{"id":869133,"date":"2026-10-03T07:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T07:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/869133\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T07:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T07:20:09","slug":"j-j-mccarthy-ready-for-whats-ahead-of-him-after-giants-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/869133\/","title":{"rendered":"J.J. McCarthy ready for what’s ahead of him after Giants trade"},"content":{"rendered":"

He isn\u2019t the Giants\u2019 Quarterback of the Future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nor is he (yet) the Giants\u2019 Quarterback of the Present.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But J.J. McCarthy is happy that the Giants are no longer only a part of his past.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In his first interview since he was acquired earlier this week for a fifth-round pick to be Jameis Winston\u2019s backup<\/a> while Jaxson Dart is sidelined for the season, McCarthy said it came as a \u201cshock\u201d to be traded by the Vikings less than three seasons after he was a first-round pick.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t anticipate it,\u201d McCarthy said, \u201cbut it\u2019s an opportunity to take advantage of.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of the shock gave way to comfort when general manager Joe Schoen (who heavily scouted McCarthy, including on a Top 30 facility visit, before the 2024 draft) and head coach John Harbaugh (whose brother Jim was McCarthy\u2019s college coach<\/a>) called to make him feel wanted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"New Giants quarterback J.J. McCarthy (18) at practice on Friday. Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved this place from the second I walked in here,\u201d McCarthy said after Friday\u2019s practice. \u201cJust being able to be here now, it\u2019s full circle. The [franchise] tradition is something I value tremendously.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

McCarthy, who was idling as the Vikings\u2019 third-stringer after going 6-4 last season, didn\u2019t want to look back at \u201cthe multitude of things you can think of\u201d to explain why it didn\u2019t work out in Minnesota<\/a>. Not when he has so much to learn to make up for lost time with the Giants offense.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel really good,\u201d McCarthy said. \u201cOffensive football is all the same concepts, for the most part. It\u2019s about getting the verbiage down, and I feel like I\u2019m picking it up pretty quickly. I\u2019m focused on the next thing. Where I\u2019ll end up is where I\u2019ll end up when the time gets there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"New Giants quarterback J.J. McCarthy (18) at practice on Friday. Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\n

Harbaugh hasn\u2019t decided yet whether McCarthy or Jake Haener will serve as the No. 2 quarterback Sunday against the Cardinals. Winston took the \u201cmajority\u201d of first-team practice reps while Harbaugh is trying to figure out \u201chow do we use?\u201d McCarthy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it will be mobile McCarthy and his 100-mile-per-hour fastball sooner than later \u2014 and it\u2019s only a matter of time before he is nipping at Winston\u2019s heels if the offense continues to produce as it has during 19 touchdown-less possessions without Dart.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not something that you can show up in an NFL building as a quarterback and be ready to play in a week,\u201d said quarterbacks coach Brian Callahan, though Baker Mayfield and Joe Flacco are recent examples of players who did just that. \u201cThat\u2019s challenging.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGo behind the scenes with Big Blue\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Inside the Giants by Paul Schwartz, a weekly Sports+ exclusive.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\u201cBut a week in the NFL feels like five [elsewhere]. As you stack those days, for a player that\u2019s intelligent and works at it, you have a chance to get up to speed pretty quickly. We\u2019ll push it as fast as we can make it. It\u2019s kind of up to him and how he picks it up.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Callahan-McCarthy crash-course meetings started with cadence, formations, motions and shifts and moved onto revisiting the first day (and so on) of spring OTAs, which included run and pass-protection installs. Simultaneously, McCarthy is being fed the weekly game plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s catching up on this background information and terms while he\u2019s trying to piece together what we are actually putting together for the game plan,\u201d Callahan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTrying to close that gap from what\u2019s been worked on for the last six months to what we\u2019re doing today. Then you start with the pass-game terminology. Hours and hours and hours worth of that. It\u2019s a race to see how much we can give to him and how much he\u2019s going to be able to retain.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

McCarthy reportedly didn\u2019t fit the locker room in Minnesota, where he had to sit his rookie season with a torn meniscus (same as Dart) while backup Sam Darnold led the team to a surprising 14-3 record. Then he lost a quarterback competition this offseason to Kyler Murray.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s all in the past,\u201d McCarthy said. \u201cAll I care about is what\u2019s important now: that next rep, that next meeting, that next game.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here comes his fresh start.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing in the league almost 2 \u00bd years, who you are is who you are,\u201d McCarthy said. \u201cI just try to be authentic because the locker room is going to find out. I just try to do whatever I can to let them know I love this game, I\u2019m going to work my butt off and I love these guys around me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

McCarthy said he has not heard from Jim Harbaugh since the trade, though Jim acknowledged that John called him beforehand for coaching insight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely love the Harbaugh family,\u201d McCarthy said. \u201cThey are made of the right stuff: faith, family, football. Everything he did in Baltimore was super inspiring. Being in this building, you feel it. Excited to play for him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

McCarthy\u2019s first step is build a relationship with Winston.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be able to hear how he internalizes things,\u201d McCarthy said, \u201cthere were great conversations where I\u2019m like, \u2018Wow, that\u2019s how a true veteran does it.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He isn\u2019t the Giants\u2019 Quarterback of the Future.\u00a0 Nor is he (yet) the Giants\u2019 Quarterback of the Present.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":869134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[6343,977,349,99],"class_list":["post-869133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-j-j-mccarthy","tag-new-york-giants","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869133","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=869133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/869134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}