Daily Norseman
It makes sense
Since the end of the 2024 season, the Minnesota Vikings have taken numerous measures to improve themselves, including shoring up the lines on both sides of the ball and adding a solid complement to Aaron Jones in the form of Jordan Mason. The questions surrounding the team stem from the most important position on the roster, and with good reason. After Sam Darnold had a renaissance in 2024 under Kevin O’Connell’s tutelage, the Vikings are expected to turn the reins over to J.J. McCarthy, who missed all of 2024 with a knee injury.
Bucky Brooks of NFL.com has labelled McCarthy the biggest “wild card” in the league going into this season, and with good reason. With as excited as we Vikings fans are at the prospect of McCarthy taking over, he hasn’t proven anything to this point.
Brooks, however, seems to be of the impression that McCarthy will rise to the challenge.
In J.J.’s de facto debut season, the stakes are exceedingly high. And I believe he’ll deliver. Though (Sam) Darnold posted 13 games with a passer rating north of 100, I think McCarthy will be an upgrade over the journeyman as an athletic game manager with efficient production. Perhaps I am being a little bullish on a 22-year-old with somewhat-limited college experience (28 starts at Michigan) and zero regular-season snaps in the NFL, but the combination of McCarthy’s game and O’Connell’s scheming should enable Minnesota’s offense to keep humming with the youngster under center.
While I’m not going to copy-and-paste the entire piece (because you should really go check it out for yourself), Brooks goes on to talk about O’Connell’s ability to adapt to the strengths of his quarterback and the supporting cast that McCarthy is surrounded by in pretty glowing terms.
Now that we know that there are quarterbacks everywhere who know what Kevin O’Connell can do for quarterbacks, it’s hard not to be bullish on McCarthy’s prospects. While I speak from a biased viewpoint, and I don’t deny that, this young man would have to be an absolute flaming dumpster fire disaster for this team to not be successful going forward, and there’s nothing in his makeup or on his current resume that suggests that’s going to be the case.
If you’re like most Vikings fans, you’ve never seen this team really, truly draft and develop a quarterback for the long term. Daunte Culpepper is about as close as it gets for a lot of us, and though his peak was pretty spectacular, it was cut short due to injury. We thought we may have had something in Teddy Bridgewater, but his career suffered a derailment due to injuries as well.
With McCarthy, it really sort of feels like there’s something special brewing with him and O’Connell for the long-term future of this team. I mean, there had better be. . .if there isn’t, both O’Connell and Kwesi Adofo-Mensah will likely be looking for jobs sooner rather than later.
Is it September yet?
