Vikings should take as long as McCarthy needs to be ready
Fans want to see him, media wants answers -- oh and there's that rookie contract thing -- but KOC should only play his young QB when he's good to go
By Matthew Coller
EAGAN — Look around the NFL in 2025. Goodness gracious Baker Mayfield looks good. Sam Darnold is killing it in Seattle. Boy, Daniel Jones looks like a different dude this year, aye? Who had Mac Jones playing this well?
What do all of those QBs have in common? They are all former high first-round draft picks who are leading top playoff contenders for other franchises than the ones that drafted them.
Each one of those guys has his own story. Some may have been more victims of circumstance, others may have been pushed too quickly into the fire (or both). But one thing we can say is that there are too many talented QBs who struggled early in their careers and are now succeeding after years of playing in the NFL for it to be a coincidence.
It’s almost like playing quarterback in Roger Goodell’s National Football League is no easy task and it might take time for quarterbacks to truly learn how to play at this level.
That brings us to JJ McCarthy.
On Wednesday, the young quarterback was practicing on a limited basis while he continues his return from a high ankle sprain.
“Ankle is — it’s getting there,” McCarthy said. “I wouldn’t say it’s 100% right now, but we’re striving every day to get there as fast as we can.”
Not being at full health for his “very real injury,” as O’Connell snarked, should make the decision easy to not play McCarthy this week against the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday at US Bank Stadium. It wouldn’t make any sense to put so much focus on his throwing fundamentals and then toss him to Jalen Carter and Jordan Davis without a complete week of practice or the ability to confidently drive off his injured ankle or escape the pocket at full speed.
If he doesn’t start versus Philadelphia, the question becomes: When will he play? The Vikings face the Los Angeles Chargers on Thursday Night Football only four days after playing the Eagles. Even if he got a jumpstart on preparation for L.A., it would be tough to return on the national stage with all of his teammates dealing with limited preparation.
Does that mean Week 9 against the Detroit Lions? What if Carson Wentz wins the next two games and the Vikings are sitting at 5-2, right in the thick of the NFC North race? KOC can’t bench his veteran quarterback at that point, right? Historically speaking, we have seen many instances of journeyman QBs coming to Minnesota and leading excellent seasons, so it doesn’t seem crazy to think that Wentz could have them in the mix, especially in a year where there are a lot of good-not-great teams in the NFC.
Maybe we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves just yet with so many different scenarios. They could just as easily receive average backup-level play from Wentz and then get back to the plan with McCarthy soon enough.
The important thing to keep in mind is that the Vikings need to work on the timeline that McCarthy needs, not the timeline that everybody wants from McCarthy.
Development doesn’t just happen because you want it to happen or because you need it to happen. It works much more mysteriously than that.
Take Jordan Love, for example. He didn’t play for three years behind Aaron Rodgers and then sputtered over his first eight games. For some reason, the light came on and stayed on after that. Before his ninth start, Love had thrown 317 NFL passes and registered a 78.6 QB rating with 14 touchdowns and 11 INTs. Since his ninth start, Love is 19-10-1 with 55 TDs, 16 INTs and a 103.3 QB rating.
Even last year’s tremendous QB class had its development curves. Michael Penix Jr. didn’t get to start until the final three games of the season. Drake Maye sat behind Jacoby Brissett to start the year. Bo Nix had a 74.4 QB rating in his first seven games.
The point is that very few quarterbacks come into the league and crush it right away and they turn the corner when they’re going to turn the corner — it’s not a switch that can be flipped. What their teams had to decide is the right path for them to improve. For players like Penix Jr. and Nix, their previous experience in college and age may have helped them smooth over the bumps a bit easier. For a QB like Caleb Williams, he probably needed to sit rather than try to figure everything out on the fly. His coaches paid with their jobs.
If O’Connell decides that the best path for McCarthy is to get him back onto the field as quickly as possible and that fighting through the weekly roller coaster under the bright lights is the best way for him to improve, then they should stick with their QB1 almost no matter what happens.
