You can forgive Shawn Jefferson for being starry-eyed.
He gets to coach Garrett Wilson.
And you can forgive Tony Dews for being starry-eyed.
He gets to coach Breece Hall.
Wilson, 24, and Hall, 23, were two big reasons why joining the Jets appealed to Aaron Rodgers, a pair of third-year stars now as bright as any WR-RB tandem in the NFL.
“I have animated discussion all the time with Garrett in my room,” Jefferson said earlier in training camp. “That’s part of who he is. … That’s one thing I do love about Garrett, he’s a stickler for the details. He’s very thirsty for it, so you better be on your job as a coach, ’cause he wants to know why.”
Rodgers, who is on his job as the franchise quarterback and enjoys his animated on-field discussions with Wilson, can vouch for that.
“I love that,” Jefferson said. “That’s a coach’s dream, you got a guy that’s driven like that, he’s competitive, you don’t have to kick him in the ass to go, he’s waiting on go all the time.”
Rodgers has compared Wilson to his former Packers receiver Davante Adams.
“As far as his ability to get out of breaks and his quick twitch at the line of scrimmage, for sure,” Rodgers said in 2023 training camp.
Wilson is 6 feet, 192; Adams, who caught 907 passes from Rodgers with 68 regular-season TDs, is 6-1, 216. Jefferson (470-7,023-29 TDs receiving across 13 NFL seasons) doesn’t like to compare. But there are obvious similarities.
“The thing that sticks out to me, and I think this is a good trait of a really, really good receiver, or receiver that has a chance to be really, really great,” Jefferson said. “He makes the hard plays look routine. I’m just amazed when I got here — I’ve seen the likes of Calvin Johnson, DeAndre Hopkins make those hard plays look routine. He does the same thing. But he does it in a way it’s a lot easier than what they did. It’s like the way he contorts his body. He’s never out of position. It’s just crazy. It’s a gift.
“I just gotta be careful that I don’t screw him up.”
Dews is in his first year as Hall’s position coach.
“He can play all three downs, really excited about his ability to help us in the pass game, his ability to run routes in the passing game, and then, in the run game, he’s very smooth yet he has this twitchiness and he’s moving faster than he looks like,” Dews said. “Cause sometimes I’m looking at him on the field, I’m like, ‘Breece, you’re dragging, why don’t you run?’ Then I go look at the film and like, ‘Oh, he’s moving pretty good.’ So he has some deceptive speed, I think.”
Dews coached Derrick Henry with the Titans from 2018-22 before switching to the TE room last season. He loves coaching Hall.
Who never shies away from calling himself Breece The Beast.
“He is a thinker, he’s very smart,” Dews said. “He asks really good questions. He can watch things on the film when we’re watching and ask the right questions, so I know that his wheels are turning … and then he does a really good job of communicating with Aaron and the quarterbacks. And probably the best thing about him is he’s been awesome with the other guys in the room.”
Wilson played all of four snaps with Rodgers (Achilles, remember?) last season. And still caught 95 balls from Zach Wilson & Co.
“He’s a rare talent, he really is, man,” Jefferson said.
As is Hall, who is a receiving weapon out of the backfield (76-591-4 TDs in 2023). Rodgers has compared Hall’s running style to former Packers RB Ahman Green (9,205 career rushing yards with 60 TDs and 378-2,833 receiving with 14 TDs), mostly playing with Brett Favre. Green was 6-0, 218; Hall is 5-11, 220.
“He has very natural hands, so he catches the ball easily,” Dews said. “He’s fluid and athletic and he can change direction, and he has the ability to run routes like some of the backs that we’ve seen in the past in the NFL that were good route runners. The first name maybe comes to mind is Alvin Kamara, certainly Christian McCaffrey and what he’s doing now. So I’m not comparing him to those guys but I’m just talking about the guys that have been able to be good route runners and successful in the pass game to help their team.”
Three days before the Commanders joint scrimmage, Wilson implored Jefferson: “Turn me loose Thursday.”
“You don’t find that in this day and age,” Jefferson said. “It’s a dream come true for me.”
Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall: Beauty and the Beast.
