Daily Norseman
If you’ve been a fan of the Minnesota Vikings for any length of time, you know that their history at the quarterback position since Fran Tarkenton’s retirement has been a list of temporary fixes, short-term solutions, and bad luck.
In Dennis Green’s ten years as the Vikings head coach, the team had seven different quarterbacks lead the team in passing yardage. Seriously, the man had a brand new quarterback nearly every year and only attempted to develop a long-term solution at the end of his tenure with Daunte Culpepper (and even he, reportedly, try to draw Dan Marino out of retirement first before handing things off to the youngster).
Culpepper is, if we’re being honest with ourselves, the closest thing to a franchise quarterback the Vikings have had since the departure of St. Francis of Bloomington. Sure, he struggled in his final season with the Vikings, and when it looked like he might be turning it around he got his knee turned to mush in Carolina.
The Vikings thought they might have had something with Teddy Bridgewater, and it looked like he was really getting ready to burst onto the scene in his third season. Then, on a snap in practice where nobody laid a hand on him, his leg. . .literally. . .almost fell off.
If you’ve watched Jon Bois’ history of the Minnesota Vikings. . .and, if you haven’t, you owe it to yourself to watch the entire thing. . .he emphasizes a fact about this franchise that has likely hindered their ability to find a long-term quarterback solution, and that’s that they’ve never really been bad enough for a long enough period of time to have to go through the quarterback development process. In the last quarter-century, they’ve tried it with Culpepper, they’ve tried it with Bridgewater, they’ve tried it with Tarvaris Jackson (RIP), and they’ve tried it with Christian Ponder. Sure, Ponder wound up being a flat bust and Jackson might have been in over his head a bit (though he did develop into a solid backup with a couple of other teams), but the Culpepper and Bridgewater arcs really can’t be blamed on the team so much as unfortunate circumstances beyond their control.
Outside of that, they’ve had the zombie Brett Favre years, they’ve had Sam Bradford, they’ve had Kirk Cousins, they’ve had Matt Cassel, and they’ve had a cast of fill-ins who have had their moments but were never viewed as a long-term solution. And, because of that, the majority of fans of this team have never truly been subjected to the process of developing a rookie quarterback, at least not for a very long time.
For better or for worse, Kevin O’Connell has decided to take the road less traveled by bringing in a guy he clearly believes could be a fixture for the Vikings for many seasons to come in J.J. McCarthy. McCarthy missed his rookie season, as we know, and has now started four games this season. We’ve seen him make...
