Earlier this week, J.J. McCarthy revealed on Kay Adams’ Up & Adams podcast that the Minnesota Vikings haven’t informed him that he will be the team’s starting quarterback yet in 2025.
“I’m happy they didn’t [name me the starter yet] because I try to earn it every single day,” McCarthy told Adams. “I never want that to be given to me.”
There’s uncertainty that comes with a first-time starting quarterback. Although McCarthy won’t be a rookie when the 2025 season begins, he missed the entire 2024 campaign due to a meniscus injury. McCarthy’s time under center is limited to training camp practices and one (impressive) preseason game against the Las Vegas Raiders.
That helped fuel speculation that Aaron Rodgers could sign with the Vikings. Although the 41-year-old quarterback isn’t what he used to be, fans would know what they have in him or are at least be placated with a declining but proven player. However, the team appears comfortable moving forward with McCarthy and potentially adding a veteran backup in the coming months.
So, what does a successful season look like for McCarthy? We’ve seen Kevin O’Connell elevate quarterbacks since the 2021 season when the Los Angeles Rams acquired Matthew Stafford in a trade. In 2023, O’Connell kept Minnesota’s playoff hopes alive into December, two months after Kirk Cousins went down with an Achilles injury. Perhaps most impressively, O’Connell guided Sam Darnold to a Pro Bowl-level and 14-3 record in 2024.
So, what could O’Connell do with his own handpicked first-round selection?
First, look at Minnesota’s run-pass ratio to get an idea of what to expect moving forward. Score and game flow can sometimes skew this number. In O’Connell’s first two seasons, the Vikings ranked third and fourth in the league in total pass attempts, respectively. But in 2024, the Vikings ranked 18th in the league with 548 pass attempts. They ran the ball 457 times, 14th in the league, despite ranking 26th with 4.1 yards per attempt.
Although the Vikings didn’t air the ball out as much as they had in previous seasons, Darnold was fantastic. His 4,319 yards and 35 touchdowns both ranked fifth in the league. As a result, he had a staggering 6.4 TD%, 44% better than the league average in 2024. Darnold’s 47.7% success rate and 7.9 yards per attempt were also above the league average. His 2.2% INT rate was league average.
Earlier this offseason, the Vikings signed former Indianapolis Colts guard Will Fries and Ryan Kelly to help bolster the offensive line. Later, they traded for San Francisco 49ers running back Jordan Mason. That probably means O’Connell wants to develop an effective running game, especially with a first-year starter. So, we can probably assume the Vikings will try to keep their passing attempts around league average.
Increased volume in the passing game in 2022 and 2023 wasn’t necessarily the result of leaning on the team’s strength. It made sense to have Cousins air it out, but the Vikings didn’t change their offensive approach much in 2023 when he was injured. When he went down, Cousins’ 69.5% completion percentage, 5.8% TD clip, 1.6% INT rate, 46.6% success rate, and 7.5 yards per attempt all exceeded the season-long averages among all qualified quarterbacks in the NFL.
Even though the Vikings didn’t get overall consistency from their quarterbacks after Cousins went down, the passing game continued to operate at an above-average level once Nick Mullens took over for Josh Dobbs. On 148 attempts, Mullens completed 67.6% of his passes and had a 4.7% TD rate. His 47.5% success rate and 8.8 yards per attempt were higher than Cousins. Unfortunately, Mullens was a turnover machine. His eight interceptions were a 5.4% rate, over twice the league average.
Outside of Dobbs, who entered into such a bizarre situation that it’s unfair to compare his stats with Minnesota’s other backups, this is how Vikings quarterbacks have operated under O’Connell. Cousins exceeded league-average rates in all the above categories in 2022. However, the Los Angeles Rams quarterbacks had similar success when O’Connell was the team’s offensive coordinator in 2020 and 2021.
Matthew Stafford experienced the same success in 2021 under O’Connell in every category besides his 2.8% INT percentage, a little over 16% higher than the league average. However, because his 6.8% TD rate, 52.6% success rate, and 8.1 yards per attempt were significantly much higher than the rest of the league, the risk was well worth the reward. But like the Vikings in 2024, the Rams still had some balance in their attack. They had 607 pass attempts, the 10th-highest in the league.
