He had to overcome being my son: How Van Jefferson forged his own path outside the shadow of h

Posted by Noelle Montes on Tuesday, May 7, 2024

Shawn Jefferson’s full name — Vanchi LaShawn Jefferson — embarrassed him so much while growing up that he made a decision by fifth grade to identify with only part of it.

“I hated that name,” Shawn Jefferson told The Athletic. “Could you imagine going to the first day of school hearing the teacher say, ‘Hey, do we have a ‘Vanch-ee’ or ‘Van-cheye’ here?’ I’d be down in my desk like, ‘Yeah, here, I go by Shawn.’ ”

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For the record, Shawn Jefferson’s mother told him that his aunt recommended the name “Vanchi.” But the name “Shawn” has stuck, through 13 years as a player in the NFL and another 13 years as an assistant coach, including his current job as Miami Dolphins receivers coach.

The legacy of “Vanchi” didn’t end there, though, as much as Shawn Jefferson would’ve originally preferred it to. His father was a strong proponent of a man naming his first son after himself, and Shawn Jefferson always did what his father told him to do. So on July 26, 1996, in Jacksonville, Fla., Vanchi LaShawn Jefferson Jr. was born.

Van Jefferson shortened his first name but didn’t abandon it. Like his father, Van Jefferson is a skilled wide receiver. He transferred to Florida after three years at Ole Miss, and he has been ruled eligible to play for the Gators this season by the NCAA and the SEC. He profiles as the Gators’ most complete threat on the outside. The way Van Jefferson lines up, waits for the snap and runs is all very similar to his father.

But Van Jefferson’s first name is a reminder — an irresistible metaphor, even, for a relationship that has evolved over the years — that he is not his father. Shawn Jefferson will always be part of his story, but Van Jefferson’s decision to transfer from Ole Miss to Florida is the latest example of him becoming his own person.

“A lot of times, he had to overcome being my son,” Shawn Jefferson said. “Van is very driven. He’s extremely driven. Not that he hates the fact … I think what kind of fuels him sometimes is that they’ll mention him as the son of former NFL player and coach Shawn Jefferson. Van wants to dispel all of that, which I love — I absolutely love it. That’s why when I get requests for interviews, I never call back. I want them to focus on Van and not the fact I’m his father and blah, blah, blah …

“Van is self-made. Trust me when I tell you that. Van gets out there, works his ass off. I think his goal is, hey, look, when they mention him, don’t say the son of former NFL player … and I love the fact that I think that fuels him. I want him to be his own thing. Like, ‘This is the story of Van Jefferson.’ ”

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Tying Van Jefferson’s growth to Shawn Jefferson as a receiver may seem like a tired tale. But every time someone close to Van Jefferson is asked a question about the hardest challenge he has faced to this point, they offer a similar answer.

The part of the story that gets twisted is that, though Shawn Jefferson’s past helped, Van Jefferson didn’t make his name off his father’s, even though it’s undeniable that he wouldn’t be who he is now without his father. And to use a phrase from Shawn Jefferson on the topic: “It wasn’t always pretty.”

“My dad is more of a stern guy,” Van Jefferson said. “He wants everything done the right way. Not saying I don’t want to do things the right way, but I’m saying he’s more of a disciplinarian. Our personalities are very different because I like to joke around a lot and he’s more work, work, work, work.”

Shawn Jefferson has coached the Miami Dolphins’ receivers since 2016. (Charles Trainor Jr. / Miami Herald / TNS via Getty Images)

Shawn Jefferson like to tell the story about how when Van Jefferson was 10, his mother would say he’s going to be a special football player because of coordination, athleticism and the way he ran. Van Jefferson didn’t actually play football with pads on until the seventh grade because his father wouldn’t allow him to sooner.

From there, the stories those close to Van Jefferson enjoy sharing the most about his pre-college football days all sound similar.

