Friday Mailbag: When will JJ return?

A look at the most pressing questions regarding the QB situation

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By Matthew Coller

Happy Friday, everyone! Hopefully you’re looking forward to Sunday morning football. Let’s take a look at all of your questions…

rutvan15… Excellent coverage of the Vikings as always Matthew! One guy that I’m kind of curious about is Michael Jurgens. Obviously he’s a 7th round pick and he’s kind of been on the back burner for a little while, but I thought his performance, albeit against an awful Bengals team, was quite good for his first start. It seemed like the offense ran super smoothly and he didn’t get bulldozed at all. I was wondering if you could dive a bit into his PFF grading and general metrics as I feel like he could be a long term starter for us once Kelly Retires. Just want to hear your thoughts on him!

Jurgens did a good job overall against the Bengals. He showed some athleticism in the run game by getting to some of those reach blocks that are so needed in the outside zone system and he allowed one QB pressure (though the circumstances were favorable with a mediocre interior DL and playing from ahead all day).

Some of the details were problematic. The center can’t have three penalties and he had a high snap that would have flown over the head of a shorter quarterback. The snaps were an issue in camp as well. That has to get cleaned up but it seems otherwise they have a player who can step in similarly to the way Mason Cole or Austin Schlottmann did in years past.

The PFF grades from the game were solid. A 63.0 in the run game and 67.4 in pass pro are both good for a backup center. The only reason his overall grade was a 49.6 was the penalties. They factor those pretty heavily for offensive linemen.

Pickle Enjoyer… What would you say the main issue with McCarthy’s play has been? Getting through progressions? Throwing mechanics/fundamentals? Or just plain lack of experience/other?

The two stats that tell the story for me are the fact that he had the slowest time to throw that wasn’t a running QB like Caleb Williams or Lamar Jackson in the NFL and him going 8-for-15 with two turnover-worthy plays and a 33.7 PFF grade on throws from 0-9 yards through the air.

That says to me that the reads and timing of the offense weren’t happening the way they were supposed to happen.

To take it a couple steps further with the data: The average pressure that McCarthy faced took 3.52 seconds, per PFF. That’s the 16th (of 36) slowest and eight of the top 10 are running QBs. You can’t expect Justin Skule to hold up that long (yes, several were instant losses).

I know everyone talks about KOC wanting all these deep balls but I was looking at some new data that I just got my hands on from TruMedia and the chart below is all the routes on plays where McCarthy was under pressure.

A lot of the grey routes are underneath. A lot of his attempts were downfield. Again, that says to me that he was trying to stick with the read and not getting rid of it. I saw another stat today that he threw like one checkdown in the two games.

So I think that out of the options you gave, I would pick No. 3 as my explanation. Lack of experience.

It’s a really small sample size and all the caveats about Darrisaw not playing and Addison not playing and KOC having some big misses on play calls are all relevant but at the end of the day we’re talking about a QB who needs more football. Timing and rhythm when there’s 65,000 people in the stands and the other team has a good gameplan against you aren’t the same as a joint practice.

Nobody is saying it was all his fault. Nobody is saying he can’t still be good. Personally I think if he had played against Cincinnati that he would have been much better. But his two performances mostly looked like a brand new QB who isn’t fully ready to run this offense.

Patience is going to be required. There’s no other way around it.

Griffin…Is Rodgers playing higher quality football again so far this year? I know we’re favored, but i’m seeing a lot of people taking the Vikings and it feels like this is more of a toss up game

He’s been good on opening scripts and when he has time to throw. He’s been horrific when under pressure. He’s 6-for-22 when pressured and only 11-for-23 when he’s been blitzed. It’s clear he’s playing better football than he was last year against the Jets early in the season. This seems more along the lines of his late 2024 when nobody was really watching.

I’m seeing a QB who can’t move and is trying to protect himself by getting the ball out quickly. That can cause problems though because it gives the Vikings opportunities to jump routes and fool him with some coverages like they did last year.

You never really know in the NFL as we clearly saw last week. That’s why I write about football rather than gamble on it. But the Vikings are the better team. They should win as long as Wentz does the same thing he did last week.

Brian_H… Hindsight is 20/20 and I was convinced after the week 1 comeback that McCarthy was on track for multiple Super Bowl wins, but am I crazy to be concerned that the Vikings brain trust only got half the 2024 diagnosis correct? Perhaps the offensive line upgrades and improved run game were all Sam Darnold needed to take another step towards fulfilling his draft position and pedigree. Please talk me down.

You wouldn’t be a football fan if you didn’t go from Super Bowl champion to total bust in one week. That’s how it works in this crazy league.

If you were to give Sam Darnold Will Fries, Ryan Kelly, Jordan Mason and this defense, then the Vikings would be a Super Bowl favorite. The problem is that Darnold wasn’t going to sign a contract unless they traded McCarthy or franchise tagged him. It wouldn’t have made any sense for him to be in a QB competition when he could be QB1 for another team. If they tagged him, it would have been really hard to build this version of the roster and then you end up with the same Kirk conundrum of past years with a B- roster and B+ QB.

The idea was that if you could get 75% of what Darnold did out of JJ McCarthy with this supporting cast, it could yield similar results and then hope for a better situation in the playoffs. That’s still possible, by the way.

I’ll always think Darnold is a really darn good quarterback. I don’t think it was a fluke or that KOC entirely made him. He did a lot of repeatable stuff with a ton of talent and he was a great leader for that team. But it’s hard to convince me that they would have been playing in February if they didn’t get a sick interior O-line and D-line in free agency.

Look, McCarthy has played two games. He’s 22 years old.

