Luke Braun's Film Room: Justin Jefferson and the End of All Things

Luke Braun explores how the universe will end, a concept called "the Great Attractor" and why Justin Jefferson is part of that equation.

There are three main theories for how the universe will end.

The universe is expanding like a firework, with each galaxy moving constantly further away from the next. But everything in the universe has gravity. Is the force of gravity more powerful than the force of expansion?

If it is, the universe would eventually slam itself back together in a “Big Crunch,” possibly into another singularity that would Big Bang all over again. If it isn’t, the universe will expand infinitely, isolating every object into its own cold, dark, infinite void. This “Big Freeze” is also referred to as the heat death of the universe.

Entropy could continue pulling everything apart. This “Big Rip” would dismantle everything from comets to black holes, infinitely, until every particle in the universe dies in a lonely prison of cosmic nothingness.

The Big Freeze is the most popular theory, thanks to observations from the Hubble Telescope. The aptly named Hubble Constant describes the consistent speed at which something is accelerating away from us. The further it is, the faster it is, and we can use this constant to map out the shape of the known universe.

The “Hubble flow” of the universe isn’t neatly uniform, however. Elsewhere in the observable universe, several galaxy clusters are all drifting away from the path set by the Big Bang. Curiously, they’re all drifting toward the same spot. That spot is placed perfectly behind the dense light of the Milky Way, so it’s difficult to observe. We can’t tell what these clusters are moving toward. 

Only that they are moving toward it.

Down in front!

And so, the universe’s mysteries continue. Somewhere, a Great Attractor so powerful exists that it challenges the forces of the Big Bang and entropy itself. We can’t see it. We can’t know it. We certainly can’t resist it. We can only see that it’s there. That it’s something. A mysterious leviathan manipulating entire constellations.

The beauty of astronomy is that scientists don’t need to directly observe the Great Attractor to know that it’s there, to stand in reverence of its power. They can see its impacts without knowing if it’s a supermassive black hole, a spacefaring monster, or a restless god. 

This sort of deductive science can be useful to us in the football world as well. Whether someone shows up in the box score or not, you can still understand their impact. You can see how they influence the players around them. And no player has more of that influence than Justin Jefferson.

Gaze In Awe At Justin Jefferson

Plenty of ink has been spilled on how good Justin Jefferson is, but let’s spill a little more. As a treat. 

Every facet of Jefferson’s game has something elite about it. The way he stems his routes, for example, gives defenders several extra decisions to make, and a wrong one can lead to a long completion.

Here, Jefferson is running a simple comeback out of play action. He runs the first ten yards at full power with instant acceleration. An old receiver adage is, “Everything's a go route until it isn't,” forcing defensive backs into a game of chicken. How deep can you “sell” a go route before you have to slow down for your break, and how long before that corner has to buy it?