• There was the time Van Jefferson showed up to a Nike Opening event for the first time in Birmingham. His father told him not to worry about the plethora of five- and four-stars, that he would earn each star he received. After a while, no defensive back volunteered to go 1-on-1 with him. He was named MVP.

• Once, Van Jefferson had the flu the day of a game. He spent the early portion of the day with doctors. His mother, Marla Jefferson, remembers seeing him laying on the ground resting on the field prior to kickoff. Still, he played.

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• He suffered a nose injury once in a game and was taken out. His father, as he recalled, walked over and only asked if he was going back in. He went back in.

• He broke his fibula early in his freshman high school season. He grew up wanting to attend Ohio State. The Buckeyes hosted a camp a few weeks after he got his cast removed. Not yet 100 percent, he went and competed.

“That was when I was like, ‘OK, I got something here,’” Shawn Jefferson said. “Most kids don’t want to go. For the mere fact that he did that, as a father, you put that in the back of your mind like, ‘OK, he has these traits.’ After that, (Ohio State was) on him. They recruited Van until the last freaking second. They wanted him bad.”

Van Jefferson moved to Tennessee for his sophomore year of his high school after his father left the Detroit Lions to coach receivers for the Titans. He enrolled at Ravenwood High School shortly after the family met football coach Will Hester, then in his first year at the school.

“I just remember the intensity of his father,” Hester said. “He told me his son was pretty good but he didn’t want anything handed to him and just wanted an opportunity where he can come in to compete to play.”

Van Jefferson set himself apart early. His film from those days tells the story of how: Often, he was able to sink his hips, take minimal steps, get out of his breath and separate from a defensive back quickly.

“Van was — and still is in my 21 years of coaching — the most polished receiver I’ve ever been around,” Hester said. “Van was one of those guys who could come to the sideline and say, ‘Coach, listen, the corner is playing me like this, the safety is rolling like this, this is there and that’s there.’ ”

Van Jefferson started collecting major college football offers ahead of his junior year. The boy who grew up watching college football all day on fall Saturdays and getting exposed to greats like Calvin Johnson through his father’s job informed Hester of his pro aspirations, confirming what Shawn Jefferson always thought he knew.

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“When he told me that, my blinders went on,” Shawn Jefferson said. “Sometimes I was brutal on him. It would be, OK, this is what you need to do to get there and it’s going to be uncomfortable at times.”

That it was.

Shawn Jefferson caught 470 passes for four teams during a 13-year NFL playing career. (David Maxwell / AFP / Getty Images)

“As far as challenges go, the biggest challenge was living with his dad,” Hester said. “His dad is an uber-intense guy. Their workouts would rival anything you would put an NFL guy through. At times, Van, early on in his life, would resent that a bit just because it was so hard and so intense. Shawn was coaching him like an NFL receiver and Van wanted him to be his dad a little bit more.

“I don’t know if it was ever off. It was always on, and I think that wore on Van.”

Hester played the role of “good cop” for Van Jefferson, often serving as a listener as much as a coach.

“Van is a very, very, very loving kid,” Hester said. “Van craves affirmation from everyone, and the hardest thing was he wasn’t getting a whole lot of that from dad. And not because dad didn’t love him or didn’t want to give it to him, but because dad knew what kind of ability he had and wanted to make sure he reached that potential.”

Shawn Jefferson fathered his son like a coach, one who would harp on a missed block instead of glorifying receptions and yards. He wouldn’t degrade his son, but he would be direct. He didn’t want Van Jefferson to just be the best receiver, he wanted him to be the best blocker, too.

“Sometimes, as a father, there’s no filter time,” Shawn Jefferson said. “I have to make sure he gets what I’m trying to get across to him. I don’t know if I’m Van’s worst critic. But I’m after perfection. I’m always a stickler on just being perfect on everything. And I know there’s no one perfect but the man upstairs. But that’s where I want his mindset to be.

“If you keep that mindset, you’ll always hover around excellent.”

