The Minnesota Vikings knew there’d be bumps along the way. Kevin O’Connell knew, too.
And maybe the fourth quarter from last Monday’s shocking win over the Chicago Bears at Soldier Field helped delude Vikings fans away from what I think we all knew in the back of our minds, as well.
For all intents and purposes, this is J.J. McCarthy’s rookie season, and there are going to be bumps along the way.
On Monday night, there were flashes. Yes, the first three quarters were downright abysmal, but the fourth quarter had that glimmer of a Vikings quarterback affirming “I AM HIM” for the first time since Brett Favre’s maiden voyage with the team.
There was none of that on Sunday night against the Atlanta Falcons.
The numbers hardly do it justice. The Vikings lost 22-6, but it could just as well have been 220-6. The offense was stagnant, aside from the last play from scrimmage in the first half when McCarthy found Justin Jefferson for 50 yards which directly led to half the team’s points just before the…well, half.
That play alone — in an instance where many, if not most coaches would have simply taken a knee and gone to the locker room licking their wounds — accounted for the following:
- 31.6 percent of McCarthy’s passing yards for the whole game
- 61.7 percent of Jefferson’s receiving yards for the whole game
- 25.3 percent of the team’s total yards for the whole game
Blech.
Let’s give the defense some credit. Facing a quarterback with only marginally more experience than McCarthy — Michael Penix Jr. came in with four career starts to J.J.‘s — the Brian Flores-led bunch made the southpaw look like a rookie in his own right. He completed 13-of-21 passes for 135 yards without a score or an interception, and in general looked out of sorts for most of the night.
The crowd helped a lot with that, especially early on when he was having trouble getting the playcalls in from the sidelines, as well.
Numerous Falcons drives stalled in big spots. And while this game had the makings of a revenge game for one Falcon — Penix getting one over on McCarthy, who beat him for the National Championship 20 months ago — the spoils didn’t go to the most likely Atlanta player.
Hell, not even the second-most likely, which would have been Kirk Cousins. The camera panned to Cousins a few times during the game — fewer than I’d have anticipated, really — and he had the same exact look on his face each time.
Instead, it was Parker Romo — filling in for the sidelined Younghoe Koo — who got the last laugh, nailing all five of his field goal attempts to give the Falcons a comfortable lead before Tyler Allgeier plunged in with the clincher, and the game’s first/only touchdown with 3:22 left in regulation.
To be fair, the Vikings had no answer for Atlanta’s two-headed running attack of Bijan Robinson and Allgeier, but things got a bit better as the night went on. After allowing a staggering 9.3 yards per carry in the first quarter, the Vikings managed to permit a much more palpable 4.78 yards per tote over the game’s final three quarters (on 32 rushing attempts).
But the Falcons couldn’t finish drives, and that led to Romo kicking four of his five field goals from inside of 40 yards. The last Falcons kicker who made four such kicks in the same game was Koo in Week 2 of 2023 against the Packers in a 25-24 win. The last kicker who did it against the Vikings was Arizona’s Chad Ryland last season in Week 13, when the Vikings won 23-22.
It’s not surprising the Vikings defense couldn’t do it all by itself, either. And to be fair, as Cris Collinsworth pointed out, it appeared the defense let Allgeier score to get the ball back more quickly as a last-ditch effort to get back into the game.
But when you lose the time of possession battle by more than 13 minutes — 13:04, to be precise — it’s hard to ask much more from a defense that faced 39 rushing attempts and generally speaking held up.
The last time the Vikings lost the time of possession battle by that much was Week 17 in 2023, a 33-10 shellacking at home against the Packers. The last time they did so and won was Week 4 that season, a 21-13 win on the road over Carolina.
The Panthers finished 2-15 that season.
All of this circles back to an offense that was entirely disjointed on Sunday night. To what extent does this fall on McCarthy’s shoulders? To what extent does it fall on O’Connell’s?
To what extent does it fall on Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s?
And I think the answer, as much as it seems a cop-out, is…..*shrug*.
Let’s consider all the factors at play.
For one, missing left tackle Christian Darrisaw was a huge deal. Ryan Kelly left with a concussion and fill-in left turnstile Justin Skule was terrible until he too left with his bell rung.
That makes quarterback play tough for a signal-caller of any experience level difficult, let alone one making his second career start and first at home.
Don’t get it twisted, none of this is to say we should hand McCarthy a participation trophy and a ribbon that says “thanks for trying.” But you have to deal within the facts; for as much as this team has been built for McCarthy to succeed, the first two weeks have been marked with potholes — some missed, some hit at 75 mph with little-to-no warning.
And people will naturally look to the alternatives — especially those directly tied to the Vikings. Aaron Rodgers appeared to be openly campaigning to be the Vikings’ next quarterback. In Week 1 he looked like vintage A-Rodg, throwing four touchdown passes for a passer rating of 136.7. Not so fast, my friend — Rodgers came back this week with one touchdown and two picks and a 58.0 passer rating in a two score loss at home against Seattle.
Sam Darnold was on the other side of the win in Pittsburgh on Sunday, and threw for 295 yards, two touchdowns and two picks a week after his Seattle debut resulted in 150 yards, no touchdowns and no picks. He’s riding with an 88.8 passer rating right now (23rd among qualified quarterbacks, but still ahead of McCarthy’s 67.2).
Daniel Jones is probably the most compelling argument statistically, as he’s thrown for 588 yards and two touchdowns without an interception through two games with the Colts, but let’s look at this realistically: was it realistic to bring back Jones in anything more than a continuing education program participant under O’Connell?
At least in the cases with Rodgers and Darnold, you’d be casting aside McCarthy for a player who had proven something in the recent past. With Jones, you’d just be adding more uncertainty at the position.
At some point, a young quarterback has to play. Keeping Jones would have been kicking that can down the road. The further into the future you kick that can, the more you eat up that quarterbacks cheap salary years as well as productive seasons from the careers of players in their primes right now, like Jefferson, T.J. Hockenson and others.
That’s not to say that Jones wouldn’t make this a better team right now, but all decisions aren’t made in a vacuum. When you commit to McCarthy with a high first-round pick, you’re agreeing that at some point, you’ll throw him out there and let him take his lumps in live game action.
That’s what Sunday night was.
It won’t be pretty. It won’t always look promising.
But if you want any chance of having a long-term starting quarterback in this league that you’ve handpicked and developed, it has to start somewhere.
And that’s what’s happening right before our eyes.
Yeah, it stinks that they lost to the Falcons. It might not look like they can beat anyone else in the division besides the Bears. It might look like the three quarterbacks the Vikings chose against this offseason will all outperform J.J. in the short to medium term.
But this is a snapshot in time. Will Vikings types — from the owners down to the fans and everyone in between — be glad the Vikings made the decision to go to McCarthy over the long run?
Time will tell — but I think the answer is still yes.
Progress is uneven. It’s not linear. You won’t always see it coming.
It might be bumpy for a bit with McCarthy, but nothing worth doing is easy.
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