And that's that

The Vikings season comes to an end with a win over the Packers that included another JJ McCarthy injury

---

By Matthew Coller

MINNEAPOLIS — Like everything else regarding the 2025 Minnesota Vikings, Sunday’s game left a lot to be desired.

The only thing left to focus on during the meaningless Vikings-Packers Week 18 contest was whether JJ McCarthy could leave a strong final impression.

Like everything else regarding McCarthy, he left a lot to the imagination as he reinjured his throwing hand and could not finish the game.

The plays that the Vikings’ QB did make were much like all the others from this year. Some were pretty impressive. Some were erratic. And there was a bizarre decision that was hard to explain (i.e. his taunting penalty in the first quarter).

Not that a good ballgame from McCarthy would have shoveled off any of the mountain of salt on Vikings fans’ wounds from watching their young QB struggle all year while Sam Darnold led his team to the No. 1 spot in the conference but at least it might have provided a little momentum going into the offseason after his games against Washington, Dallas and 1/2 in New York had looked better than his first handful of starts.

But there wasn’t even a morsel of extra hope inside US Bank Stadium on Sunday that McCarthy could either fix what ails him or stay healthy.

The most interesting subject during the game was who’s going to be playing quarterback next year.

At least everything else went OK. They got Jefferson over 1,000 yards for the season. Congrats.

Everybody else stayed healthy.

Harrison Smith’s potential last game was a dominant defensive performance, even if it wasn’t against starters. His friends Andrew Sendejo, Anthony Harris, Anthony Barr and a few others came to the game wearing his jersey. That was nice.

CJ Ham scored a touchdown. That’s good. He deserves that moment.

But everyone walked out of the stadium with the same empty feeling of A) what might have been if McCarthy had been ready/good B) what might be next at QB.

It’s hard not to feel like time is a flat circle and that the franchise will once again be looking for somebody else’s QB to fix again.

It’s hard not to look at the rest of the roster — the one that couldn’t find development players to give reps in this senseless endeavor — and wonder how they are going to build into the future with Chicago on the rise and Detroit and Green Bay still poised to win next year.

It feels like a lot is going to change and nothing is going to change.

But, hey, the Vikings got over .500.

Here’s how it went down….