J.J. McCarthy Is In A Hell Of A Spot With The Minnesota Vikings

The Minnesota Vikings certainly didn't put J.J. McCarthy in a "bad spot" from a roster standpoint. As far as situations for a young quarterback to step into, you can't ask for much more than the Minnesota Vikings bring to the table. The Vikings are a franchise that's consistently competitive. They have one of the best receivers in the NFL in his prime. An above average defense. They have a down year about every other season. But they almost never multiple years without making the playoffs.  Even before the Kirk Cousins era, they had years where they went 13-3 with Case Keenum. 11-5 with Teddy Bridgewater. 10-6 with Christian Ponder. For the last 20 years, if you're a quarterback, you don't have many excuses if you wind up with the Minnesota Vikings.

But J.J. McCarthy walked into a hell of unique situation with this year's team. There can't be many rookie QB's (technically it's his second season, but it's his first year healthy) whose franchises voluntarily choose them over a guy who led the team to a 14-3 record, and threw for 4,300 yards + 35 TD's the year prior. While rehabbing a torn meniscus, J.J. McCarthy had to sit there and watch Sam Darnold give the Vikings about as good of a regular season as a team can ask for. But in the end, it wasn't good enough. Because Sam Darnold choked in the playoffs. That was enough for the Vikings to say he's not worth a 3-year, $100M contract. That they'd rather roll the dice with an unproven rookie coming off a season-ending injury. 

Half of the franchises in the NFL would kill for a year like the Vikings had last season. The fact that nobody (not "nobody", but not nearly as many people as I thought would have) balked at Minnesota's decision is still kinda wild to me. That's "Rings Culture" rearing its ugly head. If you don't win the Super Bowl, the season is a failure, and you need to make significant changes. I'm of the opinion that if your NFL team wins 10+ games and makes the playoffs, you'd be nuts to break that up. If you have a playoff team, you have a shot at the Super Bowl. You only have get hot at the right time once. If the Vikings had been making the playoffs with the same QB for a decade straight, and that QB continuously failed to get the job done, I'd better understand that move. But I heard Dave on 'Wake Up Barstool' this morning refer to "Playoff Sam Darnold", as if he's a known commodity. You just can't possibly determine what a QB is in the playoffs based off a one game sample size. 

Not only did the Vikings let Sam Darnold walk. But they let him walk to a team that is in many ways the same team as the Vikings. The Seattle Seahawks have one of the best receivers in the NFL in his prime. An above average defense. They make the playoffs on a pretty frequent basis. So not only is J.J. McCarthy quarterbacking a Vikings team whose fan base knows exactly what they could be with an above average QB. But the guy who they let out the door is playing out the season the Vikings could be having on the west coast. With the #1 seed in the NFC, and a QB who has the 6th best odds to win MVP (via The DraftKings Sportsbook).

That's a pretty high pressure spot for J.J. He's not playing bad either. He's had bad moments. But he picked himself up after 3 rough quarters and had a perfect 4th quarter to beat the Bears. Coming off a soft benching an ankle injury, he beat a 5-2 Detroit Lions team. He's shown promise. And to the Vikings credit, the fan base seems to be generally willing to sit through the growing pains. It's actually pretty admirable how much confidence they have in their front office, where after last season, their minds didn't immediately go to, "This is our window. We have to win now. Trade draft picks for pieces. Sign Sam Darnold. We have to go ALL IN." 

Imagine the Chicago Bears doing that? If Chicago won 14 games and their front office decided to not re-sign their 4,000-yard QB in favor of Caleb Wiliams... Bears fans would burn down Soldier Field. 

I get that the Vikings invested a #1 draft pick in J.J. McCarthy. I get that there's a salary cap, and signing Darnold to $100M for 3-years would be a pretty sizable chunk of that. But quarterback is so clearly the most important position in the game. It's a position that's worth spending extra money on. And typically, when NFL teams have a good thing going at quarterback, they'll do anything to keep it going. They could have just paid 2 QB's and let J.J. McCarthy sit a while longer. The could have traded J.J. McCarthy for a pretty solid return. There are multiple things they could have done that didn't involve letting a QB playing at a near-MVP level walk out the door. 

It's tough to improve on 14 wins. That's a lot of immediate expectations for J.J. to live up to. I'm not even sure how many years you're supposed to give a guy in his situation. I'm not sure what realistic expectations for him and the Vikings in year one, year two, year three, etc. should even be. Usually a top 10 draft pick quarterback will start his career with the "privilege" of playing for a not-very-good team. They'll have multiple years to learn and grow before there's any sort of expectation to win consistently. But starting your career with a team who was already near the top of the NFL, while the quarterback they chose you over is doing things like this for the Seattle Seahawks...

What a way to enter the league. On one-hard, J.J. McCarthy in the best situation a first-year QB can ask for. On the other hand, it's gotta be hell. I think J.J. McCarthy is going to end up being a solid quarterback. But if Sam Darnold wasn't such a vanilla name... if the Minnesota Vikings weren't such a non-polarizing franchise... if they're fans weren't generally reasonable people... if J.J. McCarthy didn't have such a remarkable groundswell of online support from the likes of Dave Portnoy, and noted Gen-Z'er Michael Grier.

Then I think we'd already be hearing WAY more talk about the Minnesota Vikings having potentially made one of the all-time worst front office decisions in professional sports history. Which isn't fair to J.J. McCarthy at all. But it's not like the NFL is a league famous for not jumping to conclusions about things like this. If J.J. McCarthy doesn't almost immediately evolve into a playoff quarterback, or doesn't go on to consistently be a top 5 QB in the league for the Minnesota Vikings for a decent stretch of time, or if Sam Darnold doesn't fall off a cliff (which is still very possible)… I'm not sure how you could call it anything else.