Where does JJ McCarthy stand now?

Buzz is everywhere about new QBs. Will the former top pick get another shot?

Photo courtesy Minnesota Vikings

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By Matthew Coller

When Kevin O’Connell said that organizations fail quarterbacks more than quarterbacks fail organizations, we all nodded in agreement.

There is no better proof than Sam Darnold, who was let down by the New York Jets early in his career. They saddled him with poor coaching, a struggling offensive line, mediocre weapons and they tossed him into the starting lineup prematurely. His “seeing ghosts” years were a far, far cry in supporting cast quality from the likes of O’Connell, Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, TJ Hockenson etc. in Minnesota or Klint Kubiak, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Ken Walker and several highly-drafted offensive linemen in Seattle.

Years of experience were invaluable to Darnold as well. He repeatedly has cited his year as a backup quarterback to Brock Purdy as being vital to his development as a quarterback and the clear turning point in his career.

Darnold is an outlier in NFL history having won the Super Bowl after playing for four different organizations before Seattle but he’s far from the only historic quarterback that took a while to become the version of himself that everyone expected until their mid-to-late 20s or later.

Steve Young, for example, was 31 when he earned his first Pro Bowl honors and he finished his career as a seven-time Pro Bowler, three-time All-Pro and was the highest rated passer in history when he retired. Kurt Warner went from indoor football to superstardom at 28. Jim Kelly was 30 when he took the Buffalo Bills to the Super Bowl for the first time in 1990. Kerry Collins led the Giants to the Super Bowl at 28. The list goes on and on.

So, in a world where QBs often take time to develop, does that mean that the Vikings will give JJ McCarthy more opportunities to prove he can still be QB1?

Let’s look closer…

How in the world is McCarthy supposed to feel after these last four weeks?

— His head coach failed to endorse him as the 2026 starter in two separate press conferences.

— His general manager said that the decision to go with him kept him up at night. That same GM was fired shortly after that.

— His owner didn’t utter his name in the press conference to talk about Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s firing.

— His teammates went on radio row and weren’t shy about admitting that they wanted Sam Darnold back in 2025 and that he was to blame for Justin Jefferson’s down season. More 2024 Vikings, Harrison Smith, Blake Cashman and Nick Mullens, talked in separate articles by Tyler Dunne and Kalyn Kahler about Darnold wrongly taking the blame for 2024’s meltdown in the playoffs.

— NFL Insiders repeatedly mentioned different QB options for the Vikings. Kirk Cousins return, anyone? Mac Jones? Derek Carr? Malik Willis?

— During the Super Bowl broadcast, there were a bunch of references to the team that let Darnold go.

McCarthy must feel like he is out in the middle of the ocean all alone. Nobody has even tossed him a life preserver.

How does O’Connell feel about his notable quote now?

I don’t mean that sarcastically or like some type of dig at him. I mean, do the Vikings have a plan to avoid letting down McCarthy?

Do they think there is a path to boosting his chances of taking an enormous Year 2 jump? Or is that entirely on his shoulders? Or are they done?

If the Vikings bring back Kirk Cousins or woo Derek Carr or Aaron Rodgers or convince Malik Willis to come to Minnesota or sign/trade-for Kyler Murray, then it would be a pretty clear sign that they aren’t going to start McCarthy in 2026.

Theoretically they could fill a one-year gap with Kirk or Carr but usually once a quarterback hits the bench they do not return to starting.

Would they be letting him down by having someone else take the job next year? That really depends on whether you think they let him down already.

You could argue that tossing McCarthy into a situation where he had a bunch of expensive veteran players coming off a 14-win season or signing in Minnesota with expectations of playing for a Super Bowl was ambitious at best, reckless at worst. He was asked to recover from an injury in January and then lead a team with sky high expectations at 22 years old with less than 750 passes under his belt and an entire season of progress and development lost.

The Vikings believing they could develop his fundamentals on the fly while creating the perfect bubble for him was pretty rough logic. It takes some quarterbacks years to master throwing technique and how many teams in the NFL have a perfect situation? They knew Christian Darrisaw wouldn’t be there at the start of the season. They knew Jordan Addison was going to be suspended.

We have seen how tough the first year of many players’ careers can be. It wasn’t all roses for Drake Maye in his rookie season but he wasn’t saddled with the fate of the franchise right away.

At the same time, McCarthy’s data is not promising. Not only did he rank at the bottom of the NFL in most key statistical categories, the advanced numbers don’t shed any different light on the situation.

By NFL NextGEN stats’ Completion Percentage Over Expected, which weighs the openness of the targets versus completion percentage, McCarthy was third worst in the NFL at 5.2% lower than expected. In 2024, Darnold’s Expected Completion Percentage was 63.4% and in 2025 McCarthy’s ECP was 62.8%. That sure makes it look like it’s about the quality of the throws.

McCarthy had an entire training camp in 2024 learning O’Connell’s offense. He spent the year behind the scenes presumably studying and even using a virtual reality system to put himself in Darnold’s shoes. It wasn’t like he received his first Vikings official sweatpants in April 2025.

One of the most blatant acts of coping from fans is solely blaming O’Connell’s offense, play calling and approach to McCarthy for the struggles of the young quarterback. Sure, it feels much better to have it be someone else’s fault than it does to acknowledge that the kid couldn’t cut it but asking McCarthy to do things like throw the ball on first down and send people in motion, make checks at the line of scrimmage, attack the middle of the field on time and throw accurately are not tremendously unique things at the NFL level.

The Seattle Seahawks, a run-first team, still finished with the 8th most passing yards, if you were wondering. Darnold threw for nearly 2,000 yards on first down.

O’Connell was accused of being slow to adjust to a simplified offense for McCarthy but it’s very difficult to adapt an offense to someone’s skill set when they hardly play. They had the comeback win in Week 1, and then McCarthy was injured amidst a difficult game in Week 2 and then he was out for five weeks. When he came back, the gameplan already adjusted versus Detroit in a victory.

The following week they fell behind in part because of McCarthy turnovers and were forced to try to pass their way back in. After that against Chicago and Green Bay they were using more of the run-first approach that would last the rest of the year and help them win the final five games.

The Vikings also had four straight years of being an explosive passing game, even 2023, which makes it even harder to buy that it was all coaching.

Beyond the lack of execution, the vibes were weird. O’Connell had to announce that he wasn’t teaching McCarthy mechanics anymore. There was a back-and-forth in interviews about him dancing into the end zone in Dallas. Both times he injured his hand, the visuals were bizarre. O’Connell said on team radio that McCarthy was coming back to the sideline and talking about things they had never discussed before.

Also, usually if the locker room is all in on a guy who has struggled, they are mindful of not saying things on radio row that look like they are tossing the QB under the bus.

None of the aforementioned stuff screams that O’Connell will put his coaching career on the shoulders of McCarthy.

While ESPN’s Kevin Seifert reported that KOC isn’t thought to be on the “hot seat,” Stephen A. Smith made that exact declaration after Darnold won the Super Bowl on Sunday. To be fair, isn’t every coach on the hot seat if Sean McDermott can be fired after losing the divisional playoff game on a ref’s whim?

So what’s our ruling on whether he was failed by the team?

Was it asking a lot of McCarthy to pick up where he left off in the previous year’s training camp? Yes. Was it asking a lot of him to be ready to handle an NFL starting job on a win-now team? Yes. Would you be convicted in football court of malpractice and ruination of a quarterback? That’s a tough sell.

Now the hard part: Figuring out how to go forward.

It appears that there are three options regarding McCarthy now that the dust has settled and the temperature on the Vikings has been cranked up to 1,000,000 degrees following Darnold’s Super Bowl victory. The first is that they acquire a quarterback that will compete with McCarthy for the starting job in training camp. Second is that they get a clear starting quarterback and see if McCarthy can develop behind him. Third is to trade away McCarthy.

Nobody on the outside knows the answer about where they truly stand, even if the tea leaves are not pointing toward him getting another chance to prove himself.

In a theoretical world, it makes complete sense to ensure that McCarthy gets a shot at showing how much he can grow in a single offseason. They simply might not have time for that.

It’s clear that Justin Jefferson isn’t going to tolerate another year of footballs flying over his head. It’s also clear that, historically speaking, heads roll when the Vikings miss the postseason multiple years in a row.

And that’s why sometimes teams have to fail young quarterbacks.

Life hasn’t been fair to McCarthy. If he had a healthy 2024 season of development, things might have been different. If the Vikings only won eight games in 2024, they might have spent differently and viewed his debut season differently. If McCarthy hadn’t gotten hurt in Week 2 or if he hadn’t had the pressure of pumping the ball to the top receiver in football or if, if, if, if…

But football isn’t fair. In a sports world full of justice, every kid with talent would get their shot. The NFL can’t wait around though. That’s why most QBs who have had McCarthy’s start to their career are out pretty quickly.

That’s why O’Connell’s quote was rooted in the right idea but he might not be able to follow through on it this offseason.

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