KJ Osborn is ready for his chance

EAGAN — Keenan McCardell remembers when the Jacksonville Jaguars drafted a receiver in the first round and the talk surrounding the pick was that R. Jay Soward was taken to replace him.

In 1999, McCardell was coming off a 78-catch season at age 29. He had dipped under 1,000 yards for the second year in a row after back-to-back 1,100-plus yard seasons. The two-time Pro Bowler understood what was going on: The Jags needed another weapon. The next best receiver beyond Jimmy Smith and McCardell only had 16 receptions. Still, he heard the noise.

Talk of his demise put a chip on the shoulder of one of that era’s most chip-on-shoulder players and McCardell racked up 94 catches for 1,207 yards in 2000 and repeated those numbers the following year.

McCardell, now the Minnesota Vikings wide receivers coach, is known in the receiver room for sharing tales from back in his day. You can bet he told KJ Osborn about R. Jay Soward after the Vikings used the No. 23 overall pick on receiver Jordan Addison.

“He’s a guy that can handle adversity really well,” McCardell said of Osborn in a sit-down interview last week. “He doesn’t let it break him. He steps up to the challenge. Now that everyone is saying that we drafted Jordan and we’re going to replace him…Us drafting Jordan adds fuel to his fire but he has to have the professionalism to teach [Jordan]. It’s part of how football is.”

Sometimes players use the strawman approach as a motivational tool. I’m not sure there was a flurry of folks in Jacksonville saying that McCardell was washed at 29 but he used it as motivation. In this case, there’s lots of evidence that the football analysis world is leaving Osborn behind. ESPN’s Mike Clay, who does statistical projections for every team, predicts 91 targets for Addison in 2023 and only 78 for Osborn.

On draft night, the Associated Press’s write up of the Addison pick said: “The Vikings selected the USC wide receiver with the 23rd overall pick in the NFL draft on Thursday night, giving their superstar a viable sidekick after the jettisoning of veteran Adam Thielen.”

No mention of Osborn.

That’s more or less how things have always gone for Osborn, who caught 60 passes for 650 yards and five touchdowns last season. He remembers when he first started playing football as a kid, he was the backup running back. He recalls when he arrived at the University at Buffalo, they redshirted him and his first game action didn’t come until two other slot receivers got hurt in the same game. When Osborn arrived as a fifth-round pick of the Vikings, it looked more like they were taking him as a punt returner than a top receiving option and he posted a grand total of zero targets in Year 1.

“This has been my career, it’s been my path,” Osborn said. “Wait my turn, grind it out. But I think that gives me a sense of appreciation.”

McCardell saw something there with Osborn from the outset. When he was the receiver’s coach in Jacksonville, McCardell wanted the Jags to draft the Miami standout. When he arrived in Minnesota, he made it a priority to get Osborn going from the outset.

“I knew his talent from doing my reports on him,” McCardell said. “I knew what he needed and some of the things I was going to do with him if he came to Jacksonville. I poured into him that way and made him confident. There’s a reason why you’re here. You’re not here just to be a fifth-round draft pick.”

To open the 2021 offseason, McCardell purposefully put Osborn in situations during OTAs and minicamp to get the ball. The long-time player and coach believes that making big-time plays is a skill that can be practiced and honed and he wanted Osborn to get the feeling of being the main target on a third-and-long or in a red zone situation.

“The thing I was trying to tell him is that in the big-time moments you have to step up and be that guy,” McCardell said. “That offseason I literally put him in those situations in OTAs. I put him in Justin’s position to show him: If Justin was there, he would be making this play. If it’s third down, you have to make this play. Hell or high water, you have to make this play. If [the defender] is hanging on your back, you have to make this catch and get this first down. When it’s time to run by people, you know it and you see it and you’ve got to make these plays. So every time he did it, the confidence kept coming and he started to understand what I was telling him.”

From the outset of the 2021 season, McCardell’s vision for Osborn came to fruition. He opened the year with 12 catches in the first two weeks for 167 yards and a touchdown. Later on in the year when Adam Thielen got banged up, Osborn caught 19 passes for 290 yards in a six-game stretch during Thielen’s absence.

“When Adam got hurt, the game wasn’t too big for him because we went through that in the offseason and training camp,” McCardell said. “It was, ‘Oh, this is what I’m supposed to do.’ Just like riding a bicycle. Once you’re taught to do it, you will never forget to do it. Him making all the big plays this year, it wasn’t nothing big for him, he expects that now. That’s his standard because we started that way. When you get him with that mindset, it’s hard to stop.”

McCardell’s grand plan for Osborn wouldn’t have gone anywhere had the 26-year-old receiver not been coachable. But absorbing information and continuing to grow is his super power.

“In this offense, receiver IQ means a lot,” McCardell said. “It gets you open. It makes a big block for the long runs. He has a great football IQ and it continues to get better. He has a mindset of humbling himself and knowing what he doesn’t know…That’s a power of his. I’m willing to learn. I’m willing to tell you what I don’t know and can you help me? That’s big.”

