By Matthew Coller
EAGAN — There were only a few times that it looked like JJ McCarthy was going to the franchise quarterback that the Minnesota Vikings dreamed about but those moments will stand out forever in the minds of fans as they wonder how it all went so wrong.
McCarthy’s first preseason game against the Las Vegas Raiders in August 2024, for example, featured all of the reasons that the team drafted him with the 10th overall selection. He saw the field well, threw accurately and made impressive plays with his legs.
What happened after the game ended up being a trend during McCarthy’s stint with the Vikings. Head coach Kevin O’Connell said the next day that McCarthy suffered a knee injury and then a few days later he had surgery on his meniscus that would end his rookie season.
It was during the announcement in Berea, Ohio, that McCarthy would miss the entire year that O’Connell remarked that he’d seen all the signals of a franchise quarterback in training camp 2024. At the time, nobody blinked at the statement.
O’Connell’s comment continued to ring in everyone’s minds as Sam Darnold struggled in the final two games of the 2024 season. Why pay someone who couldn’t get the team over the top if Kid Franchise was sitting right there?
The team decided that they agreed with that line of thinking. The decision to move on from Darnold marked another major flash point in the belief that he could be the long-term answer that Daunte Culpepper, Teddy Bridgewater and Christian Ponder never became.
If they were willing to move on from a quarterback who just threw for 4,300 yards, 35 touchdowns and beat the Packers to win his 14th game of the season, then McCarthy must be the next Josh Allen or Justin Herbert, right?
Not only that, they also declined an offer from Aaron Rodgers to come toss footballs to Justin Jefferson.
Whew.
At the owner’s meetings in 2025, Mark Wilf said that the reason they believed in McCarthy was his work ethic behind the scenes during the 2024 season and what they had seen from him in his first camp. O’Connell reiterated that sentiment as well.
Some on the staff were pushing for a veteran QB instead of handing the keys to McCarthy. O’Connell wanted Daniel Jones to return to compete with McCarthy. There were also whispers about things with his recovery were not going as smoothly as the team was saying publicly, though that was never confirmed by any public statements and it wasn’t for lack of effort by the team, who kept him involved with a virtual reality program and meetings with O’Connell where he went through gameplans.
Despite a rocky start to 2025 training camp, McCarthy had a strong finish, putting together an outstanding second day of joint practices against the Patriots. Reports of his performance in the most important practices of the summer lit the spark again. Teammates seemed to be buying into him and the overall roster looked stronger than it had been since 2019 due to major investments in the O-line and D-line with the money saved by letting Darnold walk.
The ending to the opening night game against Chicago was proof of concept. While McCarthy played poorly for three quarters, the Vikings’ defense kept them in the game until he came alive and produced three touchdown drives in the fourth quarter to win his first start. The arm, mobility and clutch gene he was said to possess were on display.
The roller coaster that was McCarthy’s time in Minnesota took a hard turn south the following week. He missed practice due to the birth of his child, a fact that O’Connell brought up numerous times in press conferences, and then looked like a deer in the headlights against the Atlanta Falcons. He went 11-for-21 for 158 yards with two interceptions and six sacks in a 22-6 loss.
Toward the end of the game, he suffered an ankle injury. What seemed routine turned into mystery theatre. Online doctors claimed that he was being “soft benched” because the injury shouldn’t take long to heal. The Vikings took him overseas to Ireland and London, where he said he suffered additional swelling and then they chose not to play him against the Chargers after he had been medically cleared.
Everyone wondered whether they were hoping that Carson Wentz would become the next Sam Darnold, in part because O’Connell did not make a declaration that he would be locked in as QB1 regardless of Wentz’s performance.
However, questions about how they really felt about McCarthy disappeared quickly upon his return though. McCarthy played well in a 27-24 win over the Detroit Lions, making several key throws and scrambling for a highlight-reel touchdown.
Ah, yes, back on track. There’s QB1. The Vikings were back at .500 with a chance to seriously chase the playoffs and make things interesting.
Once again the moment was fleeting. The next week it became very apparent that McCarthy’s throwing technique was struggling. He went 20-for-42 with two interceptions against the Ravens and missed a number of routine passes. He also injured his hand by hitting Baltimore player’s helmet.
The following week, the same thing happened. While the Vikings ended up with a chance to win the game at the end, a 50% completion percentage for 150 yards and two more touchdowns and another one-score loss had everyone wondering if they had made a mistake by letting go Darnold, especially as he thrived in Seattle.
O’Connell had been working with McCarthy on the technical part of his throwing throughout, including spending the bye week with him on the turf inside TCO Performance Center. He was trying to fix the baseball-pitcher leg kick and his crow hop. They had been working on touch and layering since Day 1.
Hopes of a turnaround took their biggest hit in Green Bay. McCarthy was battered in an 87-yard passing game against the Packers at Lambeau Field, taking five sacks and looking completely overwhelmed.
He missed the next game against Seattle.
At that point, with the team sitting at 4-8, O’Connell switched to an offense fit for the Army/Navy game. He only called for passes that he thought McCarthy could execute, like deep throws to the outside edges and they ran, ran, ran and punted, punted, punted.
The schedule gods shined down on the Vikings at the end of the year. They faced three teams that fired their defensive coordinators after the season and the Packers sitting their starters and McCarthy went 4-0 with a 64% completion percentage and 100.4 passer rating.
But even that stretch didn’t go smoothly. Instructed in practice not to dance into the end zone against the Cowboys, McCarthy did the Griddy anyway, showing up his coach. Tyler Dunne of Go Long reported that he was told by a teammate that there were times inside meeting rooms where McCarthy would tell O’Connell how things should be done and O’Connell mentioned on KFAN that McCarthy would sometimes come to the sideline with explanations for decisions that they hadn’t talked about during the week.
