After a week behind the scenes, the Minnesota Vikings opened training camp to the public on Saturday. Fans swarmed TCO Performance Center to get a glimpse of their team in the leadup to the 2024 season, but there may have been no player more popular than J.J. McCarthy.
McCarthy walked onto the field with an aura that would make Prince proud. Fans whipped out their phones with every rep. He talked to the media like a seasoned pro and showed the arm strength that had caught the beat writers’ attention in June.
Although he isn’t the starting quarterback now, McCarthy looked the part during his first open practice. While the Vikings are committed to Sam Darnold, they also want to develop McCarthy the right way, making training camp the ultimate balancing act.
Minnesota set the stage when it drafted McCarthy with the 10th-overall pick. Much like Daunte Culpepper (11th-overall, 1999), who had been the highest-drafted quarterback in franchise history before McCarthy’s selection, the Vikings were moving forward with his development with the speed of a middle school romance in Pleasantville.
McCarthy didn’t speak to the media regularly, and many of his reps were clouded in the secrecy of the second and third teams. Thanks to social media and beat reporters, fans had an idea of how McCarthy looked. However, they didn’t really know who he was or how he was performing in the controlled minicamp environment.
Offensive coordinator Wes Phillips explained Minnesota’s philosophy during his Friday press conference, noting the balance between giving reps to Sam Darnold, who is in his own learning process as the Vikings’ starter, and McCarthy, the quarterback of the future.
“It can be a challenge,” Phillips admitted. “You know, in the situation we’re in, where you want to give a young guy some opportunities to grow. … He’s got to make some mistakes. He’s got to have some opportunities to go in there and play with live bullets, per se. So, it is a little bit of a challenge. But we have a plan.
“We talk through every day. What are the reps going to look like? [Are they] even? When is Nick [Mullens] going to get in there? When can we get Jaren [Hall] a couple of reps? They are limited, as you know, but they’re going to get more limited when we get into game week. So now’s the time to try to make sure we can also, from our evaluation process, get a chance to get them out there and actually see them.”
McCarthy was the next to take the podium and offered a similar approach to his training camp experience.
“I feel like…I’m not focused on the outcomes of each day,” McCarthy explained. “I’m just focusing on learning how to get better and improve the weaknesses that I have with my game and also learn my teammate’s strengths and try to amplify them every chance I get. So we’re off to a great start so far.”
It’s clear that the Vikings want to take McCarthy for a test drive during the early weeks of training camp. However, while the coaching staff wants to take a quick lap around the block, the fans want to head straight to the autobahn.
McCarthy’s press conference racked up over 24,000 views in two days on YouTube. That’s three times more than O’Connell’s Friday press conference and four times more than Phillips’ presser.
If you want more evidence, McCarthy’s press conference is his third-most watched video since coming to Minnesota. He got 41,000 views on a presser at the end of minicamp and 82,000 views on an interview with VEN’s Gabe Henderson.
People want to know what makes McCarthy tick. The evidence was clear when scrolling social media on Saturday afternoon. People met Minnesota’s requests to limit filming with a “They can’t stop all of us” mentality as people posted each throw and broke them down with an egregious amount of likes. McCarthy’s performance in a red-zone drill set Twitter on fire, and some might think he should start Week 1 over the guy who once saw ghosts on national television.
That’s the balancing act the Vikings are trying to pull off. Everyone knows that McCarthy is the future. However, the team also wants to focus on the present, winning as many games as possible with Darnold under center. Many teams have taken this approach with varying degrees of success.
Look across state lines where the Green Bay Packers made Jordan Love the highest-paid quarterback in NFL history. The Packers buried Love behind Aaron Rodgers after taking him in the first round of the 2020 draft. Rodgers then fueled an MVP season with four fingers of tequila, a lot of ayahuasca, and rage against the front office.
Three years later, Love has emerged from his metaphorical broom closet like a butterfly from a cocoon. His first half as a full starter was shaky, but he gained confidence throughout the season. The problem here is the Packers waited too long to cut the cord on Rodgers and had to pay Love $55 million per season.
There’s also a world where this can backfire. The Vikings selected Kellen Mond in the 2021 draft and firmly placed behind Kirk Cousins. With Mike Zimmer’s job on the line, it felt like he tossed Mond into an actual broom closet, and his career never got off the ground.
Then there’s Darnold’s tale. The New York Jets overexposed the 20-year-old out of USC after taking him third-overall in 2018. A franchise savior from Day 1, Darnold was plugged into some of the worst supporting casts in recent memory and is now on his fourth team in six seasons.
The Vikings don’t want to overexpose McCarthy. However, they also don’t want to toss him to the side, forcing him to develop on his own accord. The fans want instant gratification, but the Vikings want a long-term answer to one of their biggest riddles.
It’s something that will play out, and it has everyone doing a high wire leading into training camp.