Ask Van Jefferson about the pros and cons of having a father who is a coach, and he doesn’t list any grievances. Instead of talking about how demanding his father was, his brain goes in a different direction: He mentions needing to block out the criticism and speculation that Shawn Jefferson, like any NFL coach, faces.

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“My dad instilled in me everything I know,” Jefferson said. “Getting out of breaks, creating separation, I owe it all to my dad. He’s been a great influence on my life.”

Van Jefferson isn’t “in your face” with teammates and in any setting, really, as Marla Jefferson put it, and he is far more reserved than his father, whom Marla Jefferson describes as a “strong-fisted-type of a guy.” There are reasons for the differences, and they shed light on Shawn Jefferson’s style of parenting. He never wanted Van Jefferson to be the next Shawn Jefferson, but he did want his son to develop the same kind of mindset that he was forced to have growing up, the idea of working for everything.

Shawn Jefferson grew up with six brothers and five sisters in the Jacksonville projects. His father worked a construction job to support his family of 12. His mother ran the household. His father believed in hard, tough, rugged training.

“You see some of your friends getting killed and you realize how grateful you are for a family structure like we had,” Shawn Jefferson said in a 1991 article in the Los Angeles Times. “You have to have a strong mind to resist (drugs and gangs). Your mother and father instill that in you.”

Van Jefferson lived a suburban lifestyle with his two sisters. “Privileged,” was the way Marla Jefferson put it. In a family of faith, Shawn and Marla Jefferson took their children to soup kitchens, homeless shelters and poor neighborhoods to “bless homes.” One such trip happened in a poverty-stricken area of Detroit when Van Jefferson was in eighth grade. The family visited a woman and her two sons in a tiny two-bedroom apartment. This was the only time the Jeffersons were invited inside someone’s home on such a visit. The woman fried fish for everyone, creating a thick smoke throughout the small house.

The car ride back home that day featured questions from Van Jefferson about why his family lived the way it did and why the woman couldn’t live elsewhere.

“We did not want him to grow up looking at life through one type of lens,” Marla Jefferson said.

Compassion and introspection have long been parts of who Van Jefferson is. The recruiting process, when every writer covering every new school that offered him a scholarship wrote the same biographical information, compelled Jefferson to reflect more. Marla Jefferson often heard her son say, ‘Why do they always say ‘the son of Shawn Jefferson’ all the time?”

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“So much of who Van is, what he does and the accomplishments that he acquires have always been associated with his father,” Marla Jefferson said. “When he was being recruited, that’s when the battle actually started really. There were peaks and valleys before. But that’s when it really came head to head.”

Van Jefferson grew up wanting to play for Ohio State, but his father didn’t think it was the right program after weighing several factors such as fit in the offense and the depth chart. “He kind of forbid him not to go there,” Marla Jefferson said. Oklahoma was also in the mix, but Shawn Jefferson didn’t want his son to go there, either. Shawn Jefferson was particularly fond of Georgia, but Van Jefferson decommitted from the Bulldogs after a visit.

“I don’t know if Van couldn’t really receive Georgia well because his dad pushed it so much or if he just really didn’t feel at home,” Marla Jefferson said. “And I kind of believe that. When he went to the campus he liked everybody, but there wasn’t a connect.”

After redshirting his first year, Van Jefferson caught 91 passes in two seasons for Ole Miss. (Stan Szeto / USA TODAY Sports)

The draw for Ole Miss when the Rebels entered the recruiting picture was Hugh Freeze, Marla Jefferson said. Van Jefferson and the family liked Freeze. But his mother, with a laugh, also said choosing Ole Miss may have been the act of a rebellious 18-year-old.

“He was sick of the back and forth, the roundabout, the ‘I can’t go here, I can’t go there,’ ” Marla Jefferson said. “He was torn. At that point, he was depleted. It was kind of like, ‘Whatever I have to deal with with dad, I’ll just deal with, this is what I’m doing.’ ”

When Van Jefferson signed with Ole Miss, his father made the following clear: Whatever school you choose to go to, you’re making a commitment to that school … So that means you’re stuck there … There’s no going back and forth … There’s no transferring.