If O’Connell decides that McCarthy working with Wentz and running the scout team is the best place for him to lock in some of the fundamental stuff that went sideways during his two starts, then he should remain on that path until he feels the 2024 10th overall pick is ready.
“You could tell by his experience with the anticipation in the windows, with the quickness of when the ball’s getting out of his hand, just little things that he does pre-snap that he’s been kind of telling me about,” McCarthy said of watching and working with Wentz over the past few weeks. “We’re reading certain plays, seeing different leverages from certain secondary defenders, and just the timing of everything is something that I’ve been really impressed with and took a lot from.”
The Vikings’ head coach spent the bye week working directly with McCarthy, noting that when everything clicks from a technical standpoint he can be a very accurate thrower. We have seen that in practice and training camp as well, particularly in this year’s joint practices. So what happened to his footwork in the game setting?
O’Connell pointed to things that helped them win the game against Chicago being positive but said that more time “on grass” helps build a “layer of consistency” that help the QB battle through situations where things aren’t perfect.
If McCarthy needs more time than just the next two weeks to build up that time on grass, then we shouldn’t treat it like franchise travesty.
That is said with all acknowledgement that they picked the McCarthy path over franchise tagging Darnold or signing Aaron Rodgers or convincing Daniel Jones to stay rather than going to Indy. It is said with the understanding that they are working on a roster timeline that was meant to land on 2025 as a win-now year with a stacked roster around the rookie QB contract. It is said with an understanding that Vikings fans have been waiting for their Franchise Guy and they do not want to be told that they have to wait longer.
But sometimes the only way to have any chance at success is to wait longer. Nobody could have predicted that McCarthy would miss his first year to injury. Nobody could have really known for sure what it was going to look like when he got out there or that he was going start with half the projected roster or that he was going to get hurt again right before the team’s get-right game against Cincinnati.
If only football worked out just the way we all drew it up.
The only thing we can say is that the Vikings have the right coach to lay out the path forward for McCarthy. O’Connell wakes up thinking about QB development and goes to bed thinking about QB development. He has his own career along with the experiences of young QBs he’s worked with in the past and dozens and dozens of successful quarterbacks that he has been close with over the years. We have to admit that no matter how much we try to read the room, we aren’t going to know what he knows.
Still, KOC has a tightrope to walk. Deciding the right time to play McCarthy is going to be tough so long as Wentz is running the offense fairly efficiently. He has to consider the locker room’s feelings on the QB decision and whether McCarthy can gain enough ground to improve his future odds of success by working behind the scenes.
This week, McCarthy’s less-than-100% ankle may have kicked the decision down the road for O’Connell. How he approaches the situation after McCarthy reaches full strength may set the path for his future with the franchise. *
ADDITIONAL NOTES
— Blake Cashman practiced in full on Wednesday, which is a good sign toward his possible return.
— Andrew Van Ginkel, Brian O’Neill and Donovan Jackson were all limited as they work back from injuries.
— On Philly’s side, Jalen Carter was a full participant and both Landon Dickerson and Quinyon Mitchell were limited.
It’s all well and good for him to sit if he’s not healthy, but once he gets there, we can absolutely not have any hesitation in playing him. There can’t be excuses of hey this team is too good or that matchup is bad. Reps matter in live game action as well.
If they felt good enough about McCarthy’s fundamentals and ability to run the offense to pass on Darnold, Rodgers, and Jones (assuming they could’ve signed him with a commitment to start him), then I would hope we are just talking about a week or two to make sure he is fully healed and focusing on some of the fundamentals he let slip when the bullets started flying. If he needs more than that, it is what it is and they should absolutely do it, but I won’t be able to help myself from complaining about them letting Darnold walk, especially when they spent a lot of that money on past their prime guys who aren’t doing a whole lot at the moment.