Why the J.J. McCarthy-Vikings experiment went south so quickly: ‘It has just been brutal’

For days, members of the Minnesota Vikings organization wondered what would happen. It was March 2025, and head coach Kevin O’Connell had spoken on the phone several times with future Hall of Fame quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

“It’s still undecided from what I understand,” one Vikings staffer said at the time. “As we go through other quarterback options, it’s just scary.”

Once again, this organization had found itself in the NFL’s version of the Bermuda Triangle: the state of uncertainty at quarterback.

O’Connell and then-general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah decided not to commit to veteran Sam Darnold for the long haul. He signed with the Seahawks. They also overestimated Daniel Jones’ willingness to return after he signed with the team’s practice squad the previous November. Jones left to compete for the Colts’ starting job. Even the Jaguars’ plucking of Vikings backup Nick Mullens caught the team by surprise.

Those departures left the team with few reliable quarterback candidates to pair with young J.J. McCarthy, a player many Vikings football operations employees believed needed more seasoning and development before shouldering the starting responsibility for a team with playoff goals.

“This organization went from the ultimate professional in Kirk (Cousins) to an experienced veteran who is buttoned up in Sam (Darnold),” the same Vikings staffer said. “J.J. (McCarthy) is still so young.”

Knowing what they knew about McCarthy’s frame of mind in the aftermath of his torn meniscus the previous summer, before his rookie season, even key members of the team championed the idea of signing Rodgers. In the end, though, the Vikings stuck with McCarthy, believing their ardent support would give him the best long-term chance to succeed and reach his potential.

This decision set up a pivotal 2025 season. It also set the Vikings and McCarthy on a chaotic journey that culminated in Monday’s difficult conclusion.

Following months of speculation, the team traded the 23-year-old to the Giants for a fifth-round draft pick. The move punctuates the latest miss in the franchise’s decades-long pursuit of an elite quarterback. It also spotlights O’Connell’s line from several years ago — “organizations fail young quarterbacks before young quarterbacks fail organizations” — with a real-time example of how difficult it is to separate the responsibility between the young quarterback and the organization.

And it leaves the Vikings in a familiar spot. Until they spin the wheel again, they are left to ruminate over another path that led to a dead end.

The Athletic spoke with sources in the Vikings building and around the NFL who requested anonymity so they could share details about the McCarthy situation without facing repercussions from their teams. What became clear is that the relationship between McCarthy and the team quickly became strained given his need for further development and the franchise’s urgency to win.

Even before Monday’s blockbuster deal, NFL scouts, coaches and front-office officials had a lot to say about McCarthy’s potential — or lack of it.

As a rookie, McCarthy debuted in the 2024 preseason against the Raiders. Afterward, one NFC scout said he thought McCarthy looked confident, decisive and clean. He had thrown an interception, but not even that turnover overshadowed a performance that this evaluator deemed worthy of genuine optimism.

“I’m surprised how intrigued I am after watching that,” the scout said, speaking on condition of anonymity to speak honestly about another team’s player.

Around the league, pre-draft opinions on McCarthy ranged. One AFC executive explained that he didn’t view McCarthy as a first-round pick. An NFC scout shared that he had graded middle-round prospect Spencer Rattler ahead of him. Another NFC evaluator said he liked McCarthy but “saw more talent than polish” and was concerned about McCarthy’s relative inexperience and the lack of adversity he faced in college at Michigan.

Even the Vikings preferred one of the top three consensus quarterbacks (Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels or Drake Maye), according to multiple team sources. O’Connell himself designed the evaluation process, following ownership’s preference for a young quarterback — but with the expectation that the Vikings would not blow things up and rebuild. The goal was to remain competitive each season.

When Williams, Daniels and Maye were drafted with the top three picks, all of the Vikings’ primary decision-makers signed off on McCarthy. They felt he offered a higher upside than Bo Nix, the Broncos’ current starter. They traded up to take him with the 10th pick.

In the immediate aftermath of the draft, several team sources acknowledged that McCarthy had work to do. He would have to eliminate his overstriding on throws and develop better touch.

But it seemed he had improved in training camp and versus the Raiders. So much so, in fact, that the Vikings planned to give McCarthy a significant number of reps the next week during joint practices with the Browns.

McCarthy’s torn meniscus shattered those plans. It also marked a major turning point in an otherwise positive trajectory.

For the first time since the pandemic, McCarthy couldn’t play the game he loved. As he recovered from surgery, the Vikings locker room rallied around Darnold, who led the team to a 14-win regular season that became the talk of the NFL. (They would eventually lose to the Rams in the wild-card round of the playoffs as Darnold suffered nine sacks.)

This confluence of events — along with the lofty expectations for McCarthy before his injury — produced what team sources and even those close to McCarthy acknowledge was a challenging couple of months. The team committed to providing him as much mental health support as possible.

In March of 2025 at the league’s annual meetings, Vikings owner Mark Wilf reiterated his faith in McCarthy.

“We, as an ownership and a franchise, are going to make sure that all the resources are in place to maximize his potential,” Wilf told reporters.

Facing pressure after the first-round playoff exit, the Vikings sought to insure themselves at quarterback if McCarthy needed more time to recover. Neither Adofo-Mensah nor O’Connell unilaterally vouched to sign Darnold to a long-term contract, according to team and league sources. Meanwhile, Minnesota’s decision-makers believed Jones would value the Vikings’ advantageous quarterback environment, misjudging his desire to start.

Jones’ departure opened the door to Rodgers. The team mulled the idea for days after Rodgers pledged to play for a minuscule amount of money, and many endorsed the move.

But concerns with Rodgers’ potential fit and the possibility of McCarthy’s camp requesting a trade contributed to the Vikings’ dice roll that McCarthy could be a franchise quarterback for the long term. The Vikings moved forward into the spring and summer hoping that an intentional structure could accelerate McCarthy’s growth.

