How did JJ McCarthy look at OTAs? Well...

Analyzing what we saw and heard from the Vikings starting QB

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By Matthew Coller

Bigger, faster, stronger.

That’s how JJ McCarthy described himself physically following Wednesday’s OTA practice at TCO Performance Center, which was open to the media.

I would quote Larry David to characterize his practice: Pretty, pretty, pretty…. pretty good.

Before we dive into the details, it has to be pointed out that we are talking about one OTA practice. One. That’s it. Nothing more. Following the workout, head coach Kevin O’Connell reminded everyone that this is the “learning phase” and made a crack about rep counts and the silliness of reporting on completions versus incompletions. He is completely right considering the full-speed(ish) reps are all 7-on-7. These aren’t high-octane camp practices.

However, in order to deal with the problem of needing to have takeaways from an OTA practice because Vikings fans are frothing at the mouth for updates on McCarthy while also wanting to be fair to the actual information we are working with here, I decided to make a criteria with questions and answers that would help quantify what would make a “good” practice for the first-year starting QB.

Question: Did the practice move along smoothly or were there a lot of stops and starts with O’Connell or Josh McCown having to step in?

Answer: The tempo seemed fine. McCarthy got the plays and ran them without a lot of disruption. If you didn’t know he had never been QB1 before, you wouldn’t have known.

Question: Did McCarthy throw the ball with similar velocity and accuracy as we saw from him last year in training camp?

Answer: Yes. He completed most of his passes with a high degree of accuracy. One in particular stood out — a deep out route to Jordan Addison that was around 20 yards downfield.

Question: Did it seem like McCarthy was getting rid of the football on time?

Answer: Mostly. There were still a couple plays where he couldn’t find the right answer and had to do a mini scramble, but not very many. Most of the time he was going through the progression and then getting to the checkdown if there was nothing there.

Question: How was the vibe of practice and the press conferences?

Answer: Very good. There was good energy throughout practice. O’Connell seemed pleased with how things were going and how much information McCarthy was retaining already and QB1.

The bottom line on this one, single, lonely, solitary practice that we were privy to watching is that McCarthy seemed to pick up where he left off. I was ready to talk about rustiness and patience with all the time that he had been away from physical activities but it simply did not look like he missed anything at all.

Now let’s get into what he and O’Connell had to say….