J.J. McCarthy’s Development and Where the QB Stands With the Vikings

On Tuesday morning, Viking coaches and doctors congregated on the team’s practice field to watch J.J. McCarthy go through a workout. The second-year quarterback had practiced a bit on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and the hope was that everyone would walk away with McCarthy ready to roll on a short week against the Chargers.

Again, that was the hope. Not the mandate.

After going through the paces, McCarthy told the staff that the high ankle sprain that he sustained in Week 2 against the Falcons wasn’t quite all the way back yet. And the staff decided to err on the side of caution and hold McCarthy out one more week, giving him 10 days of runway to prepare for a titanic Week 9 game against the Lions on Nov. 2 at Ford Field.

This is about McCarthy’s health, as he works his way back in dealing with bad injury luck for a second consecutive year. More than that, though, it’s a story on quarterback development, during a season in which we’re seeing reclamation projects such as Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold and Daniel Jones play lights out. Mayfield is now on his fifth NFL team, Darnold is on his fourth, and Jones is on his third.

It’s probably no coincidence either that two of those three happened to make it after passing through Minnesota (and stops with the 49ers and Rams in those guys’ travels aren’t happenstance to the final results, either).

What’s important to the Vikings is to not become what the Jets, Giants and Browns are in that equation: the teams that drafted those guys and failed to bring out their very best.

So let’s get to where the Vikings are right now with McCarthy.

Just to be clear: The expectation is that the extra rest will have McCarthy ready for the Vikings’ game against Detroit. Assuming he is prepared, the plan is to start him. And the hope is that, by waiting, they’ll get a quarterback going out there with a head of steam and, more important, filled with confidence.

If McCarthy were 50 or 100 starts into his NFL career, the Vikings might’ve decided the best course would be to have him hobbling around out there against a Chargers team that’s going to be raring to break loose of the 1–3 rut it’s in. As it is, the chance he goes out there and aggravates the injury, and loses confidence, makes the idea of McCarthy playing not worth it.

The idea reminds me a lot of a conversation I had with Matt LaFleur, a little over two years ago, as the Packers coach and I were talking about the advantage he had in being able to sit Jordan Love for three years, save for a few calls to the bullpen.

“I think—and this is just my opinion—the league would benefit if more guys took that approach,” LaFleur told me. “What happens is, these guys get thrust into situations where there’s not a lot of talent around them, and they lose confidence. I’ve seen it happen too many times, and it’s hard to recover from that. I do think that we would be able to develop more quarterbacks if guys were given a couple of years to sit and learn the game, and then go out to play.”

In this case, the talent around McCarthy isn’t the problem. It’s his ability to function at a high level. But the point is the same: A young quarterback’s confidence has to be built and protected. As LaFleur would go on to tell me, once a quarterback loses that confidence, it’s very, very difficult to get it back.

It took Mayfield and Darnold multiple restarts to get there, and Jones has yo-yoed throughout his seven years in the league. Those three are in good places now. But it took longer than it should have because the early issues had left a mark. While you can’t totally prevent a quarterback from taking on those scars, you can limit them.

The other end of that deal, of course, is that the attached expectation will be that McCarthy does play well when he returns. In other words, he’s able to summon what he did in the fourth quarter in Chicago in Week 1, and make the three or four plays that result in a win, rather than a loss.

If he doesn’t, then the Vikings have Carson Wentz ready. It’s also why they tried to bring Darnold and Jones back; those guys left because they found opportunities to be long-term starting quarterbacks. Minnesota wants to give McCarthy plenty of runway to prove himself when he returns to the lineup, presumably next week. But he won’t have an endless rope to get it right.

So in the end, the goals here are simple: give McCarthy the best chance to develop, a better opportunity than so many other highly-drafted quarterbacks have gotten; give McCarthy time to show to the coaches, front office and his teammates what he is and can be as an NFL quarterback, for better or worse; and give those teammates the best QB available.

Ideally, the Vikings can do all three at once, make the playoffs, and go forward with McCarthy as the guy they drafted him to be.

For now, what we can say, at the very least, is the plan to get there is pretty sound.

I think Tuesday morning showed that.

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