The video below is from Kevin O’Connell’s postgame speech after the Minnesota Vikings’ 27-24 win over the Detroit Lions on Sunday. Scroll to the 2:31 mark and watch as O’Connell hands the last of what has to be 17 game balls to J.J. McCarthy.
Left everything we had out on that football field. #Skol pic.twitter.com/AyhPrmKC7J
— Minnesota Vikings (@Vikings) September 9, 2025
“It’s been a long road back,” O’Connell said, waving the game ball in McCarthy’s direction. “Nobody wants to be on the grass more than you, but this team will ride with you. This team will ride with you!”
Notice how it’s almost impossible to spot McCarthy until O’Connell goes to hand him the game ball. McCarthy leaps out from the crowd and starts raving and flexing, firing his teammates up.
For a moment, we see Maniac McCarthy. Then, in an instant, McCarthy calms himself to embrace O’Connell. Seconds after that, he’s waving his arms and screaming, telling his teammates to “bring that s— in,” and asking that the Detroit game not “become an emotional letdown.”
There’s the J.J. McCarthy who meditates and speaks about loving his teammates. Then, there’s the J.J. McCarthy he calls “Nine,” who’s a psycho.
“There’s definitely a level of a switch that gets flipped,” McCarthy acknowledged after Wednesday’s practice.
“Nine comes out, and I got to understand, ‘Okay, he can’t be at his peak performance throughout three and a half hours,’” McCarthy explained. “So, how do I find little ways on the sideline, get back my breath, get back to my visualization that can kind of maintain that intense, competitive stamina throughout the game?”
McCarthy has split personalities, and that isn’t very comforting. We all thought we knew the boy wonder from Nazareth Academy in suburban Chicago, who seldom loses football games. The potential franchise quarterback whom Vikings management is trying to manage with clean hands.
Little did we know that the Vikings were fostering a part-time demon. One moment, he’s drawing a smiley face on his hand; the next, he’s channeling Jim Harbaugh.
However, all these guys are psychos.
Kevin O’Connell, the California cool quarterback guru? He’s not always a ray of sunshine.
“The best coaches coach hard without players taking offense,” O’Connell told the Star Tribune last year. “They don’t feel they’re being attacked. The way you do that is to build the relationships on the front end. That gives me a ton of runway when things aren’t up to the standard I want.
“I might not always use the best language, and I never want things to be demeaning. But these players are going to know when I don’t think things are good enough.”
Justin Jefferson, the gilded purveyor of the Griddy? There’s the soft-spoken southerner who likes to play Madden and Call of Duty. Then, he tosses thousands of dollars‘ worth of jewelry in his mouth and vaporizes cornerbacks.
“Justin is cool, calm, and collected. I’m chill, I play video games and be to myself a majority of the time,” Jefferson told the Netflix crew on their Receiver docuseries. “But when I start putting these chains on, start putting the teeth in and all of the jewelry and all of that, I mean, then it starts to become Jets.
“Jets is the most confident. That’s my swagger. Not cocky, but he has the confidence in himself to go out there and perform at the highest ability. I like looking good while I go play.”
Jefferson ceded his “J.J.” nickname to McCarthy when the Vikings drafted the former Michigan quarterback last year. McCarthy then developed an alter ego, like his star receiver. And after seeing McCarthy neglect to cut his hair last season, some fans suspected he had turned to the dark side.
JJ McCarthy looking like Ep. 3 Anakin Skywalker on the Vikings’ sideline pic.twitter.com/ho1pYbeXXi
— Matthew Lounsberry (@Matt_Lounsberry) January 6, 2025
On Wednesday, McCarthy confirmed it.
“It was just this built-up anger that was kind of just ready to explode,” explained McCarthy, “and I chose to harness it instead of letting it [become self-destructive].”
McCarthy may be unleashing his anger on the league, but he says he can shed the dark, metallic armor off the field. It’s a balance he strikes as someone who unleashes madness on the gridiron and meditates off it.
He also seems like the perfect conduit between O’Connell and Jefferson. Try as he might, O’Connell can’t hit Jefferson on a deep out – he’s 40 and the New York Jets cut him twice. O’Connell needs J.J. to turn into Nine and hit Jets in cloud coverage.
A coach with a dark side, using a first-year quarterback who turns into a maniac to connect with his receiver, whose alter ego is a sleek multi-million-dollar machine that can break the sound barrier?
That’s profoundly absurd. But so are the Vikings, always and forever.