J.J. McCarthy sat staring into his locker after the Minnesota Vikings lost 23-6 to the Green Bay Packers. They entered the game with a 2% chance of making the playoffs and have less than a percent chance following Sunday’s game at Lambeau Field.
The rest of this season is about McCarthy’s development now.
“I went into [this game] with a lot of things that I felt I did pretty well with my feet, just staying calm and all that,” he said. “There’s little things that show up in a big way in these types of games. Just making sure that every play, there’s a full intensity, focus, and urgency. I think we slipped a couple of times with that today.”
Minnesota’s sense of intensity and urgency shouldn’t have slipped, though. They had an opportunity to go into next week’s matchup with Sam Darnold and the Seattle Seahawks with something on the line.
Still, they would have had to pick up wins over the Chicago Bears at home or Sunday against the Packers for that game to matter. Pick up wins in two of three games against Chicago, Green Bay, or Seattle, and they had a pathway to the playoffs.
Following next Sunday’s game in Seattle, the Vikings play the Washington Commanders with Marcus Mariota, the Dallas Cowboys after the Micah Parsons trade, and the New York Giants with Jameis Winston. All three are winnable games if McCarthy plays like he did in Detroit.
However, McCarthy isn’t playing good football. He finished 12 of 19 for 87 yards and two picks, and took five sacks. That’s a week after he completed 16 of 32 and was so inaccurate on some passes against Chicago that Defector columnist Drew Magary wondered if he was physically ill.
“I’ve seen enough of J.J. McCarthy,” Magary wrote. “On a weekend where draftmates Bo Nix and Drake Maye assumed full command of the AFC, there was the Vikings quarterback, playing football as if he had acute lead poisoning.”
McCarthy appears to be healthy after a meniscus tear ended his rookie year before it started, and a high ankle sprain kept him out from Weeks 3 through 8. While McCarthy is healthy now, his lack of development time likely affected his mechanics, leading to inaccurate passes.
The Bears likely ended Minnesota’s season last week. Still, leave it to an organization that once drafted a serial killer to end any hope they had for this season.
In 1974, the Packers drafted Randall Woodland in the 17th round. He later became known as the I-5 killer after committing 18 murders, and was suspected of killing 44 people. He’s one of many serial killers from the Pacific Northwest, including Ted Bundy, who experts suspect committed crimes after exposure to lead poisoning.
Incidentally, the Vikings are headed to the Pacific Northwest next week.
Minnesota entered the season with championship aspirations and will finish it focused on McCarthy’s development. People are already openly speculating about whether the Vikings chose the wrong quarterback between McCarthy, Darnold, and Daniel Jones.
Darnold looks like a franchise quarterback in Seattle, and Jones is 8-3 with the Indianapolis Colts this year. Minnesota also could have tanked for Drake Maye in 2023, and he’s looking like a franchise quarterback with the New England Patriots.
Meanwhile, McCarthy is 2-4 as a starter and barely completing half his passes.
“[McCarthy’s development] is still a work in progress, but I still believe he’s absolutely under control from a play-call standpoint,” said Kevin O’Connell, emphasizing that McCarthy must focus on the smaller details. “There’s little things that come up here and there that just continue to limit your chances of having ultimate success against a defense, to go put points on the board.”
Minnesota’s experiment of putting the league’s starting youngest quarterback under center and trying to contend has failed. The rest of the season will be about whether McCarthy just needs to master the finer details of the position to succeed, or if they went with the wrong quarterback in the offseason.
Sam Darnold awaits them in Seattle next Sunday.
