Vikings Fans Think J.J. McCarthy Will Put Up Big Numbers

At least our poll says they do

Happy Independence Day to all of you who are reading this from the United States today! (And Happy. . .uh, Friday. . .to everyone else.) We’ve got the results of this week’s SB Nation Reacts poll about the Minnesota Vikings, so let’s take a look at the results here, shall we?

Our two questions this week were centered around how we feel about the potential performance of young J.J. McCarthy as he takes over the helm of our favorite football team. We put a couple of figures out there for both passing yardage and touchdown passes and asked you to pick “over” or “under” for both. We’ll start with our passing yardage prediction, which we set at 3,700 yards.

Of those who responded to our poll, 62% of you believe that McCarthy will hit the “over” on a line of 3,700 yards. For reference, Sam Darnold started all 17 games for the Vikings last year and put up 4,319 yards, or right around 254 yards/game. To get 3,700, McCarthy would have to average right around 218 yards/game, which should absolutely be achievable given the talent he has available at the skill positions and an upgraded interior offensive line. I think the “over” is the play here, too.

As far as touchdowns, people are even more emphatically on the “over” on that one.

A full 80% of our respondents believe that McCarthy is going to have more than 24 touchdown passes this year. Darnold put up 35 in the regular season last year, an average of right around two per game. McCarthy would have to average right around 1.5 touchdowns/game if he wants to get to 24. That’s a number which, again, should be well within his grasp unless he’s just a complete disaster out there.

(SPOILER: I don’t think he’s going to be a complete disaster out there.)

So, it would appear that fans of the Minnesota Vikings. . .or the ones that read this website, at the very least. . .are pretty bullish on J.J. McCarthy’s prospect to start his NFL career with a bang in the 2025 season. As you’ve probably gathered from the rest of this article, I’m certainly not going to be the one who tries to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm on that front.

Thank you, as always, to those of you who took the time to participate in our SB Nation Reacts survey for this week!

Check out the FanDuel Sportsbook, the official sportsbook partner of SB Nation.