By Matthew Coller
Finally, it’s game week.
The Minnesota Vikings were back at practice on Wednesday as they prepare to play the Green Bay Packers. Here’s all the takeaways…
Harrison Smith returns
Harrison Smith was on the practice field Wednesday after missing training camp while he contemplated whether he wanted to play in 2026.
Head coach Kevin O’Connell said that despite his conversations with Smith throughout the summer, he truly wasn’t sure if Smith was going to return to the team this season.
“He’s in great shape and you could tell by just the way he came in that he had a mentality of coming in in shape and not really needing a ramp-up period for a guy with that level of experience and knowing what it’s going to take,” O’Connell said. “As we worked closer towards the end of the camp and the dialogue of where he was at, I think he just... feels like he can play still, and he feels like specifically his role in our defense and the enjoyment he has being a quarterback out there for that group…I think it was a pretty easy decision for him in the end.”
When asked if it was possible that Smith could play this Sunday against the Green Bay Packers this Sunday, O’Connell said, “absolutely, we’ll obviously practice for the first time today and we’ll assess where he’s at.”
In terms of his possible workload, when Smith came back from a health issue that kept him out of camp last year, he played 22, 17 and 29 snaps in the first three games back before getting up to full speed. O’Connell said that the team will have a plan for his ramp up.
“I’m in good shape,” Smith said. “There’s nothing like playing football. Heart rate, thinking a lot while you’re moving, it’s hard to simulate that. I’m in a really good place right now.”
JJ McCarthy is QB3
O’Connell announced that McCarthy will be the emergency quarterback on Sunday against the Packers. He said that it will be a decision that they reevaluate from week to week.
“Carson, he’s got almost 100 career starts,” O’Connell said. “What he was able to do last year from a standpoint of very limited repetition and being able to apply a career’s worth of experience, that’s kind of what you need to do as a backup quarterback, especially early on when so much of the emphasis is going to be on getting Kyler as comfortable as we can possibly get him.”
As far as McCarthy’s prospects long term, O’Connell said:
“He’s still a young quarterback in the NFL with 10 starts and a bunch of talent and a bunch of things that make him a guy that we want to pour into every single day,” O’Connell said. “And the best part is he’s going to work as hard as anybody.”
The writing appeared to be on the wall that Wentz was going to be the backup when he began getting more reps at the end of camp and outperformed McCarthy in the preseason.
As far as what it means for McCarthy in the bigger picture, we never really know how things are going to play out and we’ve seen QB3 needed multiple times during O’Connell’s era. However, getting first and second-team reps all summer and still not being QB2 does not give much optimism to his chances of being a starting quarterback again any time soon.
O’Connell’s lesson from 2025
In the final five games of the 2025 season, O’Connell was forced into a grind-it-out mentality where the Vikings adapted to a run-first, simplified offense and relied heavily on their defense to win games.
At the end of 2025, he commented that he learned that sometimes they had to find ways to win even if it wasn’t really in the style that they would like to play.
On Wednesday, he reflected on that lesson learned.
“I think that’s one of the things that I probably am so appreciative about the experience of the four years leading up to this year… you’ve got to learn some things as far as not only just how you approach trying to win one game every Sunday, and they’re all different,” O’Connell said. “Every weekend is a challenge schematically, personnel wise, where your team’s at from a health standpoint, where your team’s at at certain positions. And ultimately, all we’re tasked with doing is trying to win a game for 60 minutes every week. And it sounds like a cliche until you learn. It doesn’t matter what the stat box looks like. It doesn’t matter what an EPA looks like.”
Over full seasons, the box scores and EPA data do tell a story about a team’s overall strength but there have been games and situations that the Vikings may have closed out easier or won if they leaned into the run-and-play-defense approach. That doesn’t mean that O’Connell should completely change, rather adjust certain in-game approaches as he did last year.
Jihad Ward is back
In 2024, Jihad Ward was a rotational pass rusher for the Vikings, playing a total of 467 snaps and posting 31 pressures and picking up one sack. Last year, he spent the season with the Tennessee Titans and had a strong season with 47 pressures and 5.0 sacks as a starter.
With outside linebacker depth still somewhat a question after signing Kyle Van Noy, the Vikings brought Ward back on Wednesday, signing him to the practice squad.
A clean injury report
The only player on the Vikings’ injury report Wednesday is safety Jakobe Thomas, who has an illness. The rest of the squad was fully practicing and is expected to go on Sunday against the Packers. In total, the only injuries the team suffered during training camp and preseason were Jamal Adams and Tyler Batty’s season-ending leg injuries.