Even Jared Goff’s last season as Rams quarterback wasn’t all bad. Goff completed 67% of his passes and had a 51.8% success rate, well above 2020 season averages. However, his 3.6% TD clip was 25% lower than the league-average 4.8% rate. His 2.4% INT rate was lower than Stafford’s in 2021, but it wasn’t paying off with points. Goff’s 7.2 yards per attempt was league-average, and they traded him after the season for Stafford. The Rams again had balance, attempting 590 passes, the 12th-highest in the league.
So we’ve seen that the five passers above mostly exceeded league-average rates under O’Connell. That highlights these quarterbacks didn’t put up good stats by throwing more alone. They were better than the average quarterback on a per-pass basis.
Quarterbacks under O’Connell have averaged 608 pass attempts in the last five seasons. If McCarthy were to take all those reps and perform exactly as the average NFL quarterback did in 2024, his final stat line would be 397 of 608 passing for 27 touchdowns, 13 interceptions, and 4,317 yards.
Why would Minnesota ask McCarthy to throw more in 2025 than Darnold did in 2024? Although it’d be ideal to have him throw less, the Vikings may ask McCarthy to throw them back into games more than Darnold was asked to in 2024. Minnesota only trailed for three minutes and 27 seconds in the season’s first five games. That was a historical start, and they probably won’t repeat that next year.
Just because McCarthy is young doesn’t mean the Vikings won’t ask him to sling it. That isn’t just because O’Connell is his head coach, either. Bo Nix attempted 567 passes in 2024, the sixth-highest number in the league. Caleb Williams was right behind him with 562 passes. They both had varying degrees of success airing it out.
The five quarterbacks O’Connell has primarily worked with since 2020 exceeded the league average in completion percentage. McCarthy completed 64.6% of his passes in 2022 before completing 72.3% in 2023, the highest mark in the Big Ten. If his accuracy can translate at even the most baseline level in O’Connell’s offense, McCarthy can meet the 2024 league-average completion percentage of 65.3%. Jayden Daniels, Drake Maye, and Nix all surpassed 65.3% completion rates, so asking McCarthy to hit that in Year 1 isn’t farfetched.
But if McCarthy were to generate the projected stat line, his yardage would exceed all 2024 rookies. None of them even surpassed 4,000 passing yards. McCarthy’s 27 touchdown passes would trail only Daniels, who threw 29 in 2024. Daniels and Nix both had TD percentages that exceeded the league average.
The only qualified rookie to meet the league-average 7.1 yards-per-attempt minimum was also Daniels, who posted a 7.4 mark. Only five of the 16 qualifying rookie quarterbacks since 2020 have met the 7.1 mark. McCarthy has a chance to exceed that. Despite his limited skillset. Mullens obliterated it in 2023. Every other quarterback O’Connell has coached (again, outside of Dobbs) has hit at least 7.1 yards per attempt.
If McCarthy can exceed that number, he has a chance to be named to the initial Pro Bowl roster and could give the Vikings optimism they’ve hit on the right guy, much like the Washington Commanders feel they have in Daniels. However, if he fails to reach that number, McCarthy could be considered more of a Nix-level guy. That’s a very good first campaign, but there could be uncertainty about his potential and how much he can build on it.
Or McCarthy could appear overmatched in his first season, dealing with many of the same growing pains Williams had in Chicago. This feels less likely because of the talent on the roster and O’Connell’s playcalling, but it’s possible. That doesn’t mean McCarthy would be doomed to become a bust. However, there would be much to consider heading into 2026, especially with the rest of the roster ready to contend.
Will that keep O’Connell from letting McCarthy air the ball out, though? It’s doubtful, as the fourth-year coach has appeared content in going down doing what he does best. However, that stubbornness could help McCarthy push through and realize his potential. It seems he could thrive as a league-average quarterback in the system. Is the world ready for a KOC-level quarterback in a KOC system? We’re about to find out.