Kevin O’Connell was kind of clairvoyant before J.J. McCarthy’s first NFL start.
“There’s a lot of guys that can light up the practice field every day,” he said in the week leading up to the Minnesota Vikings’ Week 1 game in Chicago. “But the guys that can either take it to the game or maybe even be a better version of themselves in the game have those, you know, ‘the gamer,’ whatever tag you want to put on it. I think he’s got that trait.”
Unfortunately, the future is always clouded, and things unfolded differently than he expected. McCarthy was a “gamer” in Chicago, but only in the fourth quarter. After a pedestrian performance in the first 45 minutes, McCarthy became the first quarterback in league history to account for three touchdowns in the fourth quarter.
“Heck of a growth moment for him,” O’Connell said after the game. “I had total belief in him that we were going to figure it out together.”
McCarthy looked like the player who guided Michigan to their first national title since 1997. He may have been out of sorts for most of the game in Chicago, his hometown, but he delivered when it mattered most. He was calm and steady, guiding a wayward team to victory.
However, McCarthy’s growth has been uneven since then. He regressed against the Atlanta Falcons a week later, then missed Weeks 3 through 8 with a high ankle sprain, a year after missing his rookie season with a torn meniscus. McCarthy has only played in five of Minnesota’s 22 games since it drafted him.
Upon returning from injury, McCarthy only threw for 143 yards with two touchdowns and an interception in Detroit. Still, he was accurate from the pocket, and his steady play kept the Vikings in control for much of the game. He looked like the game manager who could lead an experienced roster to the playoffs.
After struggling to get out of the huddle in Chicago and Atlanta, McCarthy constantly got to the line with ample time to read the defense and set protections, even with the boisterous Detroit crowd. His biggest issues were throwing while scrambling and understanding how fast defenders can close in on him.
Strangely, McCarthy regressed at home against the Baltimore Ravens the following week. The Vikings had eight procedural penalties, and McCarthy was inaccurate from the pocket. McCarthy threw for 248 yards, but he only completed 20 of 42 passes and had two picks and one touchdown.
Before the Ravens game, McCarthy revealed he had an alter ego he called “Nine.” Known for meditating and positivity at Michigan, McCarthy had started channeling the anger he felt after missing his rookie season due to injury into a volatile on-field persona.
“I kind of love feeding that wolf,” he said, “because my entire life at Michigan, it was a smiley face on my hand and smile, and you have fun, you’re going to play better, and all that. Which is true, but I also think there’s a lot of power that comes from that built-up anger that you can transmute into your performance.”
Channeling anger that way may be creating a vicious cycle when paired with his ADHD, creating chaos when he used to foster calm.
In April, McCarthy told Rich Eisen he sees his ADHD as “a superpower.”
“You look at hyper-focus and all the benefits of that when you actually love something, you’re actually passionate about it,” he told Eisen, “you lock in so much more intensely.
“People with ADHD,” he added, “they find calm in the chaos and chaos in the calm.”
Things looked chaotic for McCarthy against Baltimore, and they did again in Minnesota’s loss to the Chicago Bears last Sunday. McCarthy cleaned up the procedural penalties; the Vikings only had one false start. Still, he was inaccurate again, finishing 16 for 32 for 150 yards, a touchdown, and two picks.
McCarthy is adjusting to a faster game with better players and more sophisticated defenses. He’s also learning how to play quarterback with O’Connell’s mechanics in a complicated offense. His injuries also took away valuable practice time as he adjusted to the NFL.
“I was taught how to play quarterback in a very different way,” McCarthy admitted. “And that’s expected going into the league, going into any new team, any new system. But at the end of the day, it was really just the injuries that I felt like kind of took away all those reps and the constant repetition to make those a habit and make them concrete like KO talks about.”
McCarthy appears to be processing too much – new mechanics, a faster game, and an expansive playbook – while trying to find an open receiver in less than three seconds. Perhaps it’s why he throws the football like he’s trying to toss a spear through somebody’s body.
He’s probably trying to fit the ball into tighter windows in the NFL. However, McCarthy might be behind on his reads and trying to hit the receiver when he’s still open instead of throwing him open out of the break. As a result, it’s a less catchable ball, and he can’t layer throws into gaps in coverage.
“Understanding that these defenses are not simple,” he said on Wednesday. “There are a lot of protection plan that takes up a lot of brain space. Obviously, the new concepts going in week after week, the coverages, and those little things about your fundamentals slip sometimes.
“So I feel like the more preparation I can do throughout the week to make sure those things are to a T gives me more brain space to work on the consistency of those little things.”
Kevin O’Connell talks about wanting his quarterback to play with a “quieted mind.” However, it looks like J.J. McCarthy is sorting through cacophony in his head. He appears to be trying to do too much, trying to salvage a team with championship aspirations in a year that may become more about his development.
O’Connell had a vision for McCarthy when the Vikings drafted him two years ago. He believed McCarthy would be “a gamer” once he took the field in his first season. We’ve seen shades of that, but we also know that some of the stuff he’s doing on the practice field hasn’t translated on Sundays.
McCarthy’s future is cloudy because he no longer appears calm in the chaos.