I want to preface this story with the following disclaimer before I get too deep into things here:
Jonathan James McCarthy did not play well on Sunday against the Chicago Bears. Sure, the last drive was great, but there were way, way too many mistakes in the first 57 minutes for those last three minutes to paper over. He has to be significantly better going forward, and there are numerous areas that he has to improve in.
Okay, now that we have those pleasantries out of the way.
We are five starts into J.J. McCarthy’s career as the starting quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings, and we’ve seemingly already reached the point where it’s damn near impossible to have a rational, meaningful conversation about him in the online space. We’re already getting the unflattering comparisons to past Vikings quarterback failures and revisionist history about how the Vikings have “fumbled” the quarterback position.
On the latter front, Exhibit “A” is the case of Sam Darnold. Darnold, if you’ll recall, was (mostly) brilliant for 17 weeks last season when most of the Really Smart Football People™ laughed at the idea of him being a solid answer at quarterback for the Vikings. After being cast off from numerous teams, he turned in the best season of his career for the Vikings in 2024. You’ll notice that I said 17 weeks. . .unfortunately, the NFL regular season is 18 weeks long, and he was abysmal in the Vikings’ regular season finale in Detroit with the #1 seed in the NFC on the line. He topped that by somehow being even worse in the next week’s Wild Card playoff game against the Rams, taking nine sacks while the entire Upper Midwest was screaming for him to just throw the damn ball.
Still, the Seattle Seahawks rewarded Darnold by signing him to a three-year contract worth north of $100 million, a price the Vikings were not willing to match. Now, if I missed any full-throated excoriations of the Vikings for not bringing Darnold back, I apologize, but I don’t recall seeing any. But, with the Seahawks getting off to an 8-2 start with Darnold at the helm, the takes were that the Vikings made a serious mistake by not giving Darnold that sum of money and instead rolling with McCarthy, who missed his entire rookie year with a knee injury.
Well, on Sunday, Darnold once again ran into the Rams with the inside track to the #1 seed in the conference and first place in their division on the line. And, once again, Darnold was positively awful, throwing four interceptions in a 21-19 loss. Yes, the Seahawks had an opportunity to win at the end of the game, much like McCarthy and the Vikings somehow had an opportunity to beat the Bears despite McCarthy’s poor performance. And even if their special teams hadn’t failed them, a victory for either of them wouldn’t have erased the fact that they did, in fact, perform poorly.
The difference is that one of those guys is an eight-year NFL veteran with dozens of NFL starts, while the other. . .in case I hadn’t mentioned it previously. . .has started five career NFL games.
Five.
And don’t tell me there wasn’t a line of people forming to drive Sam Darnold to MSP personally after that playoff game, either. Again, if there were any passionate defenses of Sam Darnold that I missed, point them out to me, but I don’t recall seeing any.
Is it entirely possible that the Vikings might be having a better regular season if Darnold were still at the helm instead of McCarthy? Certainly. But the idea behind moving on from Darnold and handing the reins to McCarthy was the hope that the Vikings. . .much like the Chiefs, the Bills, or (lord help me for saying this) the Packers. . .could develop their own long-term solution at quarterback to get themselves beyond the level that a quarterback like Darnold could get them to.
Five games are not enough to come to a conclusion on that front. Sorry.
My other favorite reason for people criticizing McCarthy is that he took over a team that went 14-3 last year and had a ton of talent around him. Sure, the Vikings do have plenty of talent at the skill positions. I can concede that point.
Does that matter? Nope.
Because a quarterback still has to get out there, still has to see things happen, still has to take the hits, and still has to do all of the little things that go into being an NFL quarterback in order to develop. This season was, is, and will continue to be about the development of J.J. McCarthy, as I mentioned in my piece last week, and that entails all of the good and the bad that are going to come with it. If you’d like a good example of this, look no further than the guy who just beat the Vikings on Sunday.
Ahead of Caleb Williams’ arrival, the Bears did some pretty heavy investing in the skill positions of their own. They brought in D.J. Moore, who has been a very good player for them. They used a top-10 draft choice on Rome Odunze to develop alongside Williams. They brought in D’Andre Swift to run the ball. While those players might not be Justin Jefferson or Jordan Addison, they’re not exactly slouches, either.
And, in his rookie season, Caleb Williams was. . .not good. He took an absolutely stupid number of sacks because he held the ball too long, he spent a lot of time looking confused, and just generally didn’t look like a #1 overall pick. But I can promise you that nobody in Chicago was screaming for Tyson Bagent to take over at quarterback the way I see people yelling for Max Brosmer on social media now.
Now that Williams has gotten a year under his belt, along with a change to a head coach who isn’t a complete dope, it turns out that the guy might actually be pretty good. Imagine that. Maybe a guy needs to play more than five NFL games before we come to a conclusion about him.
Oh, and if we’re talking about the quality of the talent around McCarthy, if guys like T.J. Hockenson and Addison and even Jefferson could stop dropping the passes that do hit them right in the hands, that would also be helpful. I believe the Vikings had half a dozen drops on Sunday, which is tough for any quarterback to overcome, never mind a young quarterback who’s having his fair share of struggles.
Now, as I said in the opening, attempting to have a rational discussion about this topic is probably a futile exercise. The gnashing of teeth and rending of garments will continue until something changes to make people happy. I’m not sure what that something would be, and I’m not sure if the people who are doing the gnashing and the rending know what that something is, either.
I, however, am not ready to cast J.J. McCarthy off to the proverbial Spartan hillside after five NFL starts. I hope we start seeing the signs of development coming sooner rather than later. But, for now, the roller coaster is on the tracks for this season, for better or for worse. Barring injury, a change is not coming, so it’s time to just strap in and hang on.
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