In Week 16 against the New York Giants, McCarthy decided not to tell the staff that his hand had been injured and he dropped the ball while attempting a pass, resulting in a New York touchdown. Max Brosmer closed out the win that day. And then against the Packers, he picked up a 15-yard penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct that cost them a chance at a touchdown and then suddenly pulled himself from the game and had a towel over the hand.
Every good moment seemed to be followed by a huge plummet or bizarre event.
By the way, after the Vikings’ season ended, Sam Darnold went on to win the Super Bowl and GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah was fired.
Everyone wondered going into the NFL Combine what O’Connell was going to say about the quarterback position. Were they going to get a journeyman to compete with McCarthy and give him another chance or get a replacement starter?
“The timeline has changed,” O’Connell said.
Indeed. Without a playoff win in four years and with the world talking about Darnold’s title, O’Connell knew he needed to get a quarterback that could return them to serious contention.
Kyler Murray fell in their lap at a $1.3 million price tag. During Murray’s visit, O’Connell told him that there was a real possibility he could be in Minnesota for a long time.
For all intents and purposes, the McCarthy story ended there. Murray had been the 12th best quarterback in the NFL by PFF in 2024 and had taken the Cardinals to the playoffs and posted a top-10 season in 2021. He possessed immense talent as the former No. 1 overall pick and surely only would have signed in Minnesota if he were locked in as the starter.
However, O’Connell understood that he twice reached QB4 in four years. He wanted to give McCarthy every opportunity to put in the work throughout the offseason and come back a different man. After all, they had no commitment to Murray. If McCarthy looked incredible, they could always cut bait with the veteran.
McCarthy did enough in the spring to get a chance in camp. It wasn’t without a strange press conference in which he declared that he wasn’t talking to Murray. O’Connell said that he had to “at least attempt to be a good teammate.”
As camp got started, there were plenty of interpretations from onlookers about the quality of each quarterback’s performance. But one thing was hard to deny, even for the most ardent McCarthy defender: Murray got through progressions much quicker and threw the ball with much more touch and accuracy.
McCarthy still struggled with getting rid of the ball on time and threw line drives as he always has. He had some very good moments and strong practices but the fatal flaws cropped up too often.
When Murray won the job, O’Connell declared McCarthy the backup quarterback and appeared to be happy with his progress.
Once again, around every corner…
But in the two preseason games against the Giants and Ravens, McCarthy missed a number of wide open passes, including two touchdowns against Baltimore and he suffered another injury, caused by hanging onto the ball too long with a backup offensive line in the game.
Meanwhile, Carson Wentz looked fine. He completed passes easily and seemed in command of the offense despite getting basically zero reps during camp.
That was where it was over. There simply wasn’t anything different from the start against Atlanta in Week 2 of 2025.
On the day that the Vikings decided to trade McCarthy to the New York Giants for a fifth-round draft pick, the autopsies will be epic.
NFL Insiders will talk to sources, looking for any nugget about what went wrong. McCarthy’s biggest fans will blame O’Connell, the QBs coach, the assistant QBs coach, the wide receivers, the left tackle, right tackle, center, right guard, left guard, equipment manager, media members, climate change, Abe Lincoln and Kyler Murray.
There will be tons of questions about who pushed the big red button to draft him over Bo Nix, whether he was developed properly and what happened behind the scenes between him and O’Connell. Who failed whom?
But the reality is that sometimes things don’t work out.
There is no mystery. No McCarthy Files. No trial of the century to determine what happened. He just never showed enough for the team to believe they could win with him.
The mistake by the organization was not as much buying into the national champion from Michigan as it was believing too much in their ability to turn anybody into Sam Darnold with a good passing scheme and two great wide receivers. Their crime was missing the forest through the trees with Darnold and buying too much into the lure of free agents — who are free agents for a reason.
Maybe it was a crime that they didn’t give McCarthy a year behind the scenes, though Dianna Russini reported that they were worried he wouldn’t be able to handle being the backup for another year.
Who knows exactly what that means but that report stands out on the day the Vikings decided to trade him. In order to keep him on the roster, they would have needed to believe that he could be a helpful backup QB to Murray and that there was any potential left to work with for the final year of his contract in 2027. Clearly those boxes were not checked.
Now the Vikings are left with a very talented starting quarterback and O’Connell should thank his lucky stars for that. Yes, it looked bad in his first game but at least they have someone who gives them a chance to build a competent offense for the first time since 2024.
At 3-0, the team has legitimate potential to reach the playoffs and make it right in the playoffs. Most coaches do not get that opportunity after a top pick goes bust like this.
The nature of football is pretty simple: If it works out, the McCarthy gaffe will be forgotten quickly. If it doesn’t, it will be amplified for many years to come.
For McCarthy, there is still hope. Other quarterbacks have gone behind the scenes and improved touch and accuracy and found their way back to starting opportunities. It took Darnold, Alex Smith, Ryan Tannehill, Geno Smith and Malik Willis years of development to find their way.
Vikings fans will watch from afar to see if that ever comes to fruition, maybe in part because they want to know if their team bailed too early, maybe in part to see if they were crazy for buying into those flash moments, as fleeting as they were.
On to Miami.
Drafting is hard, and everybody takes players who bust. It’s irksome, especially given the abundance of information, but it happens.
Absolutely agree, the notion that there is some kind of deeper story here is just silly. JJMC is incredibly brittle, immature and during the brief moments he was on the field, played badly. It’s too bad, but it’s certainly not complicated.
The timing is a little odd given the return, but that probably doesn’t matter, either. The original cost became sunk a while ago, and it’s clear a good return wasn’t going to happen.