J.J. McCarthy’s Lost Season Could Turn Out to Be a Blessing

The Minnesota Vikings’ rookie QB has been force-fed a redshirt year that has helped almost every quarterback at the NFL level develop faster.

McCarthy will sit out his rookie season after undergoing a meniscus repair. / Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports

Before the news of J.J. McCarthy’s torn meniscus sends Minnesota Vikings fans into a familiar Daunte Culpepper-ian, Teddy Bridgewater-ian, Sam Bradford-ian, Kirk Cousins-ian spiral related to their horrendous luck with talented quarterback injuries, let us momentarily consider the positive. 

It’s unclear what head coach Kevin O’Connell’s ultimate goal was with giving Sam Darnold the bulk of the snaps heading into the preseason opener but it was clear that McCarthy played well enough to make a late push for the starting job. Watch his debut again. McCarthy slides through the pocket like Joe Burrow on his first completion. He fired the single-most beautiful, in-stride pass of any rookie quarterback this past weekend … while getting plowed by a free rushing linebacker. And, he recovered from an ugly interception (that, if we’re being honest, his receiver may have been able to help negate). 

McCarthy is the youngest of the first-round quarterbacks at 21. I could imagine pressure—both actual and political—may have thrust him into the starting lineup full time in 2024. Instead, he’s been force-fed a redshirt year that has helped almost every quarterback develop faster. He gets to follow a few years at the Jim Harbaugh school of quarterbacking with an apprenticeship at the hip of O’Connell, one of the true bright young play-callers in the NFL and, himself, a former quarterback drafted in the third round by Bill Belichick in 2008. This year can now be about answering each and every question McCarthy has in real time. 

I don’t think it's controversial to suggest that, if we played out a simulation of the Vikings’ 2024 season with Darnold at quarterback and another with McCarthy, we would have likely ended up with similar numbers, or with Darnold slightly ahead. In removing C.J. Stroud from the equation, the debuts of most of these quarterbacks are fairly pedestrian, with Mac Jones’s 2021 season (3,801 yards, 22 touchdowns, 13 interceptions) being the next best-case scenario over the past three years. Again, I don’t discount the idea that McCarthy could have had one of these outlier seasons but I do think there is something to be said about how many NFL coaches (Andy Reid telling me as much) are pleased to see more, older quarterbacks coming out of college with a higher volume of reps. 

Though he has not shown his full potential at the NFL level, Darnold spent last season in the Kyle Shanahan QB factory and, over his time with the New York Jets and Carolina Panthers, left a breadcrumb trail of random, highly incredible and unfathomable throws that exhibited what was possible if he was put in a better situation. He is now with the best receiver in the NFL, not Jamison Crowder, Braxton Berrios and Robbie Chosen (no offense to any, but neither are going to change the calculus like Justin Jefferson). 

Of course the best-case scenario is a season of practice reps and those will be irreplaceable. But the worst-case scenario, which would have seen McCarthy thrust into the middle of a lost season with a coach trying to bounce back from a losing season and a general manager—with no true signature personnel move since arriving here in 2022—trying to prove that his players are capable of contending with the simultaneously rising Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers, was very much on the table if McCarthy was active. 

Nothing about this meniscus tear prevents him from live-prepping for his opponents. Nothing about it prevents him from taking receivers and offensive linemen out to dinner. Nothing about it prevents him from listening into the headset conversation throughout the year, understanding when and why his coaches call certain plays. 

And, so, it’s not quite the Culpepper injury because the expectations weren’t as high for this team, anyway. It’s not quite Bridgewater because McCarthy wasn’t in a pivotal season toward the end of his rookie contract. It’s not quite Bradford because there is no high-pressure boom-or-bust feeling tied to McCarthy’s injury and it’s not quite Cousins because we’re not in a top-of-market fully guaranteed contract type of situation. 

We are being forced to wait. And in an NFL landscape where that is often impossible for teams, coaches and executives to do, time, however one can get it, can be a blessing.