The New York Giants face the Minnesota Vikings this weekend. This is an interesting game for the Giants, if a meaningless one in the standings. We turned to Christopher Gates of SB Nation’s Daily Norseman to learn aboutt his Vikings in this week’s ‘5 questions’ segment.
Ed: Did the Vikings make the right choice to move on from Sam Darnold (and Daniel Jones) and turn to J.J. McCarthy? Is there regret? Is there a belief that choice will be proven right in the long term?
Chris: I think that, in the long run, the Vikings will have made the right choice in moving on from Darnold and Jones and turning things over to McCarthy. I think a lot of McCarthy’s struggles early on stemmed from O’Connell trying to overload him with too much at once and overestimating his ability to run the type of offense he wanted to run early on. He’s simplified things a bit in recent weeks, and McCarthy has really responded well to what he’s been asked to do. Outside of his inexplicable lack of chemistry with Justin Jefferson thus far, he’s been really good over the past couple of weeks and has shown quite a bit of what the Vikings saw when they made him a top ten pick in 2024. The floor right now is certainly lower than what Darnold or Jones might have been able to provide this year, but if O’Connell can build him in a much more orderly manner than he did at the beginning of this season, I think the ceiling is going to be significantly higher for McCarthy than it would have been with either of those two guys.
Chris: It’s pretty much been directly tied to his quarterback situation. In 2022, he had Kirk Cousins playing the best football of his career, Cousins stayed healthy all year, and they won a lot of close games on their way to going 13-4. In 2023, Cousins blew out his Achilles just as he was hitting his peak, they spent the second half of the season playing musical quarterbacks with Josh Dobbs, Nick Mullens, and Jaren Hall, and they went 7-10. Last season was the Sam Darnold Renaissance that got them to 14-3, and this season has brought us J.J. McCarthy’s struggles, Carson Wentz playing until his arm (almost literally) fell off, and whatever the heck that was Max Brosmer did in Seattle a couple of weeks ago. That’s why this offseason is going to be crucial for this football team. They’re going to be in a rough spot cap-wise, but if they can start next season with the sort of play from McCarthy that he appears to be finishing this season with, they should be significantly better in 2026 than they’ve been this season and the even/odd/even/odd pattern could, potentially, continue.
Ed: If you could take one player off the Giants’ roster and put him into Minnesota’s lineup who would it be? Why?
Chris: I think we did this question last year when these teams played, and the answer is the same. It’s Dexter Lawrence. The Vikings spent a lot of money on their defensive front this year with middling results, but if they could take a guy like Lawrence and plug him in next to Jalen Redmond up front, Brian Flores would be able to have a field day with the rest of the defense. I don’t think there’s a better interior defensive lineman in the National Football League than Lawrence, and he can single-handedly wreck an opposing offensive line. He would free things up for guys like Andrew Van Ginkel and Jonathan Greenard (when he’s healthy … his season is over for this year, unfortunately), and be a consistent force against the run as well. The Vikings’ defense is already good, but adding a player like Lawrence would take them to a completely different level.
Chris: I think that as long as Flores is suing the National Football League, there’s a better chance of you or me getting hired as an NFL head coach than of Brian Flores getting a head coaching gig. It certainly isn’t because Flores isn’t a worthy candidate, and I’m pretty sure everyone knows that. But “the shield” has a way of protecting its own interests, and I don’t think there’s any chance of them having a guy that’s got an open lawsuit against the league for their hiring practices as the head coach of one of its 32 teams. Given the fact that, as you mentioned, Flores explicitly names the Giants in his lawsuit, the chances of that connection happening are even lower. He might get an interview here and there, and the league certainly isn’t going to be stupid enough to say anything out loud, but I’m sure there’s enough of a “wink wink, nudge nudge” understanding among the league’s ownership groups and front offices that Flores isn’t going to be getting a head coaching job until he either drops his lawsuit or it gets settled in some way.
Ed: How well do Vikings fans travel? Giants fans are not flocking to MetLife Stadium these days. Could we see a stadium with an overwhelming number of purple jerseys on Sunday?
Chris: I’m sure there’s going to be some purple in the stands on Sunday, but I’m not sure if it’s going to be a full-blown invasion or anything like that. The competitive portion of the Vikings’ season ended last week when they were eliminated from playoff contention, and New York/New Jersey in December isn’t exactly a tropical paradise or anything. To be honest, a lot of Vikings fans may have blown a decent portion of their road trip budgets for the year on the Euro trip to Dublin and/or London back in late September and early October. So if the Giants fans aren’t going to fill MetLife Stadium on Sunday afternoon, I think what you’re going to end up seeing is a lot of empty seats rather than a lot of them being filled up with folks wearing purple jerseys. Like I said, you may get some Vikings fans who live closer to the local area who can make a shorter road trip up there, but I don’t think there will be a lot of folks making the trek from the Twin Cities or anything like that.
