Ted Schwerzler: Vikings Evaluation of J.J. McCarthy Failed
The Minnesota Vikings put their eggs in the basket of young quarterback J.J. McCarthy this offseason. They opted against bringing back Sam Darnold and didn’t give Daniel Jones enough belief that he would start. Kevin O’Connell and Kwesi Adofo-Mensah decided that the 2024 first-round pick was going to be their guy out of the gate.
The Minnesota Vikings bet on J.J. McCarthy being ready as the guy for the 2025 season, and they could not have been more wrong.
By making that decision and pairing it with the offseason they had, the Minnesota Vikings needed to be right. They needed to believe that watching from the sidelines would provide sufficient development for McCarthy. Despite missing his entire rookie season with a knee injury, McCarthy was expected to hit the ground running.
A Rocky First Five Games for J.J. McCarthy
Minnesota addressed the interior of its offensive and defensive lines this offseason. They spent a boatload of money on aging veterans, some of them with lengthy injury histories, and plenty more with concerns as to what they had left in the tank. With misses all over previous draft classes, Adofo-Mensah used cap space to supplement the roster. This wasn’t a team looking to kick the can down the road. They wanted to win now.
Then McCarthy struggled out of the gate, and not long after, he wound up hurt. Through his first two games, McCarthy played one strong quarter. In the time since his return from the high-ankle sprain, we have yet to see a consistent level of play. On Sunday, against a beatable Chicago Bears team, it was the performance (or lack thereof) by McCarthy that sank the team as a whole.
It’s far too early to write a 22-year-old quarterback off. The Vikings didn’t invest first-round draft capital in the National Champion out of Michigan to dump him after five games. They also didn’t spend hundreds of millions this offseason to watch a win-now roster put up a 4-6 record while guaranteeing playoff elimination before Thanksgiving.
Maybe this will wind up being a small bump in the road as McCarthy’s career evolves into something to be proud of. Regardless of whether that winds up being true or not, the Vikings bet on being right about the current state of their quarterback, and they could not have been more wrong, at least based on McCarthy’s first five-game sample.
You must be logged in to post a comment.