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Quarterback J.J. McCarthy of the Minnesota Vikings.
Quarterback J.J. McCarthy will step back into the role of starting quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings against the Detroit Lions in Week 9, but the timing of his return probably could not be worse.
McCarthy played just two games to begin the year before a high-ankle sprain sidelined him for the past six weeks. Danny Heifetz of The Ringer explained on the October 22 edition of “The Bill Simmons Podcast” the direness of the scenario McCarthy faces.
“The Vikings, to this point in the season, had the easiest schedule in the NFL. The Vikings going forward have the hardest schedule in the NFL,” Heifetz said. “So McCarthy comes back, he’s gonna get rocked. He’s clearly not ready for the NFL, and the Vikings are a win-now team.”
Minnesota has two games against the Lions, two with the Green Bay Packers, one vs. the Seattle Seahawks and one against the Chicago Bears remaining on the schedule.
Heifetz continued, asserting that Minnesota’s McCarthy problem is going to extend into the 2026 campaign.
“The timelines are totally mismanaged. He’s not gonna play well. And if he doesn’t, the whole offseason is gonna be, ‘What do the Vikings do?’” Heifetz said. “You gonna go with just J.J. McCarthy again? They had Daniel Jones last year, let him go. They had Sam Darnold, they let him go. [McCarthy] has more pressure on him than any quarterback going into next year.”
Vikings Facing Serious Consequences for Betting on JJ McCarthy Over Sam Darnold, Daniel Jones
GettyMinnesota Vikings quarterback JJ McCarthy.
And that is to say nothing of what McCarthy faces across the final 10 games of this season — even beyond the gauntlet of the toughest slate in the league.
Minnesota is 3-4 and currently paying the price for making a huge bet on McCarthy as the No. 10 pick in 2024. The team made another monster wager that parting ways with Darnold and Jones in favor of a 22-year-old QB with zero professional experience was the right call simply because his salary is manageable enough compared to what Darnold now earns ($100.5 million over three years in Seattle) that the Vikings could spend more to build out other parts of the roster.
“The Vikings had a very difficult situation, decision, where do you pay Darnold $30 or $40 million a year or do you go with McCarthy? And that’s a hard decision. So it’s not Monday morning quarterbacking, but they clearly made the wrong decision,” Heifetz said. “We all wonder if the McCarthy ankle thing was a shadow benching. There was probably some kind of injury there, but I’m like, ‘They are hiding this guy.’”
Vikings Will Bring in Competition for Starting Job Next Season if JJ McCarthy Struggles Down the Stretch
GettyQuarterback Max Brosmer of the Minnesota Vikings.
McCarthy is going to get as much rope as exists through the remainder of the 2025 campaign. The Vikings have only undrafted rookie Max Brosmer and John Wolford (four career starts) to round out the quarterback room.
It is possible, or maybe even likely, that the team will try to add a veteran signal-caller ahead of the trade deadline to replace the departed Carson Wentz, who is now out for the season due to surgery on his non-throwing shoulder.
If Minnesota does bring in another veteran QB by November 4, it probably won’t be a player who can viably threaten for the starting job in 2026. However, if McCarthy continues to struggle, the Vikings are certainly going to hunt for competition for him come next spring.
“If the young quarterback shines, as he did during a transcendent fourth quarter on the first Monday night of the season, he’ll have a firm grip on the job that was handed to him last spring, and the Vikings will continue to build around him,” Michael Silver of The Athletic wrote Friday. “Should McCarthy struggle, as he did in a Week 2 defeat to the Falcons, the organization will surely explore viable alternatives at season’s end.”
Max Dible covers the NFL, NBA and MLB for Heavy.com, with a focus on the Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings, Chicago Bears and Cleveland Browns. He covered local and statewide news as a reporter for West Hawaii Today and served as news director for BigIslandNow.com and Pacific Media Group’s family of Big Island radio stations before joining Heavy. More about Max Dible
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