JJ McCarthy takes his first punch
Kevin O'Connell stuck with his mantra that everyone has to get better around the young QB
By Matthew Coller
MINNEAPOLIS — As the final seconds were ticking off the clock at US Bank Stadium bringing Sunday night’s disaster to an end, veteran wide receiver Adam Thielen had some words of wisdom for quarterback JJ McCarthy.
“I told him that we started 5-0 one year and missed the playoffs, we started 1-2 and went to the NFC Championship game, a Week 2 loss doesn’t derail who you are as a football team but it can if you don’t treat it the right way,” Thielen said following the 22-6 loss to the Atlanta Falcons. “So it’s a great opportunity to see what this team is really made of and what kind of guys we are to go fix this.”
There will be a lot to fix. The Vikings produced just 198 total yards and McCarthy went 11-for-21 with 158 yards passing and two interceptions. He was also sacked six times.
Last week in Chicago, McCarthy rebounded from a tough start to lead three touchdown drives against the Bears in a fairytale start to his career. It seemed that he had proven his resilience but that game was only a matter of surviving body blows. Sunday night’s horrific loss to the Falcons was a true knockout punch thrown by a team that will be competing for the postseason this year (and not a team that gave up 52 points on Sunday as the Bears did).
McCarthy’s collection of rough moments started right from the beginning of the game. On his first drive, McCarthy scrambled for six yards on third-and-7 and then ran up to the line of scrimmage to sneak for the first down. The problem was that he bobbled the ball and couldn’t recover in time to fall forward and turned the ball over on downs.
There were a bunch of opportunities throughout the game to pull things together the way he did in Chicago, yet something went wrong every time. In the second quarter, he converted on third-and-18 with a 19-yard connection to Adam Thielen and then hit Jalen Nailor with a dot along the sideline for 17 yards to set the Vikings up with first-and-goal from the 2-yard line. But he fumbled the ball, then threw incomplete, then took a delay of game, then got sacked, then got sacked again and the Vikings were forced to kick a field goal.
On the next drive he threw an interception. On the next drive he threw short of Jefferson on third down.
Despite all the problems, the Vikings were only down 12-6 with the ball on their own 40-yard line to start the fourth quarter when the Falcons got a free rusher who stripped McCarthy.
Still, the game was somehow not over yet at 15-6 with 9:52 left and third-and-1. McCarthy overthrew a wide open Nailor. They punted. And just for good measure, down 22-6, McCarthy overthrew Jefferson for an interception on the final drive of the game.
At the end of the game, McCarthy finished 11-for-21, 158 yards, two interceptions and a 37.5 QB rating. To put that in context, there have only been 11 games by Vikings QBs with at least 15 passes that have registered lower QB ratings in the last 25 years.
Coming into the season, much was made of how McCarthy had been a winner everywhere he went. From high school to Michigan, he rarely felt the agony of defeat. After his first start turned out to be a magical comeback, it might have felt like things would always just break his way. That’s not how life works in the pros.
“I think it’s a great opportunity to get better,” Thielen said. “Learn from some of the plays that he could have done better. Maybe grow on some of the things he did well and keep fighting.”
The head coach shied away from directly breaking down the things that McCarthy struggled with and elected to focus on the overall message that everyone has to improve.
“It’s going to be easy to put the microscope on JJ and I’m sure that there’s some plays, some throws that he would love to get another [opportunity] at but I thought that he also made some throws and thought he showed his athleticism,” O’Connell said. “As a group we did not execute to our standard.”
It’s true that McCarthy was not playing the football game alone. The Vikings defense gave up 218 yards rushing. The team committed eight penalties for 50 yards. And there were some questionable decisions, including having three chances at either third-and-2 or less or first-and-goal from the 2-yard line and not running bruising running back Jordan Mason on any of them. Not going for the fourth-and-1 in the fourth quarter was also questionable.
They also had a rash of injuries, from starting the game without Blake Cashman, Andrew Van Ginkel and Christian Darrisaw to losing Ryan Kelly and Justin Skule to concussions mid-game.
But while it’s never entirely the QB’s fault and it makes sense for O’Connell to avoid directly criticizing his young leader, the reality is that McCarthy just had something happen that is part of every quarterback’s career: A punch in the mouth.
On the same list of QBs with QB ratings under 40 is Super Bowl winner Brad Johnson, Daunte Culpepper and Kirk Cousins.
All those fellas bounced back. How McCarthy responds next week against Cincinnati and going forward well tell us a lot about how far this team can go. The opportunity is there in the coming weeks for the Vikings to beat some vulnerable teams. The Bengals come to US Bank Stadium without Joe Burrow, who was lost to a foot injury on Sunday. And then they go overseas for games against Pittsburgh, who has shown weakness on defense each of the last two weeks and Cleveland, who hasn’t gotten out of its own way since coming back into the league in 1999.
The Vikings will need those games badly because after the bye week is a hellacious run of good franchises with the Eagles, Chargers, Lions, Ravens and Packers on the slate.
Following Sunday night’s loss, McCarthy took a focused approach on moving forward.
“We got a lot to do and I have a lot to do personally,” McCarthy said. “It’s awesome to be part of a great group and I know we’re going to grow together. I know we’re going to learn together. There’s a lot of love in that locker room. That’s what it comes down to. This is a long season. Everyone is telling me this is a frickin’ journey and I believe them wholeheartedly. It’s about getting back to the drawing board.”
What does the drawing board say, though?
Pre-snap penalties and getting in and out of the huddle, setting protections etc. has been problematic. The sacks and pressures that McCarthy faced — whether because of the O-line or the QB — have to be improved. Running the ball 14 times for 63 yards between the two running backs isn’t enough. The Vikings absolutely have to get more than 46 plays and find ways to sustain drives.
It will be no small task for McCarthy and the offense to get up off the mat, especially since they might be without Aaron Jones, Ryan Kelly, Christian Darrisaw and Jordan Addison next week, depending on health.
“This is going to be a process for our team,” O’Connell said. “Our young quarterback is going to make some plays…and other times he’s going to have an attempt and miss something a little long and we’ll go back and try to fix it… he’s learning on the fly right now. The way you overcome that is the full group’s execution level being to a certain standard.”
Time will tell if the execution level reaches that standard. In seven of eight quarters this season, it has not.
That escalated quickly.
McCarthy was known in college for throwing over the middle and throwing on the run. He was also known for throwing picks on deep outs. Feels like they’re only doing the latter and it makes no sense to me unless the defenses are doing something to take away the middle of the field, or if they simply don’t trust JJ to layer throws over the middle of the field in the NFL.