Just a few weeks ago, Minnesota Vikings young quarterback J.J. McCarthy was battling with Kyler Murray for the team’s starting quarterback job. Now, he is not even going to be the team’s backup.
On Wednesday, the Vikings announced a somewhat surprising decision regarding their quarterback depth chart as the team named Carson Wentz the team’s second-team quarterback over McCarthy.
McCarthy’s Career in Minnesota
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When the Vikings selected the former Michigan Wolverines quarterback with the No. 10 pick in the NFL Draft back in 2024, they undoubtedly expected him to be the team’s future franchise quarterback, but that’s not how his career has gone.
McCarthy missed his entire rookie season in 2024 as a result of a torn meniscus in his right knee, but he had a chance to serve as the team’s starting quarterback last season after the departure of Sam Darnold. However, he did not play well enough
In his lone season as the team’s starting quarterback, McCarthy ranked just 36th of 40 qualified quarterbacks in terms of total QBR, completing just 57.6 percent of his passes for just 11 touchdowns to 12 interceptions. As a result, the team signed Murray during the offseason to bolster the position, and he beat out McCarthy for the starting job.
Wentz Named Backup
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While many assumed that McCarthy would be the team’s backup quarterback after losing the starting battle to Murray, that will not be the case.
On Wednesday, the team officially named Wentz the team’s backup quarterback over McCarthy.
“Carson has got almost a hundred career starts,” head coach Kevin O’Connell said via [ESPN](https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/49883304/vikings-say-mccarthy-no-3-qb-wentz-no-2-week-1). “What he was able to do last year from a standpoint of very limited repetition, but being able to apply a career’s worth of experience, that’s kind of what you need to do as a backup quarterback, especially early on when so much of the emphasis is going to be on getting Kyler as comfortable as we can possibly get.”
The team said that the depth chart will be revisited on a week-by-week basis.