Kirk Cousins and Justin Jefferson have developed into quite a tandem with the Minnesota Vikings. A season ago, the two spearheaded the Viking offense as the team went 13-4 to make the playoffs.

Cousins started all 17 games under center and threw for over 4,500 yards with 29 touchdowns. Jefferson was by far the quarterback’s favorite target with 128 catches for 1,809 yards and 8 touchdowns. In 3 seasons with Cousins, Jefferson has 4,825 career yards with 1,400+ yards every season.

Despite that combined success, Jefferson did not have Cousins in his top 5 list of QBs. Recently asked about his top 5, Jefferson listed Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers, Joe Burrow, Jalen Hurts and Josh Allen per Joe Nelson with SI.com. Nelson noted the audio of Jefferson’s segment is hard to decipher with some noting it sounds like the wide receiver included Cousins alongside Allen at No. 5.

Cousins had a chance to respond to Jefferson’s list during a Thursday appearance on KFAN-FM 100.3’s Power Trip Morning Show. At the end of the day, Cousins wants to be on that list but appreciates the honesty of his teammate.

“I didn’t even see it. This is the first time hearing about it,” Cousins said. “As a competitor, yeah, you always want that. People have to be honest and share what they think and I’m not going to tell somebody what they need to think and hopefully in 2024 I’ll be on his list. We’ll see what we can do this year.”

Is Justin Jefferson wrong?

At the end of the day, it’s hard to dispute the majority of Jefferson’s list. However, as Cousins notes, there’s a way to crack into the discussion with his performance this fall.

One of the big knocks on Cousins has been his performance late in the season, a narrative that resurfaced with an early playoff loss at home a season ago. We’ll see if the Vikings can make a deep run this year behind the offensive combination of Cousins and Jefferson.

(H/T SI.com)