The Minnesota Vikings went from 14-3 and a good playoff team to last place in their division in one year without major changes across the board. What happened? The swap from Sam Darnold, now leading the Seattle Seahawks to one of the best records in football, to JJ McCarthy has been disastrous. It’s the number one reason the Vikings are struggling, and it is cause for concern in the future.
How to move forward at QB for the Minnesota Vikings
JJ McCarthy has very little game tape nearing the end of his second season, which means two things. First, it’s hard to totally write him off because he has so little experience in the NFL so far. Things don’t always click right away. Second, it means there is a major injury problem that could continue to crop up.
Either way, as of now, it doesn’t look like the Vikings are going to go anywhere with McCarthy, who seemed like a massive reach on draft night and is looking every bit of that now. Viewed as a second or third-round prospect, the Vikings reached when an unprecedented run of QBs in the 2024 class occurred. It hasn’t panned out.
Kevin O’Connell believes that organizations fail young QBs more often than the inverse, so we can’t expect them to move on this offseason. If he plays every game the rest of the way, he’ll still only have 11 total games played. It’s far too early for someone like O’Connell to pull the plug. And unfortunately, undrafted Max Brosmer was horrendous in relief, so that’s not an option either. This isn’t a Brock Purdy situation.
So what do they do? This is clearly a playoff roster, and it might even be a Super Bowl roster with a QB. They have Justin Jefferson, TJ Hockenson, and Jordan Addison to throw to. Kevin O’Connell and Brian Flores are two of the best minds on their respective sides of the ball. There’s a reason they won 14 games with competent QB play.
Sadly, a year of this roster and window will be wasted in 2026. They can’t really give up on McCarthy just yet, and they won’t luck into a great draft prospect in their range, either (partly because the QB class is underwhelming and partly because they won’t be picking in the top five most likely).
But what they can do is exactly what they did in 2024 when they first drafted McCarthy. They need a veteran to come in and challenge McCarthy, who is still very young. He won’t turn 23 until January, so there’s still some time for theoretical development. Maybe that’s Daniel Jones, who spent last season with the Vikings and is having a resurgence on a one-year deal now.
But ultimately, that’s a stopgap solution until it’s justifiable to move on. McCarthy hasn’t shown anything that suggests he’ll magically become a good quarterback, even with excellent coaching. He had glaring problems in college that the Vikings seemed to ignore, and those aren’t going away. He can’t throw to the left, for example, and that’s a pretty big problem to have in the NFL.
The best-case scenario is that Arch Manning stays another year in college, the Vikings bring in a vet who beats out McCarthy and shows what they can do with competent QB play (again), and the Vikes grab Manning in the middle of the first round in 2027. Unfortunately, that’s not likely to happen.
By the time the Vikings do have enough to make a choice on McCarthy, it will probably be too late. Key players, namely Justin Jefferson, will continue to age, and Jefferson might want out if these struggles continue.
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