Things are happening in Minnesota. While Rudy Gobert is still busy collecting his 96th rebound against a Lakers team that tried to advance in the NBA playoffs without a frontcourt, the Vikings have used this week as an occasion to unofficially cap off a rebuilding project that they started three years ago:
That’s second-year quarterback J.J. McCarthy speaking to the Twin Cities press this week for the first time since fully recovering from the meniscus repair surgery he underwent last year. Because McCarthy has no in-game NFL experience to his name and has had two knee operations, there's been months of idle speculation that the kid wouldn’t be ready—either in terms of his health or, a more frightening prospect, his ability—to run the Vikings offense this coming season. Aaron Rodgers even managed to weasel his way into the conversation, because prior to the draft, Minnesota hadn’t yet added a third quarterback to their roster.
That was an agonizing period for yours truly, because Aaron Rodgers is a thirsty loser. I didn’t want Aaron Rodgers. I didn’t want Sam Darnold coming back on a reward contract. I didn’t want inevitable Steeler Kirk Cousins coming back to make his gritting-teeth emoji face at the line before every third down. I wanted the kid. Every Vikings fan did. You could hear them marching down Hennepin Avenue, loudly chanting, “START THE KID (DONTCHA KNOW), START THE KID (DONTCHA KNOW).”
This demand, this want, isn't borne out of ignorance. Vikings fans have spent their whole lives watching their team make the occasional foray into the playoffs using some other team’s quarterback. The greatest homegrown passer in franchise history, Fran Tarkenton, only earned that honor after being traded to the Giants and then traded back to Minnesota. Save for maybe five years of Daunte Culpepper balling out before a knee injury all but ended his career, Vikings fans like me have never truly had a tier-one passer to claim as their own.
McCarthy, picked higher than any Vikings QB has ever been drafted, represents their best chance at one. When GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and head coach Kevin O’Connell came to the organization in 2022, they shared a vision of overhauling an old and expensive roster and rebuilding it around a kickass QB on a rookie deal. I had to endure two extra seasons of Kirk doing Kirk shit before the new Vikings braintrust finally got the team’s cap unfucked and could let Kirk walk. And just in time, because they were picking high in a 2024 draft that was historically loaded at quarterback.
The Vikings didn’t get the guy I wanted (Drake Maye), but they got a guy, and he arrived in Minnesota with the blessing of O’Connell, whom I trust more than I trust my own family. What happened after that has quickly become lore not just among Vikings fans, but among skeptical lifers in the local press who cover the team. They’re also the ones who noticed—and I promise that Cris Collinsworth will repeat this story anytime McCarthy shows up on an SNF broadcast—that McCarthy stayed in Minnesota between minicamp and training camp and showed up at the team facility every day to fix all of the mechanical flaws that had been plaguing him.
He did. When McCarthy took the practice field last August, both his coaches and the beat guys noticed the improvement. Then McCarthy’s knee went NOT SO FAST, and all of us have been waiting for him to come back ever since. Sam Darnold made it a more enjoyable wait than he had any right to, but it still felt like a wait nonetheless.
As of this week, that wait is over. On Saturday, Adofo-Mensah executed a cursory pick swap with Seattle to bring in charming sack addict Sam Howell as QB2. Aaron Rodgers was beside himself, crying into his freshly opened can of Brez after hearing the news. The Vikings QB room was now full, and it had a clear QB1 already residing within it:
I know I’m ready to start, because of all the work I’ve put in and just the confidence in my skills and abilities and just being able to do my job and simplify things to the best of my ability, every single day. I have a tremendous coaching staff, a tremendous group of guys around me that I can lean on, and they can lean on me.
That quote from McCarthy sounds pretty anodyne to any casual observer. But if you’ve been waiting your whole life for a savior to walk through that fucking door, it sounds like cherubs playing harps of gold right above your head. I ate that shit up like it was a nacho on the bottom of the pile, and then I went back for more. Is he back to 100 percent after that injury? Wouldn't you know it, he actually feels even better than he did BEFORE he got hurt. Is he worried about the pressure of carrying an entire franchise on his shoulders? Well actually, he kinda likes pressure because it forces his mind to focus on the now.
And I’m buying every word of it. Any other fan says this about any other QB and I want to drown myself in battery acid, but this is MY team, and that’s MY quarterback. We didn’t take a flier on him after he crapped out with some other team. We didn’t grab him off the high-end free agent market. And we didn’t get him from the fucking Packers. We got him the old-fashioned way, which is somehow new to me and to just about every Vikings fan out there.
Not only that, McCarthy’s injury sabbatical gave Adofo-Mensah an extra offseason to fix both the interior offensive line (with center Ryan Kelly and guards Will Fries and Donovan Jackson) and the short-yardage game (by trading for RB Jordan Mason). Few first-time QBs have ever been put into such a lavishly furnished offense to start their careers. Maybe J.J. McCarthy will turn out to be dogshit. Maybe he’ll get hurt again. All I know is that this is the most I've been looking forward to a Vikings season in a very long time, perhaps ever. I've been waiting for this one. A lot of us have.
