Josh McCown is using his football life to reduce the learning curve for Darnold, McCarthy

Former journeyman QB is now guiding the Vikings' first-round quarterback.... with patience

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By Matthew Coller

EAGAN — Please, Minnesotans, if you run into Josh McCown in the airport or shopping at Target, try to hold back from giving him a hard time about the end of the 2003 season. He’s on your side now.

“Over the course of my career there’s only like five good plays so, let me have it,” McCown joked on Wednesday following the team’s OTA practice.

The former quarterback, who threw a game-winning touchdown to keep the Vikings from the postseason once upon a time, is now out on the field at the TCO Performance Center practice shaping the team’s present and future quarterbacks. McCown looked like he was having a grand time catching passes from Sam Darnold, JJ McCarthy, Nick Mullens and Jaren Hall in warm-ups and then intently worked with Darnold and Mullens on the starters’ field, giving them guidance after plays as they learn the 2024 iteration of Kevin O’Connell’s offense.

McCown understands his assignment in Minnesota. He is here to be an extension of O’Connell and use his experience with his 17 years of professional football to give Darnold and McCarthy the best possible chance to succeed.

His connection with the two quarterbacks is different for each player. McCown met Darnold back in 2018 when the current Vikings QB1 was a 21-year-old rookie who was tossed into the deep end.

“He was eager to learn and was in my hip pocket everywhere trying to grow as a player,” McCown recalled. “It’s cool to see the difference now seven years removed just with how much more mature he is and how much he’s learned from a football standpoint. That’s encouraging, that’s going to benefit us.”

McCown played three games for the 2018 Jets but still got a taste of coaching quarterbacks during year working with Darnold.

“For me that was a time in my life to get ready to leave [the NFL] and to give everything you learn throughout your career to a young guy,” McCown said.

The Vikings’ quarterbacks coach said that he has enjoyed being back together with Darnold because they have past history but more than the ribbing involved there is natural trust between the two.

“It gives me relational equity for me to be able to challenge him and bring out the best in him and hopefully expedite the learning curve as a new player to our team,” McCown said.

With McCarthy, McCown’s value to the operation began immediately after he was hired this offseason. He was part of the Vikings’ traveling quarterback party, which included going to McCarthy’s pro day and participating in McCarthy’s private workout.

“I thought his pro day was excellent and then when we went back for the private workout the meeting room time — you could tell he has been very well coached and his retention on plays and materials that we gave him and asked him to talk through was spot on,” McCown said. “He was A-plus in that regard.”

“We saw a pretty coachable player,” McCown added.

McCarthy will need to be extremely coachable in order to take on the steep learning curve that comes along with going from college football to the NFL. As McCown guides him through the process of learning an NFL offense for the first time, he is drawing upon the many, many, many times that he learned new schemes — whether it was back with the early 2000s Cardinals or UFL Hartford Colonials or 2018 Jets.

“I changed offenses every year of my football life,” McCown said. “How to adapt to learning an offense, the tricks of downloading that information mentally, you can share those and then building routines. ‘I played with Kurt Warner, I played with Jake Delhomme, Jeff Blake showed me this,’ and different guys that I was around that I pull from and grew from. All those things come up in our meetings organically.”

McCarthy told a story following rookie minicamp about McCown explaining how he threw a pick-six to Pro Bowl cornerback Aqib Talib as a cautionary tale about a particular concept. The coach elaborated on the teaching point from his memorable mistake.

“Sometimes as a coach you are installing plays and there are real scars there,” McCown said. “That was one for me. We were talking about a particular throw and the difficulty of that throw and I said, ‘I’m not just saying this, I tried to make this throw and it did not go well and I watched Aqib Talib run it to the end zone, so I’m encouraging you that when you’re evaluating whether or not to make that throw how clean that needs to look for you and what that pre-snap needs to be to take that chance.’ Little things like that come up… hopefully it keeps you from speed bumps.”

The depth of McCown’s experiences goes even beyond dozen jerseys he wore during his time playing the game. Last year he got an up-close look at a first-round quarterback who was thrown into the action immediately while he was the QBs coach for the Carolina Panthers.

“The number one thing is to know that — JJ has played in some big moments, won a national championship and Bryce [Young] had won the Heisman and was highly productive — but there is still a learning curve to this league,” McCown said. “Give yourself space to understand and not put pressure and expectations that are unattainable in Year 1.”

Aside from the fresh nature of everything for McCarthy, McCown cited the sheer volume of information that has to be processed by a first-year quarterback and the complexity of defenses as the reason that most rookie quarterbacks have struggled historically.

“You’re learning one of those things at one rate and applying a defense that is going to vary from week to week at another rate,” McCown said. “It’s having to put in the work on the things you can control, the learning. Facing the defenses, that comes with time.”

In both OTA practices open to the media McCarthy has practiced on the field with the younger players rather than working with starters. It’s clear that patience is going to be an emphasis throughout this offseason with the Vikings’ first-round pick. They will aim to strike a balance between wanting production on the practice field with understanding that everything is new for him at this level.

“It’s delicate…and we have to strike it perfectly and maintain a growth mindset with him,” McCown said. “We want him to perform well with every snap but a lot of these are his first snap at some of these looks and some of these throws. The things you get asked to do in the pros in every organization is different from what you are asked to do in college…so many of these things are new and first time for him.”

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