Kevin O’Connell should be champing at the bit right now to get J.J. McCarthy right. The head coach elevated Kirk Cousins into a clutch merchant in 2022 and guided Josh Dobbs to an improbable come-from-behind victory five days after trading for him. Last year, he resurrected Sam Darnold’s career, helping the former third-overall pick get a three-year, $100 million deal from the Seattle Seahawks in the offseason.
McCarthy spent last season rehabbing a torn meniscus, which kept him off the practice field. However, he was back on the field in the offseason, taking in coaching points from O’Connell and the rest of the Minnesota Vikings’ offensive staff. He was rebuilding his fundamentals and technique without having to navigate the pressure of an NFL defense trying to take his head off.
He had good and bad moments in the two games he played this year, which is to be expected from a young quarterback. According to O’Connell, McCarthy may have reverted to old habits in his fundamentals. O’Connell has repeatedly stressed lower-body mechanics when discussing McCarthy over the past few weeks.
The problem with all this? Before this week, McCarthy had only practiced once since Minnesota’s Week 1 victory over the Chicago Bears. A high ankle sprain suffered in Week 2 against the Atlanta Falcons has kept him from getting live game reps and from refining his craft on the practice field.
Carson Wentz has started the past three games, playing admirably in McCarthy’s place. He has completed 69% of his passes for 759 yards, five touchdowns, and two interceptions, and has the Vikings sitting at a 3-2 record.
However, the veteran quarterback suffered a left shoulder injury in Minnesota’s Week 5 victory over the Cleveland Browns. It forced him to head to the locker room early to get a sleeve put on his shoulder before returning for the second half.
The Vikings signed Wentz in late August, and he’s still learning the system. So, while he has the edge on McCarthy in experience, he lacks mastery of the playbook.
It may not have been a surprise, then, that O’Connell got as testy as Vikings fans have seen during his tenure in Minnesota on Wednesday. He offered a terse response when a reporter asked where things stand at quarterback ahead of Sunday’s game against the Eagles.
“They stand in the same place they did Monday when I answered that question,” O’Connell replied the moment the question finished.
The exasperation in O’Connell’s voice probably had something to do with answering the same question again. It probably also had to do with McCarthy being limited in Wednesday’s practice, making it difficult to start him after O’Connell previously said he’d like to see McCarthy practice fully in preparation for a start.
But it likely has even more to do with McCarthy being O’Connell’s “guy.” Cousins was 34 when O’Connell coached his first game for the Vikings in 2022. Minnesota signed Darnold to a one-year deal a month before they drafted McCarthy. O’Connell took pride in elevating both players’ games.
Still, McCarthy is like the new house O’Connell is building after years of renovating other people’s homes. Sure, there’s a sense of pride in helping others reach their goals, but it hits differently when you’re building toward your own “forever home.”
With Cousins and Darnold, O’Connell was able to diagnose the flaws in their games and fix them. This is what you did, this is how we do it here, now this is how we get you to do things our way.
There was more projection involved with McCarthy, O’Connell’s hand-picked quarterback. Although there was college film to work with, McCarthy had yet to play in an NFL game where he had to diagnose a defense and work through his progressions, all while staying true to the fundamentals that O’Connell preached.
Unfortunately, by the time O’Connell was able to diagnose the flaws in McCarthy’s game, the second-year quarterback was set to miss several games and weeks of practice due to a high ankle sprain. That forced O’Connell to have to wait to do his favorite thing: fix a quarterback.
Even the most patient people eventually reach the end of their rope. That came out in Wednesday’s press conference.
Perhaps it’s because O’Connell knows that missing Sunday’s game against the Eagles makes it likely that McCarthy also misses the next one. The Vikings play the Los Angeles Chargers on the road only four days later.
That doesn’t mean it’s now or never for McCarthy. He doesn’t turn 23 until January, and his injury isn’t career-threatening or even career-altering.
But it keeps pushing back the timeline for determining whether he is or isn’t the franchise quarterback that the Vikings envisioned when they drafted him in April 2024. McCarthy has played only two of a possible 22 games so far in his career.
That means O’Connell has somehow spent less time with the quarterback the organization viewed as a long-term solution than he has with older, more temporary solutions. Wentz has already started more games than McCarthy despite being employed by the Vikings for less than two months.
And even if Wentz hasn’t been perfect, the Vikings have gone 2-1 with him. They need to see if McCarthy is the future at quarterback, but they also need to not only reach the playoffs but win, something they have yet to do under O’Connell.
In a few months, perhaps McCarthy will have strung together multiple wins and have the Vikings poised to make the playoffs. Maybe he’ll even have the offense operating at a level close to what we saw in years past under Cousins and Darnold.
But until then, all that we — and O’Connell — have of McCarthy is the idea of what he can become. And that idea only goes so far if it never translates to the football field.