If you’ve been a fan of the Minnesota Vikings for any length of time, you know that their history at the quarterback position since Fran Tarkenton’s retirement has been a list of temporary fixes, short-term solutions, and bad luck.
In Dennis Green’s ten years as the Vikings head coach, the team had seven different quarterbacks lead the team in passing yardage. Seriously, the man had a brand new quarterback nearly every year and only attempted to develop a long-term solution at the end of his tenure with Daunte Culpepper (and even he, reportedly, try to draw Dan Marino out of retirement first before handing things off to the youngster).
Culpepper is, if we’re being honest with ourselves, the closest thing to a franchise quarterback the Vikings have had since the departure of St. Francis of Bloomington. Sure, he struggled in his final season with the Vikings, and when it looked like he might be turning it around he got his knee turned to mush in Carolina.
The Vikings thought they might have had something with Teddy Bridgewater, and it looked like he was really getting ready to burst onto the scene in his third season. Then, on a snap in practice where nobody laid a hand on him, his leg. . .literally. . .almost fell off.
If you’ve watched Jon Bois’ history of the Minnesota Vikings. . .and, if you haven’t, you owe it to yourself to watch the entire thing. . .he emphasizes a fact about this franchise that has likely hindered their ability to find a long-term quarterback solution, and that’s that they’ve never really been bad enough for a long enough period of time to have to go through the quarterback development process. In the last quarter-century, they’ve tried it with Culpepper, they’ve tried it with Bridgewater, they’ve tried it with Tarvaris Jackson (RIP), and they’ve tried it with Christian Ponder. Sure, Ponder wound up being a flat bust and Jackson might have been in over his head a bit (though he did develop into a solid backup with a couple of other teams), but the Culpepper and Bridgewater arcs really can’t be blamed on the team so much as unfortunate circumstances beyond their control.
Outside of that, they’ve had the zombie Brett Favre years, they’ve had Sam Bradford, they’ve had Kirk Cousins, they’ve had Matt Cassel, and they’ve had a cast of fill-ins who have had their moments but were never viewed as a long-term solution. And, because of that, the majority of fans of this team have never truly been subjected to the process of developing a rookie quarterback, at least not for a very long time.
For better or for worse, Kevin O’Connell has decided to take the road less traveled by bringing in a guy he clearly believes could be a fixture for the Vikings for many seasons to come in J.J. McCarthy. McCarthy missed his rookie season, as we know, and has now started four games this season. We’ve seen him make some outstanding throws and provide some big moments, but he’s also been mightily inconsistent. . .which is what you’d expect from a guy who’s started four NFL games.
If McCarthy is to develop into the sort of quarterback that Kevin O’Connell clearly believes that he can be, his teammates and coaches are going to have to play a role in that. Yes, he has the best wide receiver in the world at his disposal in Justin Jefferson, but even Jefferson isn’t infallible. If we’re being honest with ourselves, the best pass McCarthy threw on Sunday in the Vikings’ loss to Baltimore hit Jefferson in both hands in the end zone and wound up on the turf. Is it a catch that every wide receiver makes? Probably not. . .but it’s a catch that Justin Jefferson makes.
The playcalling on Sunday didn’t do the team a lot of favors, either. The team’s running back tandem of Aaron Jones and Jordan Mason averaged nearly six yards a carry against the Ravens (13 carries, 72 yards, 1 TD). When a team is doing that sort of damage in the run game, why on earth are they only getting 13 carries while you’re calling on your quarterback who’s making his fourth start to throw the ball 42 times? Well, Kevin O’Connell’s playcalling has gotten a bit suspect in key situations, as illustrated by this stat from Adam Patrick from The Viking Age:
In the four games that J.J. McCarthy has started for the Vikings, they have faced third down and between 1 and 3 yards 18 times. On 12 of those plays, they have called passes. . .zero of which have resulted in first downs. Meanwhile, they’ve run the ball six times, with five of those plays resulting in first downs. I get that you might want to call passes in these sorts of situations as a tendency breaker or something, but when your tendency is to throw the ball every time your team is in third and short, it’s not really a tendency breaker anymore, is it?
Sometimes, it’s okay to just get the first down and try to keep a drive going. This team has invested in Jones, they traded for Mason (and gave him a contract extension), and invested in the offensive line. I just don’t get why they seem to be so allergic to running the ball in short-yardage situations.
Speaking of the offensive line, they contributed significantly to a figure that no team has achieved since 2009. The Vikings managed to false start eight times in a game. . .at home. Brian O’Neill, who has been a very good player for a very long time for this team, had three false starts on his own. Of the Vikings’ eight false starts, five of them occurred on first-and-ten, which immediately puts you behind the proverbial eight ball in terms of down and distance.
I simply don’t get how on earth you manage to have eight false starts on a game on your own turf. It’s not like you’re dealing with crowd noise, and even though the Baltimore defense has improved a lot in recent weeks, it’s not as if they were lining up Ray Lewis, Terrell Suggs, and Ed Reed out there or anything like that. The Vikings have shuffled the offensive line around a lot this year due to injuries, but there’s still no excuse for what we saw on Sunday afternoon.
When you’re attempting to develop a young quarterback as the Vikings are with McCarthy, your margin for error everywhere else temporarily decreases until that quarterback really gets their feet underneath them and gets comfortable in the job. You can’t have 13 penalties for 102 yards, you can’t fumble multiple kickoff returns, and you can’t put your quarterback at a disadvantage with your playcalling.
This is what the development process of a young quarterback looks like. When the Vikings host the Bears this coming Sunday, J.J. McCarthy could go out and play the best game of his short career to this point. . .or he could go out and play his worst game. Eventually, either the better games are going to come a whole lot more frequently than the worse games, or Kevin O’Connell and J.J. McCarthy are both going to be seeking employment somewhere other than Minnesota.
But this is what developing a young quarterback looks like. The beginning of the ride might be a little rough in spots, but the destination is hopefully going to be worth it.
See More:
