With the 2025 regular season underway, the Minnesota Vikings imagine JJ McCarthy as QB1.
But as coach Kevin O’Connell said at Monday’s NFL annual spring meeting in West Palm Beach, Florida, that he has yet to earn that distinction.
“I feel really, really positive about my path with JJ from a development perspective, from an accelerator perspective,” O’Connell said. “And he’ll definitely benefit from offseason equivalent reps from offseason programs that are clearly in a competitive situation when the training camp and the quarterback room is all finished.”
Even as the Vikings signed free agent Aaron Rodgers, O’Connell would still be in touch with McCarthy in “borderline real-time” and appreciated him all the developments. Rodgers, who remains signed, has maintained contact with O’Connell since the day of play and is the first to come into contact with Minnesota after being released from the New York Jets.
O’Connell said the Vikings have high expectations for McCarthy, but as a franchise they decided they didn’t want to resist the judgement of Rogers as an option to protect McCarthy.
“…Aaron Rodgers is a four-time NFL MVP and someone who has great respect for not only himself but all of us compete with him,” O’Connell explained. “And he happened to be free to have some real dialogues in his career about what his future would look like, and we happened to be one of the teams he reached out to.”
General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah revealed that a positive outcome of offseason shuffling in the quarterback position will mark McCarthy’s step into the starting role. He was essentially a professional redshirt in 2024 after being drafted 10th overall for post-draft knee surgery. Sam Darnold placed the Vikings in the NFC playoffs 14-3 as a wild card.
McCarthy took mostly “visual person” but took part in quarterback meetings and game planning sessions, intricately familiarity with O’Connell’s communication style, expectations and vast offensive playbook.
“As a play character, in addition to requesting position standards at JJ very early on, I think it’s my responsibility to make sure he thinks he’s going to challenge himself to meet on a daily basis,” O’Connell said. “I’m very excited to see him do that.”
– Field-level media
