferson doesn’t want to go in the back of the ambulance ever again

In the documentary, Justin Jefferson was recounting the moment when he got hit. He said he was anxious. Especially when the trainers asked him to come to the tent for further evaluations, he just had one thought in his head. “I’m like, ‘Dog, are you serious?’ I’m like, ‘Not again! You can’t tell me that on this first game back and I get hurt again.’” 

The problem was not him coughing blood from his mouth, but the absence of any bleeding spot inside the mouth. So, the first diagnosis from the tent was a Pulmonary Contusion – bruising in the lung from a chest injury. From the audio inside the tent, you can hear that the trainers were quick to respond and suggested that he go to the hospital. And it was just to rule out the possibility of another prolonged absence for Justin.

“I don’t ever want to go in the back of an ambulance again. That was my first time in the back of one,” he said in the 6th episode of the documentary when talking about what happened after the injury. And it seems like it will be his last, but the future’s not anyone’s to predict. We hope that falls right for him like it did at the hospital when the X-ray was positive. No fractured bones but internal bruising and it was not enough to stop him.

He continued, “People don’t understand how much I love the game of football. I want to be out there competing and fighting every single play.” And he did compete! Just a week following this, he made it into the team sheet and onto the gridiron against the Cincinnati Bengals.

Before leaving the Raiders game, Jefferson made team history by surpassing Randy Moss for the most receiving yards by a Vikings player in his first four seasons. Coming into that game, Moss had 5,396 yards, while Jefferson catching a 12-yard pass moved him to 5,423. Not just that! The Vikings felt their star WR’s loss on the pitch. They might have won, but it was the lowest-scoring indoor game in the NFL since 2007, ending in 3-0.

If someone asks you to define ‘beast mentality’, quote this incident of Justin Jefferson from the 2023 season.