Do you remember the excitement surrounding Jalen Nailor when the Minnesota Vikings first drafted him? It’s easy to forget nowadays, but the Nailor hype train was going full steam in 2022 before he logged a regular-season snap. Not even two months after the Vikings drafted him, Paul Allen said he’d put Jalen Nailor at +200 to win the WR3 spot.
“This may have some SOD (steal of the draft) to it,” Allen boldly proclaimed.
Remember that the Vikings drafted Nailor in the sixth round and buried him on the depth chart behind Justin Jefferson, Adam Thielen, K.J. Osborn, Olabisi Johnson, Ihmir Smith-Marsette, and Albert Wilson. The excitement surrounding Nailor relative to the number of opportunities he was expected to receive in training camp was extraordinary. Predictably, Allen’s hot take didn’t come to fruition; Osborn won the WR3 job over the rookie. However, fans were still bullish on Nailor’s future even though he was buried on the depth chart due to a lack of seniority.
That was three years ago. Thielen and Osborn no longer stand in Nailor’s way. Nailor’s bright future that people were so excited about has arrived. Still, the optimism of his rookie season has not carried over into 2025, even though Nailor is a better player now and has a significantly larger role as WR3.
Why is that?
I believe that Jalen Nailor is just another victim of fanbase fatigue.
What is fanbase fatigue? It’s similar to voter fatigue in the NBA. For example, a certain player — say, Nikola Jokic — gets snubbed for an MVP award simply because they won the previous year and the media wants to promote a new player (i.e., Shai Gilgeous-Alexander). Now apply that same logic to NFL role players, and you get fanbase fatigue. The fans or the media aren’t hyping Nailor because he’s no longer an exciting young player in Minnesota’s WR room.
Nailor is not the first Vikings receiver to experience this phenomenon. K.J. Osborn isn’t a perfect comparison, because Osborn was considered a reach when Rick Spielman first drafted him in the fifth round of the 2020 draft. Thus, the hype surrounding him wasn’t as widespread compared to Nailor.
However, Osborn had a huge second-year leap in 2021 and immediately asserted himself as Minnesota’s WR3, boosting the fanbase’s perception of him. Osborn had two more productive seasons for the Vikings from 2022 to 2023. By then, the fanbase was completely over the Osborn experience and ready to see Nailor at WR3. K.J. was criticized for being a pedestrian athlete and an unreliable pass catcher, despite yielding the highest passer rating when targeted in the slot in 2022 and only having a 4.9% drop rate since 2021.
Nailor finds himself in the same situation that Osborn was in. Nailor is no longer the exciting young “steal” at wide receiver. Instead, he’s an established late-round veteran wideout about whom the fanbase has mixed opinions and an air of indifference.
Tai Felton is taking Nailor’s place as the most exciting new receiver after the Vikings selected late in the third round of the 2025 draft. Even Rondale Moore has gotten more fanfare than Nailor this offseason, and he’s been bouncing around the league for the past two years.
Vikings fans tend to undervalue role players with clearly established roles in favor of younger, more exciting prospects who will eventually replace those veterans. It’s a seemingly never-ending cycle where fourth- and fifth-string players get hyped up early in their careers, only for the hype to fade away once they actually reach their potential in favor of the next high-upside prospect.
There’s nothing wrong with being excited about the future. Still, focusing too much on backups with long-term upside can blind people to what’s in front of them.