They thought their system and personnel would establish a distinct floor. It would not.

Even after McCarthy’s heroics in Week 1 of the 2025 season, an emotional comeback against Chicago at Soldier Field, one Vikings staffer questioned how sustainable his roller-coaster performances were.

“You know the truth of how it’s been all camp,” he said.

For the most part, the Vikings offense had not looked great during spring and summer practices. O’Connell even spent a portion of one early training camp news conference looking upward and saying, “The sky has not fallen. So, all good.”

Unless McCarthy ripped passes with velocity to areas near the seams, the Minnesota passing game looked disjointed. McCarthy’s accuracy wavered on downfield throws. The offensive staff attempted to chisel away concepts that yielded tipped passes and potential interceptions.

Many of these issues surfaced in Week 2 against the Falcons, an abysmal 22-6 loss at home. A McCarthy injury added insult to the performance. The next day, O’Connell informed reporters that McCarthy’s ankle was “very, very sore.” The quarterback had already missed practice for the birth of his son, Rome, and now he would be absent for another substantial period.

McCarthy’s comments regarding his “Nine” alter ego — a reference to his jersey number — earned several internal eye-rolls. He similarly baffled members of the organization when he told reporters that he bucked his coaches’ advice by dancing the “Griddy” before he reached the end zone against the Cowboys in Week 15. These bouts of youth and defiance, evident both in front of the cameras and away from them inside the TCO Performance Center, were troubling for Vikings executives and coaches.

More concerning, though, was McCarthy’s inability to stay healthy or play with consistency.

He returned from an ankle injury in Week 9 and played well in a win against the Lions. Then, three weeks later, after a Week 12 loss to the Packers, McCarthy reported concussion symptoms that kept him out of the Week 13 game against the Seahawks. He returned the ensuing week, played well against the Commanders and Cowboys, then exited the Week 16 game against the Giants with a hand injury.

Few scenes captured the commotion of McCarthy’s season more thoroughly than that afternoon. McCarthy, who had injured his thumb in Week 2 and bruised his hand in Week 10, walked to the sideline after the first play of the second half. O’Connell, VP of player health and performance Tyler Williams and trainer Connor Whicker assessed his hand, and McCarthy squirmed.

Afterward, O’Connell told reporters that he didn’t know when McCarthy’s injury occurred.

McCarthy missed Week 17 but returned in Week 18. By then, even though the defense’s dominance and a renewed commitment to the run game led the team to five wins to close the season — and made some in the building wonder how McCarthy would have fared with this type of offensive philosophy all season — one Vikings staffer summed it up: “I knew this was going to be up and down when we made that choice this spring (to move forward with McCarthy as the starter), but it has just been brutal."

Once the calendar flipped to 2026, two factors ran parallel for the Vikings.

On one hand, they understood that McCarthy, who had started only 10 professional games, needed more time to become the player they’d drafted him to be. On the other hand, they understood the urgency to win.

The franchise did not think it could take superstar receiver Justin Jefferson’s patience for granted. He navigated the 2025 season and quarterback carousel with deftness despite posting a career-low 1,048 receiving yards. He didn’t pout. He didn’t pop off. Jefferson internalized his frustration as the team went 9-8 and missed the playoffs, but team sources knew they couldn’t expect him to do so forever.

Additionally, O’Connell was entering his fifth season without a playoff win. As Adofo-Mensah’s ouster proved, a 43-25 record over four seasons only keeps you in good graces for so long.

These layers served as the backdrop to the signings of Kyler Murray and Carson Wentz. Even though O’Connell framed the quarterback dynamic as a competition, and even before another strange injury back-and-forth with McCarthy after the team’s third preseason game, league executives and members of the organization believed the writing was on the wall.

Because Minnesota liked Max Brosmer, and because McCarthy had only one year remaining on his rookie quarterback contract, league sources suspected the team would entertain a trade. It was going to take a team desperate enough to pull the trigger on a player making backup-caliber money ($3.7 million) in 2027. The Giants proved to be that team.

Class of 2024 QBs

“A lot of the decisions we make we have to make in an instant and a moment in time instead of hypotheticals,” Vikings GM Nolan Teasley said Monday. “This decision, we think, is the best decision for the Minnesota Vikings right now.”

Detaching from McCarthy now opens Pandora’s box regarding the franchise’s future at the position. Minnesota is 3-0 this season. Murray, though, is still acclimating to O’Connell’s offensive system. Future contractual situations with players like Jordan Addison, Dallas Turner and Jalen Redmond could complicate the path to paying a premium at quarterback.

Interestingly, quarterback evaluations became a central subject in the Vikings’ interview process for a new general manager, according to those familiar with the discussions. O’Connell cited the strength of the front-office setup Monday when asked if the experience with McCarthy will scare the team off from drafting a quarterback in the future.

These last three years offer ample room for collective blame and regret, as well as lessons to adopt whichever route the Vikings take from here.

Progress at the quarterback position is not linear because, in the end, there are human beings on both sides of the formula. Patience is easier to talk about than to apply in an ecosystem where the present matters most. And hope, even with a player’s best interests in mind, is rarely the most optimal strategy.

“Neither Adofo-Mensah nor O’Connell unilaterally vouched to sign Darnold to a long-term contract, according to team and league sources. Meanwhile, Minnesota’s decision-makers believed Jones would value the Vikings’ advantageous quarterback environment, misjudging his desire to… pic.twitter.com/DrQezWvwLp

— VikingzFanPage (@vikingzfanpage) September 30, 2026

I think as time goes by, more and more things surrounding JJ's time in Minnesota will be made public. I think we're going to be surprised by a few of those things.