JJ McCarthy, Kevin O'Connell,
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J.J. McCarthy and Kevin O'Connell of the Minnesota Vikings.
Despite a divorce from Sam Darnold, the Minnesota Vikings seemed to be in their honeymoon phase with J.J. McCarthy at the heart of their plans.
The Vikings splurged over $300 million invested into new contracts and players to hand over a ready-to-win roster to McCarthy.
But after a 3-4 start before one of the toughest divisional slates in the NFL, the Vikings are long shots at making the postseason with a 4.7% chance, according to ESPN’s Power Index.
The honeymoon phase appears to be over in Minnesota, but The Athletic’s Alec Lewis hinted at a “tension” within the Vikings since the spring.
After a blowout loss to the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 8, Lewis noted that this year’s team doesn’t have the same spark as past rosters under Kevin O’Connell.
“It just feels, it’s felt to me really going back to the spring that there’s been like an underlying tension with this team,” Lewis said on his podcast on Tuesday, October 28. “And its staff, the staff is a part of it, the players obviously. But you just get the sense that the joy that has been there in two of the three seasons where they have won double-digit games, you just don’t feel that.
“You just don’t feel that every day is as downhill as days in the past were. I said that. I wrote that,” Lewis said of suggesting there is tension internally. “There are multiple people familiar with team dynamics who have talked about this.”
The Vikings had high expectations this season and carried a business-like mentality headed into the season. The “tension” brewing in Minnesota may be a byproduct of those postseason dreams dashed.
And while McCarthy’s play has not been a reason for early struggles, the unproven plan at quarterback could have had its lingering questions internally since the spring.
NFL Sources Slam Vikings for Injury Management
The bane of the Vikings’ season so far has been lingering injuries and an inability to put out that roster that many prognosticators were so high on.
The Vikings had handled many players’ rehabs tactfully before the start of the season, but with the pressure of getting out to a fast start with McCarthy under center, the team has been touch-and-go with several stars ever since.
Christian Darrisaw admitted that he returned from his ACL/MCL tear “earlier than anyone projected,” yet he has left three games early this season.
Andrew Van Ginkel is dealing with a lingering neck injury that held him out of most of training camp before he played 61 snaps in the season opener. He suffered a concussion in that game. He returned to play eight snaps in Week 3 before reaggravating his neck injury and has been out ever since.
After news broke that Carson Wentz had played for 2.5 games with a torn labrum and a fractured socket before ultimately landing on injured reserve, Purple Insider’s Matthew Coller received comments from several sources that have damned the Vikings’ mismanagement of injuries this season after they did not pull Wentz out of the Chargers game.
“This is more evidence of a *bleep* show with the training staff this year. So many mismanaged injuries,” a source with knowledge of the Vikings’ situation told Coller.
“This is how you lose a locker room,” another source told Coller. “Everyone is going to be in the cold tub saying, ‘What the heck are we doing?’ ”
JJ McCarthy Has More Pressure on Him Than Ever With Vikings
The Vikings strived to put McCarthy in the best position to succeed, which meant not putting too much weight on the 22-year-old’s shoulders.
However, with the thinnest margins of error to make the postseason and a locker room to save, there has never been more pressure on McCarthy.
There’s going to be highs and lows for the young quarterback that should have ideally happened earlier this season, before he missed five games with an ankle injury.
Now, the Vikings must weather that and uplift their young quarterback, who, at his best, can give them a better shot to win over Wentz.
But it’s on McCarthy to realize his ceiling as a first-year starter quickly.