2024 Minnesota Vikings practice - JJ McCarthy, Sam Darnold
Credit: Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Vikings
JJ McCarthy will take back over as Minnesota Vikings starting quarterback on Sunday in Detroit against the division-rival Lions. It will be the first start he has made since week two of the 2025 season and just the third start of his NFL career, which technically started 1.5 years ago.
But while other QBs in his draft class have now started 25+ NFL games, McCarthy has been under center for just two, thanks to a season-ending knee injury that wiped away his opportunity to get on the field as a rookie.
As we now know, that probably would not have happened anyway. The way reality played out, Sam Darnold’s one-year stint in Minnesota was so successful that he may very well go down as head coach Kevin O’Connell’s most prized QB pupil, even after his young coaching career eventually ends.
Sam Darnold, Kevin O'Connell - Minnesota Vikings
Credit: Matt Krohn-Imagn Images
With the Vikings, Darnold was able to combine his prior NFL experience, his immense talent and KOC’s coaching to go from a first round draft bust that the league had given up on, to one of the best quarterbacks in the entire league. Fast forward to 2025 and Sam Darnold is proving just that, as starting QB for the Seattle Seahawks.
Sam Darnold 2025 Stats — 7 starts | 1,754 YDS | 12 TD | 4 INT | 109.2 QB Rating
Now that we have seen JJ start his Minnesota Vikings career, in Darnold’s aftermath, it’s clear that a then 21-year-old McCarthy had no realistic chance to take the starting job away from Sam last season. He’s just a better QB, right now, and he almost certainly was better last year too.
JJ McCarthy and Sam Darnold didn’t get along in MN?
In retrospect, though , it sounds like a good thing JJ McCarthy wasn’t in the QB room more often than he was last season, as he rehabbed from the meniscus surgery that ended his rookie campaign before it started. Because according to longtime NFL insider Mike Silver (The Athletic) the two didn’t really get along all that well anyway.
…bringing back Darnold was problematic. He and McCarthy did not forge an especially close relationship during their time together, and it would have been hard to envision the untested youngster winning a fair competition. The vibe didn’t seem right for such an arrangement.
Mike Silver – The Athletic
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Silver did not expound on the relationship between JJ McCarthy and Sam Darnold, beyond his report that they “did not forge an especially close relationship during their time together”.
But really, if the Minnesota Vikings found it that “hard to envision” a QB room with the both of them, their differences had to stretch deeper than the two of them aligning on opposite ends of the political spectrum or one being more of a hockey guy than basketball.
If general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell factored their relationship into the Darnold decision last offseason at all, then it must mean the two really did not enjoy each others’ company… and that’s probably putting it lightly.
Does it matter how well past MN Vikings QBs got along?
Given all the glowing reviews other teammates have had of JJ McCarthy, since he was drafted by the MN Vikings No. 10 overall in the 2024 NFL Draft, this report doesn’t affect the way I view the National Championship winner out of Michigan, though it is worth keeping in the back of our minds.
Sam Darnold seems like a down to earth, meat and potatoes kind of personality. The no-nonsense type. With that in mind, what could it have been that bugged him so much about McCarthy, who everyone else claims is as real, and personable as they come?
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Maybe the answer to that question will matter down the road, but if JJ McCarthy takes the Minnesota Vikings franchise QB job and runs away with it, then nobody will care about how well he and Sam Darnold got along for that one season they were together back in 2024. Just win, baby.
Mentioned in this article: J.J. McCarthy Sam Darnold More About: Minnesota Vikings
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