In Week against the Chicago Bears, the two halves could not have been more different for quarterback J.J. McCarthy and the Vikings\u2019 offense. The first half was disastrous. McCarthy looked flustered on the first couple of drives, and he even threw a facepalm-worthy pick-six to former Vikings cornerback Nahshon Wright. <\/p>\n
For the record, the Vikings\u2019 offense was not helping him. The team struggled to run the football. The offensive line was not manhandling the Bears\u2019 front. <\/p>\n
Then everything changed. <\/p>\n
Beginning in the third quarter, the Vikings started to lean on the Bears\u2019 defense. Running back Jordan Mason side-stepped tacklers and established momentum. McCarthy fed off of it, completing a couple of critical passes to superstar receiver Justin Jefferson. McCarthy threw his first touchdown at the beginning of the fourth quarter, and from then on, the Vikings\u2019 offense had their way. <\/p>\n
McCarthy connected with running back Aaron Jones on a deep ball touchdown. He converted an out route to receiver Adam Thielen for a two-point conversion. He even executed a read-option play, running in a touchdown to secure the victory. <\/p>\n
Perhaps the most telling was the way head coach Kevin O\u2019Connell and teammates reacted. The team swarmed McCarthy. O\u2019Connell was fist-pumping on the sidelines. His final passing stat line \u2014 13-of-20, 143 yards, two touchdowns and an interception \u2014 doesn\u2019t do this starting debut justice. It was an electric comeback, orchestrated by No. 9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Week against the Chicago Bears, the two halves could not have been more different for quarterback J.J.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-143582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}