Osborn noted that one of his offseason goals is to grow his understanding of the game until he feels like he can process things like the best receivers in the league.

“Challenge myself to play different positions, which I’ve always done but there’s a difference between knowing it and mastering it and then going on another level as far as learning defenses,” Osborn said. “If you have ever heard Cooper Kupp talk, it’s like, ‘Whoa that guy is smart, he could be in the quarterback room.’ I want to push myself to be on that level….there’s always more to learn.”

The wrinkle to all of these things — whether it’s statistical production or making plays in big moments or being X percent better at reading defenses — is the presence of Justin Jefferson. It’s a blessing and a curse for the receivers who play alongside him. You can do everything right for weeks and end up with the football rarely coming your way, which is what happened with Osborn at the beginning of last year.

McCardell was adamant that his slow start to last season, which saw Osborn catch just 21 passes over the first eight weeks, was more due to Jefferson dominating than Osborn struggling. He gave a 284-word answer when I asked him about it. Here’s the best part:

“It wasn’t a jump from midseason, he was doing all the right things in the first part of the season,” McCardell said. “Right blocks, right routes, getting open. We just had a freak that was having an unbelievable season. JJ was unbelievable and it’s hard for guys to understand it. I’ve been on the other side of a guy having an unbelievable year and then everybody is talking about, ‘Maybe he’s losing a step because he didn’t have the numbers.’ Well, the guy on the other side is doing his thing and you respect that. It just so happened more toward the end of the year people in the league started to recognize, ‘Yo, Justin Jefferson is on another planet right now so we have to pay a little more attention,’ and then when that happened KJ was doing what he was doing from the beginning but the ball started to find him.”

Over the final five weeks, Osborn caught 30 passes for 388 yards including a 157-yard performance that was at the center of the Vikings’ record-breaking comeback against the Indianapolis Colts. Osborn remembers a point in that game where McCardell’s big-moment training sessions of the 2021 offseason came to fruition.

“When JJ went out when Gilmore hit him…I moved into JJ’s position as the X [receiver],” Osborn said. “We were down and we needed a spark. In my mind, I was like, ‘JJ’s not on the field, somebody’s gotta be a guy, somebody’s gotta [step up].’ The first play we threw me a slant and then got it rolling. You can’t predict those types of things and I try to take advantage of the opportunities that I’m given.”

Osborn keeps reminding himself of a saying that he heard from a coach from his past: Consistently good over occasionally great.

One of the keys to achieving that consistency is Osborn fully grasping his role.

“He has that running back semi build because he’s so thick,” McCardell said. “You have some self awareness that, I’m not a jitterbug, I can’t be trying to duck and dodge and do all that. My game is to stick my foot in the ground and run through people, run through tackles and understand that this is my bread and butter. When I go to my bag of tricks, this is what I’m bringing out. I’m going to run through your shoulder and make it hard for you to tackle me and I’m going to slash. That’s part of growing. Stick your foot in the ground and run through tackles and a 5-yard catch may turn into 15-yard catch and if they don’t tackle is that it could be 30 yards.”

Aside from Osborn fully understanding how his skills translate to his role on the team, he is also tasked with taking over the leadership void left by Thielen. Suddenly the only receiver older than him is Brandon Powell, 27, who joined the team as a free agent this offseason and has mostly been a returner. Not that Osborn is a stranger to having leadership as an element of his job. When he was drafted GM Rick Spielman mentioned that Osborn’s captainship on Miami’s team impressed him considering he was a transfer.

“My first three years here I wasn’t really a leader on the team or in the organization, I was learning,” Osborn said. “A lot of those things I learned were from Adam [Thielen], I never saw him have a bad day and sometimes as a leader you can’t really show a bunch of emotion because you have young guys looking up to him and how he’s carrying himself and his attitude whether he likes the situation or not and I think he did a really good job of being an example for me.”

Osborn acknowledged that he sees this year as his big chance. He said he woke up on the first day of offseason workouts feeling emotional about the road that has led him to this point and the possibilities ahead. He knows that opposing defenses are going to throw the kitchen sink at Jefferson. He knows he’s a free agent after this season. He knows the expectations for this offense are high and he’s a part of that equation.

And he knows McCardell is in his corner with sage words to keep it all in perspective.

“It’s not how you arrive in the NFL, it’s how you leave the NFL… I know this well,” said McCardell. “Put the work in and don’t make the same mistakes [twice] and you’re always searching for information, you’ll be in this game a long time. At the end of the day you might be the 13th or 14th ranked player in receptions or go from the fifth-round pick to play 20 years.”

McCardell would know. He was drafted in the 12th round and ranks in the top 40 all-time in receiving yards, despite folks thinking his teams were drafting other guys to take his place from time to time.