In This Story
Chicago Bears
Minnesota Vikings
Sep 9, 2025 12:59 PM EDT
Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy made quite a bit of history in his first NFL start against the Chicago Bears on Monday night.
— He was the first quarterback to throw for two touchdowns and run for another in his NFL debut since Cam Newton in 2011.
— He was the first quarterback in Vikings history to throw multiple passing touchdowns in his NFL debut.
— He was the first quarterback to overcome a 10-point deficit to lead his team to victory in his first NFL start since Steve Young did it for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1985, and McCarthy is the only quarterback in NFL history to accomplish that feat in a road game.
— He was also the first player in NFL history, regardless of position, to account for three touchdowns in the fourth quarter of his first game.
But if you told anybody at the end of the first half that this is how the game would turn out — a 27-24 win for the Vikings — most people would have assumed that you were out of your mind. This was McCarthy’s first start in a game since the Michigan Wolverines beat the Washington Huskies in the College Football Playoff National Championship on January 9, 2024. The 10th overall pick in the 2024 draft missed his entire rookie season with a torn meniscus in his right knee, so while head coach Kevin O’Connell was busy resuscitating Sam Darnold’s career last season, all McCarthy could do was sit and wait for his chance.
At first, the results were terrible. McCarthy completed just five of eight passes for 48 yards in the first half, and with 12:51 left in the third quarter, he threw an interception to Chicago cornerback Nahshon Wright that turned into a 74-yard pick-six the other way.
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Now, the Bears were up 17-6, and things did not look good for McCarthy and the Vikings.
Then, it all turned around. All of a sudden, in the fourth quarter, McCarthy shook the rust off and became every bit the quarterback the Vikings hoped he would become. In the fourth quarter, McCarthy completed six of eight passes, and accounted for 101 total yards and three touchdowns — two in the air, and one on the ground. The Vikings scored 21 unanswered points against a Bears defense that could be forgiven for thinking that Minnesota had re-signed Darnold and put him in a McCarthy uniform as the last 15 minutes began.
The 17-yard completion to Justin Jefferson with 13:39 left in the game gave McCarthy an easy defined opening, and it also set things up for McCarthy’s first touchdown pass three plays later. O’Connell had set McCarthy up with pre-snap motion on several throws before this, but not quite this way. Now, he was calling plays in which a receiver was motioning into a switch release, requiring the Bears’ defenders to adjust their responsibilities based on where the receivers go with their switches.
On the Jefferson 17-yarder which got the ball down to the Chicago 18-yard line, Jefferson motioned from right to left to take an outside backside release, while receiver Jalen Nailor took the more vertical route outside. This was somewhat similar to McCarthy’s pick-six in that he had an outside receiver and a vertical receiver to read to his left, but that motion clouded things for the Bears, and the opening was more defined.
And on the 13-yard touchdown pass to Jefferson with 12:18 left in the game, it was Nailor who motioned from outside to inside right to run one of two matching in-cuts to the front side. McCarthy had his pick of Nailor near the goal line, and Jefferson coming open in the end zone.
When in doubt, hit your best receiver. McCarthy found Jefferson with a low dart for the score.
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McCarthy’s second passing touchdown, a 27-yarder to running back Aaron Jones to cap off the next drive, was another example of O’Connell’s schematic brilliance. No motion here, but this was a three-level flood concept to the front side in which tight end T.J. Hockenson ran the flat route (level 1), Nailor ran the 10-yard in-cut to clear out the cornerback and the safety to that side against the Bears’ Cover-4 defense (level 2), and Jones ran the vertical choice route in the middle of the coverage that had been parted like the Red Sea by O’Connell’s route concepts (level 3).
It’s not an easy route combination to cover, no matter who you are.
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Then, there was McCarthy’s 14-yard rushing touchdown with 2:59 left in the game, which basically put it away. The Bears were running Cover-0 again, and this time, McCarthy read defensive end Dayo Odeyingbo to see whether Odeyingbo would pinch inside, or try to keep outside contain. When McCarthy saw Odeyingbo come inside, he knew that it was a quarterback keeper as opposed to a handoff to running back Jordan Mason.
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Perhaps the most important thing the Vikings saw from McCarthy in this game had nothing to do with his statistics, which were hardly legendary — 13 of 20 for 143 yards, two touchdowns, one interception, a passer rating of 98.5, and two runs for 25 yards and a touchdown. It’s the selective amnesia he developed after the pick-six, something that could easily derail a lot of young quarterbacks.
In McCarthy’s case, he had already been there before. He threw two pick-sixes for Michigan in the 2022 Fiesta Bowl against TCU, and the Wolverines lost that game, 51-45.
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“You know, you never want to earn wisdom that way,” McCarthy said postgame. “But it just brought me straight back to TCU when I had that first one early on in the game, and then the second one later. And at the end of the day, yeah, it sucks. It’s one of the worst things you can do as a quarterback. But you can’t do anything about it. You’ve got to focus on the next play. Defense kept us in it the whole time. It was on our shoulders just to go out there and execute and play as one and move on from that. That’s one of those things I don’t really hang on. And I was really grateful the way Coach McCown and Coach O’Connell handled it.”
How O’Connell handled it was to keep the faith in his quarterback, hoping that things would turn around.
“Part of this thing, with a young quarterback, is everybody’s going to be waiting for the aha moment of, like, look what happened. That can weigh on a player. But not him. He prepared the right way. You talk about meeting the moment regardless of circumstances, regardless of what the outcome may have ended up being. There’s a big picture plan that you hope to not have this chapter be the first chapter of needing to bring your team back so significantly after a really tough start. There’s no way to deny.
“We don’t win this game unless J.J. plays the way he did in the second half and, most importantly, kept the belief of his football team behind him. And now we know it’s possible. We hope to not be in these circumstances very often, but this team’s made of the right stuff. Players have built something special within that locker room and on that sideline, and I’m just very proud of them. And you have to be so proud of J.J. leading the group back.”
Knowing what’s possible is the first step. Now, as the Vikings go forward, maybe they can avoid learning the hard way quite this much!
About the author
NFL writer, analyst