The Minnesota Vikings closed the door on Aaron Rodgers a couple of weeks ago. Vikings owner Mark Wilf, head coach Kevin O’Connell, and general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah admitted they had all discussed possibly bringing the 41-year-old aboard as a stopgap for J.J. McCarthy. But in the end, they decided to let McCarthy get his reps during minicamp and OTAs to see if he’s ready to become the team’s starter.
We won’t see McCarthy in minicamp for several weeks, but the black cloud that is Rodgers continues to hover over the franchise. While McCarthy is the starter, the Vikings are still searching for a backup quarterback after both Joe Flacco and Drew Lock came off the board on Friday. With options dwindling, the Rodgers storm is drawing closer.
Should Vikings fans start to wonder when they should begin to panic about the backup quarterback situation?
It’s natural for any fanbase to worry about the backup quarterback. Aside from the starter, the backup quarterback is the second-most popular player on the team. Rarely can a backup come in and help a team perform while missing a beat. Still, their job is to play adequately when the team needs a replacement.
But this is the Vikings, and the backup quarterback has a brighter spotlight than the sun. Minnesota’s history is littered with backups-turned-heroes, such as Randall Cunningham in 1998 and Case Keenum in 2017. Gus Frerotte had a cameo as a potential season-saver, stepping in for Tarvaris Jackson and leading them to the playoffs in 2008.
As much as we want the backup quarterback not to matter, it’s an intriguing position, especially when the Vikings have an unproven commodity at starter.
McCarthy will probably “win” the starting job this offseason, but he comes with some risks. After some draft analysts dubbed him a raw talent out of Michigan, McCarthy hasn’t thrown a pass in a live-action football game since last August. It was also a preseason game filled with vanilla defenses and third- and fourth-string players unlikely to make a final roster.
Add in that McCarthy didn’t start doing football activities until January, and it’s easy to see why there’s some trepidation among the coaching staff and fans as backup options sign with other teams.
Some people romanticized a reunion with Sam Darnold, but that was squashed when the Seattle Seahawks traded their starting quarterback and gave him a big-money deal. Daniel Jones was Plan B. But he decided to chase the opportunity to start, along with $14 million from the Indianapolis Colts.
The dominoes continued to fall, but none of them involved the Vikings. Gardner Minshew signed with the Kansas City Chiefs. Jacoby Brissett signed with the Arizona Cardinals. Trey Lance’s long-rumored connection with the Vikings only led him to the Los Angeles Chargers. Jameis Winston, Mac Jones, and Cooper Rush all found new homes before the Vikings made a move.
The only steam surrounding the Vikings quarterback situation comes from two sources: a steady stream of speculation that Rodgers could be waiting for Minnesota and one from FOX Sports’s Jordan Schultz, who said the team has spoken to former Tennessee Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill.
So, if they’re not interested in Rodgers, why haven’t they signed Tannehill? A big reason is the NFL’s free-agent compensation formula. Nobody is exactly sure how this formula works, although Tyler Forness of A to Z Sports gave a simple explanation here. However, the players a team loses in free agency, and the ones they sign coming off an expired contract somewhere in the range of $3.5 to $4 million determine compensation picks.
Over The Cap has a compensatory projection tracker, which has Minnesota earning a third-round pick for the loss of Darnold and a fifth-round pick for Cam Robinson, who signed with the Houston Texans. They may jeopardize their picks if the Vikings sign a player that counted against the formula. That’s important, considering Minnesota has five picks remaining in the 2026 draft but has their original pick in the top three rounds.
There’s also the possibility that the Vikings just wait for someone to accept their offer. If an incoming quarterback knows McCarthy is starting, they may just wait out OTAs and minicamp before signing later in the summer. Rodgers is currently in that process with an offer in hand with the Pittsburgh Steelers, and Tannehill may be biding his time before getting off the couch to join the Vikings for the 2025 season.
It’s a process that may have some fans worried that Rodgers is somewhere sticking pins into a McCarthy voodoo doll to clear his path to Minnesota. Or that Tannehill is still stuck on his comments about Malik Willis in 2022. Either way, the Vikings’ backup quarterback position will get solved, and it probably isn’t going to involve the worst-case scenario of bringing Rodgers to Minnesota.
