There is a lot of doom going around social media about J.J. McCarthy and where he stands among the pack of promising young signal callers in the NFL. Names like Drake Maye, Jayden Daniels, Caleb Williams, Michael Penix Jr., and Bo Nix are showing nothing but promise (all of McCarthy’s fellow 2024 first-round draft picks at QB).
It just adds fuel to the flame that Drake Maye has been looking like a legitimate top-5 guy in the past couple of weeks. Jaxson Dart is another culprit of this narrative, given the Giants’ big-time win over the Eagles last Thursday night.
Is it understandable? Sure. The fact is, McCarthy has only shown a sliver of potential compared to all of the other young QBs in the league. Of course, it’s not really his fault. Of the possible 22 regular-season games McCarthy has been in the NFL for, he has appeared in two of them. We all know the torn meniscus last year robbed the kid of his entire rookie season, and a new ankle injury sustained during the Sunday Night Football loss to Michael Penix Jr. and the Falcons has kept him out for the last three games of the 2025 season.
Obviously, it’s hard to disparage McCarthy for some unlucky health concerns early in his career. One thing that does need to be made clear, though, is this: just because other young QBs are playing well, it doesn’t mean that it is impossible for J.J. McCarthy to be the guy that we want him to be.
Just because Maye is making special throws left and right and showing remarkable poise on third downs for the New England Patriots, that does not mean he is bursting some magical energy into the universe that will cause McCarthy to be Zach Wilson. It may sound like “homerism”, but that fourth-quarter comeback during his very first NFL start on Monday Night Football over Caleb Williams and the Chicago Bears should tell you all you need to know about the “dog” in this kid.
No, that doesn’t mean he is only going to be a dog every single game and absolutely nothing else. This kid is going to face growing pains for the rest of the 2025 season; the chance that he becomes who we expect him to be in his very first year is rather low. Not everyone can have a C.J. Stroud and Justin Herbert level of rookie season.
The other thing that doesn’t make sense is that we expected all these other QBs to be around as good as they are currently. As Vikings fans, the majority of us were very high on Maye. Why? Because we knew the kid was going to be very good. We all also knew that Williams and Daniels were going to be good. I personally didn’t think Penix Jr. would be that good, but luckily for him, he is solid, and the Falcons have realized how to use Bijan Robinson (but he still can’t throw over the middle, though).
So how can we say come to the ultra-depressing conclusion that because these QBs are good, a kid who has played two games was suddenly the wrong choice for where the Vikings were at? What if Williams, Maybe, or Daniels missed their entire rookie year to injury, only to come back for two games the next year and get injured again? Would the other fanbases be freaking out like this? I have a hard time thinking that they would be.
The other slight against McCarthy is the success that former Vikings QB Sam Darnold, now in Seattle, is having so far in 2025. Again, why are we using this to dunk on J.J. McCarthy? We knew that Darnold was still probably going to be good when he went to the Seahawks, and the Vikings weren’t going to give another QB that had a good regular season with an end-of-season meltdown substantial money a year after they moved on from Kirk Cousins. The plan was always for J.J. McCarthy to be the guy moving forward.
