{"id":161246,"date":"2025-09-16T16:52:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T16:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/161246\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T16:52:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T16:52:08","slug":"j-j-mccarthy-awful-then-a-hero-then-a-father-then-awful-again-then-a-bust-now-hurt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/161246\/","title":{"rendered":"J.J. McCarthy Awful, Then A Hero, Then A Father, Then Awful Again, Then A Bust, Now Hurt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three years of painstaking roster-building by the Minnesota Vikings needed less than 24 hours to be blown apart. Go back to last week and Minnesota\u2019s newly christened starting QB, J.J. McCarthy, appeared ready to fulfill his destiny<\/a> as this franchise\u2019s long-awaited savior after engineering a 21-point fourth-quarter explosion in a comeback win at Soldier Field. A few days later, his fianc\u00e9e gave birth to their first child, a boy. A few days after that, he made his formal debut at the Vikings home stadium on Sunday Night Football against the Falcons. The crowd was poised to detonate. Some Vikings fans had been waiting decades for this moment. Here\u2019s what they got instead:<\/p>\n

You could argue that pick represented one of McCarthy\u2019s better throws on Sunday night. In a game where touchdowns were excruciatingly scarce, McCarthy and the Vikings\u2019 offense failed to produce a single one of them. He looked uncertain of himself while making calls at the line of scrimmage, he mishandled the snap on multiple occasions, and he appeared incapable of manufacturing even a single first down. He was awful; no sense in talking yourself into any other conclusion.<\/p>\n

Because the data is even uglier than the tape. McCarthy was sacked six times and turned the ball over three times. He held onto the ball for well over three seconds per dropback<\/a>: a death sentence in the NFL, especially if two of your best O-linemen are already out of the game. He all but ignored the left side of the field<\/a> all game long, and overshot a wide-open Jalen Nailor streaking past Atlanta\u2019s secondary when he finally acknowledged that area\u2019s existence. In every regard, McCarthy was wholly unprepared to conduct an NFL offense. Both his team and his body suffered for it:<\/p>\n

Monday’s news that McCarthy had a sprained ankle which would sideline him for 2-4 weeks came as a surprise to fans who might have missed seeing McCarthy get that ankle taped up in the second half, after he\u2019d been brought down by a revitalized Falcons pass rush for the 800th time. But the QB really does appear to be hurt<\/a>, which means that living nightmare Carson Wentz really will serve as the Vikings\u2019 starter for the next few weeks \u2026 and perhaps beyond, if Wentz can make this offense look anywhere near respectable.<\/p>\n

This, obviously, was not Minnesota\u2019s plan. After drafting McCarthy in 2024, the QB appeared on the verge of challenging then-QB1 Sam Darnold for the starting job before a torn meniscus put him down for the entirety of his rookie season. Minnesota head coach Kevin O\u2019Connell used that rehab time to relentlessly tutor his new prot\u00e9g\u00e9 in the team\u2019s offense. McCarthy proved to be such a capable student in that timeframe that O\u2019Connell eschewed all other potential QB1 candidates for 2025\u2014including Darnold and Aaron Rodgers\u2014and elected to put the former Michigan Wolverine at the helm of a roster that was built to win right now.<\/p>\n

This was the plan: When O\u2019Connell and GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah arrived in Minnesota three years ago, they shared a vision of building a championship roster around a talented young passer still on his rookie contract. After shedding cap weight, sifting through multiple draft classes, and rehabbing a few veteran QBs along the way, they finally settled on McCarthy as their centerpiece. McCarthy\u2019s rookie deal allowed Adofo-Mensah to spend lavishly on players to surround him, and a relatively soft 2025 opening schedule would be all the new kid required to get the hang of things. Once the real meat of the schedule began in October (featuring consecutive games against the Eagles, Chargers, Lions, and Ravens), the QB who has won all of his life would be rolling. You could argue that no young QB had ever been put into a more favorable position to succeed.<\/p>\n

McCarthy, thus far, has failed. And he\u2019s now in dry dock indefinitely. Vikings fans, already a fragile lot, are left to wonder if the highest-drafted QB in franchise history is already a lost cause. That\u2019s an awfully premature conclusion to reach given McCarthy\u2019s age (22), his paltry r\u00e9sum\u00e9, and the pending return of both vital LT Christian Darrisaw and star WR Jordan Addison a few weeks from now. It\u2019s a long season. You can be a completely different team in December than you were in September. This is sports, after all; you never know what\u2019ll happen.<\/p>\n

But when you\u2019ve waited as long as Minnesota fans have for a title\u2014in any men\u2019s pro sport, let alone football\u2014you\u2019re not just afraid of the unknown, you\u2019re exhausted by it. Maybe McCarthy is just stumbling awkwardly out of the gate, as virtually every young QB does. Maybe the Vikings already know he\u2019s a bust and used that ankle sprain to soft-bench him. Maybe O\u2019Connell was too much of a helicopter parent to his young charge; the best quarterbacks are ones who don\u2019t require a QB whisperer in their headset. Or maybe a witch placed a hex upon this organization at its inception and nothing they do will ever matter. Maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe. Kevin O\u2019Connell was hired, and J.J. McCarthy was drafted, to get rid of those maybes. For a single quarter last week, it looked like they\u2019d succeeded. It looked as if the Minnesota Vikings finally had their answer. Now they\u2019re left with nothing but questions, each one more draining than the last.<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three years of painstaking roster-building by the Minnesota Vikings needed less than 24 hours to be blown apart.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-161246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}