St-Juste showed his potential in matchup with Justin Jefferson
He wasn’t perfect, but we saw the CBs potential against one of the best WRs in the NFL
The Washington Commanders will ultimately be disappointed that they couldn’t hold onto the victory against the Vikings on Sunday given the position they were in entering the fourth quarter. However, there were plenty of positives to take away from the performance, especially on the defensive side of the ball. The Commanders gave up a touchdown on the opening drive of the game and then forced the Vikings to punt on six of their following seven drives, with the other drive ending in an interception.
One of the fun battles to watch back on the All-22 footage was cornerback Benjamin St-Juste against Vikings star receiver Justin Jefferson. Jefferson is currently second in the NFL for receiving yards behind only Tyreek Hill, who has played one more game than him. Jefferson finished this game with seven catches for 115 yards and a touchdown, which on the surface make it look like St-Juste had a poor game. But while St-Juste did give up some plays to Jefferson, I suspect the Commanders will overall be encouraged by how well St-Juste was able to hold his own against one of the best receivers in the league.
The matchup started early in the game. On the opening drive, the Vikings faced a third and one, which saw St-Juste line up across from Jefferson.
On this play we see both the potential from St-Juste but also the ability of a receiver like Jefferson. Jefferson aligns to the right of the formation outside of the numbers. He takes an outside release on a fade route. St-Juste aligns in press coverage with slight outside leverage. He looks to defend the play aggressively off the snap, extending his arms to land a two-handed punch to the chest of Jefferson as he looks to release. This disrupts Jefferson’s release and allows St-Juste time to get on top of the route and force Jefferson wider to the sideline. If I’m being picky, I would have liked to have seen St-Juste be a little more aggressive in his path to force Jefferson even wider, but he ensures he stays on top of the route with his positioning.
St-Juste’s jam and positioning forces quarterback Kirk Cousins to double clutch his throw. He sets up to deliver the throw expecting Jefferson to win, but when St-Juste gets the jam and stays on top of the route, Cousins has to adjust. So instead, he puts the ball on Jefferson’s back shoulder. Jefferson tracks the ball well and suddenly breaks off the route to come back to the ball and make the catch.
St-Juste doesn’t do a lot wrong here. It’s very hard to defend a back shoulder throw. In an ideal world, St-Juste would have recognized he was “in-phase” with the receiver and thus was safe to turn back and look for the ball when Jefferson did. Being in-phase means he was tight to the receiver, had the route under control and wouldn’t lose track of the receiver while looking for the ball. St-Juste has had a lot of success this season in not looking back for the ball and just playing the receivers hands, but when a quality receiver can wait and wait until the last second to show their hands, that can be very tough to defend. This is the kind of situation where he was safe to look back for the ball and might have been able to make a play on it had he done so.
Later on in the drive, the Vikings went back to Jefferson against St-Juste.
Down in the red zone, the Vikings initially isolate Jefferson to the right of the formation but with a tight split. They then motion the tight end across the formation and stack him behind Jefferson just before the snap. From this condensed split in the red zone, St-Juste should know that Jefferson is likely looking to use the space outside on a corner route or run some sort of crosser that can be passed off inside. Jefferson does indeed run a corner route and St-Juste applies another strong jam at the line of scrimmage to disrupt his route. Jefferson gets a step ahead of St-Juste, but St-Juste sticks to his outside hip and is still very tight to the receiver as he breaks to the back corner of the end zone.
The coverage is again very solid here right up until the point of the ball arriving. Perhaps with the previous play still in his mind, St-Juste attempts to look back for the ball. The problem is, this time he’s not quite in-phase. With the receiver having a step, St-Juste can easily lose track of him if he turns back to try and locate the ball. This is where St-Juste has been so disciplined this season by not looking back and instead playing the receivers hands. His length allows him to get his hands in at the catch point and break up passes in these situations typically. However, because he turns his head to locate the ball, he can’t see that Jefferson is adjusting to the trajectory of the ball over his other shoulder. This allows Jefferson to secure the ball before St-Juste has a chance to contest it.
It’s another play that St-Juste did a lot of good things on, but just failed at the last moment with looking back for the ball. And credit to Jefferson too, it was an outstanding catch, not only to make the adjustment to the throw but to then get both feet down before falling out of bounds.
Understanding when you’re in-phase and safe to look back for the ball and when you’re out-of-phase and not safe to look for the ball is critical for young cornerbacks to learn. St-Juste is still effectively in his rookie season after missing most of last year with concussion issues, so those two plays were valuable lessons for him because he did a lot of good things on both plays up until that point, but was ultimately punished for those mistakes.
St-Juste corrected these mistakes later in the game.
Just before the half, the Vikings started to get some momentum on offense in the two-minute drill. They managed to get near the red zone and set up this play to try and attack St-Juste with Jefferson on a fade. St-Juste plays off the line of scrimmage, but rather than opening his hips inside to shuffle-step backwards as he typically would do in this position, he keeps himself square on to Jefferson and drops back with a more traditional back pedal. After Jefferson closes the gap, he suddenly widens his path outside. St-Juste flips his hips quickly and uses his right arm to land a jab that just prevents Jefferson from running by him and keeps him close enough with the receiver.
At that point, the ball is in the air and Jefferson begins to look back for the ball to try and make a play. This time, St-Juste understands he’s not quite in-phase with the receiver running behind him, so instead of looking back for the ball, he watches Jefferson’s hands and uses his length to get his hands in at the catch point. As the ball arrives, St-Juste manages to break up the pass and it ends up falling down to teammate Danny Johnson, who intercepts the pass in the end zone to end the drive for the Vikings.
That’s exactly how St-Juste should have played the touchdown pass. It’s perfect technique for being out-of-phase and he’s generally been very good with that technique this season. Had he used that same technique instead of looking back for the ball, Jefferson probably doesn’t score the opening touchdown.
Cornerback is a volatile position because one mistake can lead to a big play for the other team. Young cornerbacks can be susceptible to making mistakes, so that volatility can be even more high variance. That’s been the case with St-Juste so far this year. He’s often had one or two really nice reps and then followed it up with three or four bad ones. In this game, that variance was still there but the quality of the good plays stood out because they show the potential that St-Juste has going forward.
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