Takeaways from Vikings end-of-year presser

The QB situation was in the spotlight as well as Brian Flores' situation and Jordan Addison's arrest

Photo courtesy Minnesota Vikings

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By Matthew Coller

EAGAN — The Minnesota Vikings held their end-of-year press conference on Tuesday. Here are the biggest takeaways…

McCarthy optimism but not commitment

What everyone was wondering heading into the end-of-year press conference was whether Kevin O’Connell or Kwesi Adofo-Mensah was endorse JJ McCarthy as the 2026 quarterback. The answer: They did not.

However, that doesn’t mean that the brass suggested that McCarthy’s time in Minnesota is done either. O’Connell toed the line between praising the growth of the young QB, who went 54-for-84 with 703 yards, five touchdowns, two interceptions and a 100.4 QB rating in his final four games of the year, and making it clear that another serious quarterback will soon be on the way to Minnesota.

“J.J. McCarthy is a guy that wants to be great,” O’Connell said. “I know he's going to work tirelessly to do that. I know his teammates have a lot of confidence in what he's going to go to work to improve on this offseason and come back and have a great offseason and be ready to hit the ground running in 2026. But I think a deep and talented quarterback room will only enhance his ability to do that and look forward to being a part of that process.”

That last part opens the door to another question: How “deep and talented” are we talking about?

The Vikings will have options this offseason, whether that’s in the form of free agents like (presumably) Kirk Cousins, (possibly) Kyler Murray, Jimmy Garoppolo Marcus Mariota, Russell Wilson and Mitch Trubisky or trade options like Mac Jones and Geno Smith.

Or maybe there’s some other option that we don’t see coming.

“I want the Vikings to achieve our goals, and I think one of those goals is to make playoff runs,” Adofo-Mensah said after being asked flatly if McCarthy is the 2026 QB. “I think he has the character and ability to be the person and do that for our organization. If I say that in 2026, that kind of binds us into a certain area. The way we've set this team up, we built this corridor, really like we've always talked about, give ourselves multiple shots at it, because you never know when there's going to be a year where the field feels a little bit wide open and you can make that run. So, that's what we're really focused on talking about.”

At the end of the season, McCarthy said that he feels he has done enough to be the 2026 starting QB. There is no other interpretation from the Vikings brass’s comments other than that McCarthy will either have to do more to earn it in the offseason or they are going to bring in someone else as QB1.

You might wonder if that is an overcorrection or if they are being too impatient with a young quarterback. History says not so much.

McCarthy’s Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt is 4.3. Since 2010 there are 12 quarterbacks who were drafted between picks 5 and 64 who have averaged under 5.0 Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt in their first 10 starts. The only one who got to a third season as a starter was Justin Fields.

The others included Brock Osweiler, EJ Manuel, Kenny Pickett, Johnny Manziel, Christian Ponder, Blaine Gabbert, Dwayne Haskins, DeShone Kizer, Jimmy Clausen and Josh Rosen.

McCarthy’s ‘mechanics’

That doesn’t mean that history tells us everything. McCarthy’s circumstances are unique in comparison to those other players because he suffered a season-ending injury as a rookie and Year 2 included lots of stops and starts.

He will have an opportunity to work in the offseason to correct the issues with mechanics that plagued him during the regular season.

Here’s what O’Connell said he wants to see in terms of McCarthy’s technical improvements:

“In regard to some of the fundamentals and techniques, it's about being able to repeat the different types of fundamentals and techniques and be consistent with those things so that you're not having to self-correct as the ball leaves your hand,” O’Connell said. “Things like that are all just a way of getting to that proper base and body position at the top of a drop, and then how you navigate the pocket, how you keep your eyes up through a progression and find a completion to generate a positive play.”

He continued…

“I think he grew tremendously throughout the season in learning that feel and why it's important. And now he gets a full offseason to stack a lot of days and knowing what it felt like for those 10 games and hit the ground running doing so.”

Looking back at the QB decision

One of the elephants in the room (there were several!) on Tuesday was the upcoming divisional round playoffs, which feature former Viking QB Sam Darnold quarterbacking the No. 1 NFC seed Seattle Seahawks. His performance this season only further highlighted the misstep of rolling out McCarthy as the unabated QB1 after a 14-win season with Darnold.

Adofo-Mensah said that he spent “lot of nights” awake thinking about the decision. He went back to the “process” of the decision and what they thought at the time they elected not to franchise tag Darnold. That would include believing that the supporting cast, if improved, could support an inexperienced QB. It also may have been more influenced by Darnold’s final two games of 2024 than anyone would like to say out loud.

Even if they were happy with their approach to making the decision, there was acknowledgement from the GM that they may not have weighed all the factors.

“Understanding how we play to win football games…. I’m not going to get to into the specifics on how we group it, but we won a high clip of games since we’ve been here and we’ve gotten a certain level of play, a certain style of explosive plays,” Adofo-Mensah said. “These are things we’ve talked about, but a lot of times, I think points aren’t made until something is removed, and then you see the complex system and when you move that one variable, how that one variable affects other things.”

A possible translation here is that Sam Darnold’s arm had a lot to do with the Vikings ranking at the top of the league in explosive plays in 2024. They may have underestimated how singularly responsible it was for the downfield passing effectiveness. Darnold ranked No. 1 in the NFL in deep passing yards. That would have been hard for anyone to repeat, much less a first-year starter whose technical throwing is not on par yet.

There are other variables that impacted the explosive plays as well. Christian Darrisaw’s health struggles likely hurt a young QB more than it impacted Darnold. Jordan Addison missing for the first three games. Justin Jefferson not being able to practice in training camp with McCarthy.

“Seeing when we weren’t that explosive, how teams played us, and how they got to box a different fight, and when they got to box a different fight, how that impacted our defense and their ability to create turnovers and win games the way we thought we could win,” Adofo-Mensah continued. “That was really a great learning experience that tied into the quarterback discussion, and those are things we’ll carry with us going forward.”

If you are wondering, in 2024 Geno Smith was the fourth highest graded PFF deep passer. Just something to consider.

Anyway, Adofo-Mensah was asked if the team underestimated how long it would take McCarthy to adjust to the NFL. He said that the club prepared themselves for early stumbles.

“We talk a lot about the path of young players isn't linear, and you don't know how the first three games, four or five games are going to go,” Adofo-Mensah said. “We have a lot of historical studies about what the first few games are going to look like, or that first year could look like, in a sense, and ultimately, that's why we tried to build the team, knowing those growth pains could come, to be able to overcome them and withstand them, in a certain sense.”

However, he acknowledged that they were working with a difficult set of circumstances considering McCarthy’s injury in 2024.

“You would have had a full sample, three years of watching him play in the NFL before, that's not how this works,” Adofo-Mensah said. “And sometimes you have to go on incomplete information. And the information we had was all good, but it was admittedly incomplete and small sampled. So ultimately, we trusted in the information we had, we trusted our coaches, we trusted in the team around him to do that.”

If the information was incomplete and other options were on the table, then….

Well, I suppose we’ll be rehashing it over and over for a long time.

“You saw the improvement at the end, you saw the flash of the player we thought he could be,” Adofo-Mensah said. “So, in that sense, I can't say that we were overconfident. Maybe the timing didn't work out with other aspects of our team, whether that be injuries or different things like that. But ultimately, we're comfortable with where we are and we're excited about where he can go.”

Vikings ‘being aggressive’ in trying to keep Flores