Three years later, Van Jefferson wanted to do just that. As a redshirt freshman in 2016, he finished second on the Rebels with 49 catches and third with 543 receiving yards. Things all changed in 2017. Phil Longo became the offensive coordinator. Freeze resigned a few weeks before camp opened. After Van Jefferson missed time in the summer following knee surgery, A.J. Brown moved to the slot. He didn’t receive as many targets. The Rebels were hit with another bowl ban after an NCAA investigation.

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“I remember very distinctly when he said, ‘Things are changing around here and I just don’t think that this is a good fit. I don’t want to be here. And I’m not going to be here,’ ” Marla Jefferson said. “It was definitively that sort of thing.”

Unlike the recruiting period, those close to him said, Van Jefferson based his decision to leave Ole Miss and transfer to Florida on what he wanted to do first without worrying about his father’s approval.

“For Van, someone who is very obedient to his dad, that would be like the worst thing, to do something dad told me not to do,” Marla Jefferson said. “For him to do that, I knew then that he was coming into his own.

“Van really came into his own during that time. I would love to say that he found himself a little bit before that, but no. And I still think he is just working some stuff out to figure out who is this guy and what is it that God has for Van to do that sets him apart from everyone else?”

That question is easier to answer in regards to how Jefferson stands out on the field for Florida, the school he said he chose for a few reasons: It’s in his birth state, he has family there, there was room atop the depth chart and he has knowledge of Dan Mullen’s offense.

“He understands the little intricacies and he’s an attention-to-detail guy,” Florida receivers coach Billy Gonzales said. “That’s probably one of the things that kinda separates him is he understands, he’s got the playing experience, but understands that the little things — and if you talk to him he takes it really, really personal as far as being able to, ‘Hey listen, he told me to do this. I’ve got to try to work.’ ”

Van Jefferson transferred to Florida following the 2017 season and has two years of eligibility left. (Tim Casey / Florida UAA Communications)

As usual, Gonzales mentioned Shawn Jefferson when discussing Van Jefferson. But Shawn Jefferson doesn’t want that public credit. Instead, in an hour-long conversation with The Athletic, he stressed that Van Jefferson seeks knowledge about the game through other avenues and he recently caught him studying clips of Antonio Brown in their basement. Shawn Jefferson mentioned that anecdote because the part of his son’s story that he is most fond of nowadays is how Van Jefferson isn’t a carbon copy of his father.

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And that speaks to the growth of both father and son.

“My dad deserves a lot of credit,” Van Jefferson said. “We talk every day. He asked me how the first day of camp went, what we are doing, what can I do to get better. We talk very often.”

“My son is his own person,” Shawn Jefferson said. “Van wants to know the ‘why’ in everything. He makes his own decisions and I love that. I absolutely love that. He is building his own name.”

Part of that is on the field, where Shawn Jefferson often says his son is far more advanced at this point than he was in college at UCF. The other way is through fatherhood. Van Jefferson has a 2-year-old daughter of his own who lives in Tennessee with her mother. Jefferson often posts photos of her on Twitter. The tweet pinned to his profile is a video of her running with the caption that reads, “Superstar in the making!”

“I think Van will make a very good father because of being raised by a coach and dad really not being around a whole lot because of coaching,” Marla Jefferson said. “It is a lifestyle, and it wasn’t like they were whining and crying like, ‘Oh, my gosh, where’s dad?’ I mean, they knew the gig and grew up in it. I don’t think that the fist would be as hard — not fist by hitting, of course — about things.

“Shawn was raised by a very proud, strong man, and work was a big part of being a man who takes care of his family. He walked in that vein, whereas Van, being raised the way he was by Shawn, and kind of lacking some of the things that some kids of coaches go through, I think he will have a greater respect of the time and the quality time he will spend with his children. He’ll be a great dad.”

(Top photo of Van Jefferson: Tim Casey / Florida UAA Communications)

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