JJ McCarthy's energy breathes life into the Vikings
The Vikings 2025 season was reinvigorated by McCarthy's play, personality
By Matthew Coller
EAGAN — Kevin O’Connell has a common way of talking about players that makes complete sense when applied to JJ McCarthy. The head coach will often say: “you felt him out there.”
It doesn’t matter whether you were sitting at the 50-yard line at Ford Field last week or if you were listening to the Vikings game on the radio from a deer stand in Minnesota 700 miles away from where McCarthy was notching his second career win — you felt him out there.
To finish the second drive of the game, the 22-year-old QB rolled out to his right, flipped his hips and whipped a Justin Verlander fastball back across his body for a touchdown to TJ Hockenson. There was a pop when the ball hit the tight end that you could feel. McCarthy confidently dapped up one of the offensive linemen before meeting Hockenson for an enthusiastic low five. He marched off after the TD like he owned Ford Field. You felt the buzz.
Throughout last Sunday afternoon, there were plenty of times where McCarthy looked like a rookie and you also felt like it could come crashing down. At one point, he flung the ball wildly into the atmosphere and it was intercepted. The Vikings lucked out that the play was called back due to a Detroit infraction. There was another throw along the sideline that whizzed so far over Justin Jefferson’s head that you thought it might hit the mascot or take out somebody selling popcorn.
But when the Vikings needed him to rise to the occasion, McCarthy ripped off a fastball for an explosive throw to Jordan Addison and then scrambled for a 9-yard touchdown. He flexed, mean-mugged and jumped around. All at once, you felt his arm, his speed and his enthusiasm.
“With J.J., you absolutely love the competitiveness,” offensive coordinator Wes Phillips said. “I think the guys feed off of his energy, his fire, his passion for the game. And it’s like any young quarterback in this league, he’s got to be able to balance the times where he’s completely amped up but also has to be locked in from one play to the next regardless of what play it is or what down and distance situation, all those types of things. And there’s going to be a continuous growth from a young player who hasn’t played a lot in this league.”
It’s tough to describe how badly everyone in the franchise needed the McCarthy jolt. The previous week, they walked off the field in Los Angeles with a 3-4 record and playoff odds that were barely flickering.
In the days after taking a drubbing from the Chargers, O’Connell was criticized for his handling of backup QB Carson Wentz, who played through a shoulder injury that ultimately required surgery. The franchise was questioned from national analysts for letting Sam Darnold and Daniel Jones walk. The front office was questioned for its bigger-picture plan to build around a QB who had played two games since being taken in the first round of the 2024 draft.
Last Sunday, all of that noise went quiet as McCarthy danced on the big blue Lion’s grave.
McCarthy isn’t cynical enough to have arrived at his Wednesday press conference with a “showed the haters” speech ready. Instead, he went into a Nuke Laloosh-like breakdown of his alter ego, “Nine,” who comes out when he crosses the white lines.
“It really kind of started to show up this year,” McCarthy said of his gameday edge. “It came about last year during IR, just never had a full season where, you know, you want to be out there so freaking bad, but you can. It was just this built -up anger that was kind of ready to just explode. And I chose to harness it instead of letting it go into a self-destructive kind of way.”
Jefferson co-signed the idea of McCarthy getting into a different mode on gameday.
“The [‘Nine’] persona, I like it,” Jefferson said. “Personally, I feel like he understands that he has to turn on another switch when he gets in a game. And mentally, physically, you kind of have to talk yourself into it. You have to just like me with ‘Jets.’ It’s the same thing. I’m Justin right now. But when I step on the field and it’s a whole different mode.”
The young quarterback has never been afraid to share what’s going on in his head. Over the last year-and-a-half, he’s talked about his love for meditation, dealing with depression in high school, ADHD, his reading list, how he’s sleeping in his college bed with a newborn at home, where he got his blue collar shirt that he wore after the game, his speech to his teammates before last week’s game and pretty much anything else that anything else that anyone has ever asked him to expand on.
He says it all with nods, smiles and a hint of “Nine.” There’s no corporate polish and in his mind, there is no chance that he’s losing that press conference.
“When the guys look at him, they see J.J. McCarthy being himself,” O’Connell said. “That’s all I’ve ever really thought quarterbacks in this league need to do. Much like a head coach, you have to be authentically yourself every single day, and he’s absolutely that. I think that’s what allows him to be ready for the moments in games where he’s answered the bell twice now and two divisional road games.”
After the win was peak “Nine.” The postgame video posted by the team showed McCarthy with a wild look in his eye as he broke down the team, finishing by screaming “like a dog in the street!” O’Connell said that he handed McCarthy a game ball and got out of the way.
It was the first time since the opening win against Chicago that the 2025 Vikings really looked like they were having fun.
“You feed you feed off of a guy like that,” Hockenson said. “Doesn’t matter how old he is, how young he is. He’s got more energy than a lot of us, though. It’s always fun to be out there with him.”
The Vikings will have to fuel off McCarthy’s energy through some tough opponents the rest of the way. They play an unforgiving upcoming schedule, starting with Lamar Jackson’s Ravens, then Chicago, at Lambeau and then at Seattle.
Beating Detroit opened the door to the Vikings having a chance to reach the playoffs and with a nearly fully healthy roster now, it doesn’t seem all that far fetched.
McCarthy understands that as big as the Detroit win was and as much as his good vibes gave the season a surge of energy, it won’t mean much if it doesn’t continue.
“It was a big emotional win [against Detroit] but you have to turn that page,” McCarthy said. “You have to realize there’s so many great challenges, so many great football teams in the horizon, and we have to make sure we’re on it every single day.”
Feels like there has been a lot of talk this week about whether momentum is real. I think it is probably overrated in most cases, but if McCarthy comes out and beats a healthy Ravens team with Lamar Jackson I do think the energy will completely different going into the next few games. They gotta find a way to be 6-6 or hopefully better going into that cowboys, commanders, giants stretch, and getting a win tomorrow sets them up nicely for that.