If someone asked 10,000 Vikings fans to raise their hand if they were willing to be patient with McCarthy back when they made the decision to go with him instead of Darnold, 9,000+ would have raised their hand. Now that it’s actually required, most people seem to have their hand down.

Maybe this will help: I used Pro-Football Reference to look at the first two starts of every QB’s career between 2000 and 2025 and here’s what I noticed:

JJ McCarthy QB rating: 67.1

Teddy Bridgewater: 67.1

Daunte Culpepper: 67.7

Lamar Jackson: 63.4

Tom Brady: 68.9

Kyle Allen: 133.3

Matt Flynn: 123.0

Tim Rattay: 120.4

I’m just gonna throw this out there: Maybe two games don’t really tell the story of somebody’s career.

Jon D…How would you assess Thielen’s performance so far? Do you think he’s delivered what they hoped for following the trade?

It’s pretty tough to judge because they were so inept during most of the first two games and then they were up by a million points. There were a couple catches that I thought he usually makes but otherwise not a ton of opportunities.

Does the first three games justify the trade? Of course not. He was good in the run game but you’re not trading that much for a Trent Sherfield role.

As the passing game comes together, I think we’ll see Thielen get into more of a role as WR3/4 with Jalen Nailor and he’ll have better opportunities now that Jordan Addison is back.

Just like we can’t judge a QB after 2 games, we can’t judge the trade after three.

Robert S… Would you say that Brosmer seemed more comfortable with the speed of the game and with throwing in rhythm than McCarthy, albeit in a small sample size and in a less intense situation?

It was a way, way, way less intense situation. I’ve always felt like a major strength of Brosmer’s was processing. We saw that from him all the way back in minicamp. He sees the field and make decisions extremely well. He’s also 24 years old and played a ton of football in college. Brosmer threw 1,498 passes in college, to be exact.

But what you’re hitting on is why I like Brosmer as a long-time NFL QB. The guy is never rattled and has a great feel for the plays and timing. Was last Sunday a good example to compare him to JJ though? Definitely not.

Patrick G…It’s water under the bridge now, but if the Vikings had offered Darnold a contract like he got from Seattle, do you think he takes it? Looking at the details it looks like they could have fit it with pretty much all the other moves they made this year, and it looks tradable if they decided to stick to the plan vs potentially changing course and go Darnold long term if he showed growth like Kirk did in year 2 of the system

I haven’t been told this directly but if we’re using our common sense we can pretty clearly say that Darnold was never taking a 3-year deal with the Vikings unless they traded JJ McCarthy.

I tend to believe that the only way they were going to keep him was with the franchise tag. The problem with that would have been that if Darnold struggled at all, the cries for JJ to play would have been overwhelming. It just wasn’t a situation that was set up to work so long as the 10th overall pick in the 2024 draft was there.

I do recall being shredded by most Vikings fans for saying that I wasn’t afraid of the idea of tagging him if they felt McCarthy needed more development but such is life. I really, really respected the way Darnold played last year. It’s cool to see him slinging it all over the yard in Seattle.

Matt D… Seems pretty clear at this point that Jordan Mason is the better runner and should be the first and second down back on a team that will need to rely more on the run to be successful. What are the odds that we actually see that happen when Jones comes back?

If Mason continues to play this way, he will remain as RB1 and Jones will spell him from time to time and they’ll share the field on some plays where Jones lines up as a wide receiver. There’s no way you can take him off the field when he’s bowling people over like this and he’s fitting the scheme and the offensive line as well as he is.

I think recent history does show us that it’s much better to have two options and I don’t want to write off Aaron Jones yet. Think about what he did in 2023 with the Packers. He got hurt, came back fully healthy and cooked people down the stretch and into the playoffs. Mason allows them to let Jones get fully healthy when he returns.

Matthew B… Which of the 2024 draft QBs is most likely to be a future member of the Vikings to rehab their career a la Darnold, Jones, etc.?

Caleb Williams would be the obvious first answer but I don’t think he’s ever going to be bad enough to end up where Darnold and Daniel Jones were. Even as horrific as he was as a rookie, he still had a lot of great moments. He’s going to be like Trevor Lawrence or Kyler Murray where his team just sticks with him because they have no other choice.

In that case I would go with Michael Penix Jr.

On draft night it was reported that the Vikings would have been happy with Penix Jr. and McCarthy and the way KOC talked about him sounded like he had a lot of respect for his game. But that Falcons organization overall… very suspect. You could see him struggling and someday ending up here as a backup.

Anglo Vike… In which area will Addison’s return be felt more? helping to open up the short/intermediate areas by pulling coverage towards him or by going deep with Jefferson to pressure the DBs? Also he’s missed three weeks, how soon before he gets back to his full game speed again?

Addison is really good in every area. He can get open quickly on comeback routes at 10 yards or he can hit on deep crossers or roast guys on go balls. He just gives Wentz a top-notch route runner and contested-catch guy that is going to make him right more often than wrong.

What they haven’t had is anybody to truly punish defenses for leaning on Jefferson. That’s what he really does for this team. That’s why they drafted him.

I expect him to be up to full speed and play a full workload. He wasn’t injured, it should be fine.

Nick L…You played the guitar track on your intro, but the spoken “regulator? Mount up”. Is familiar yet I can’t place it. Where is that from?

It’s a famous John Randle clip. I think from NFL Films.

Kyle R… What do you think “the line” is for Wentz to keep this job once McCarthy is healthy? I get the sense that wins are going to be a bigger factor than play, but if he lights it up and they go 0-3 will they go back to work on development? What if they’re 3-0 but he is barely holding on? I feel like this could go in so many directions and it’s hard to see a clean and easy path forward, the future appears at odds with the present