The Minnesota Vikings had a lot of quarterback drama this offseason, and J.J. McCarthy was in the middle of it. The No. 10 overall pick in the 2024 draft, McCarthy entered training camp competing with Kyler Murray for the starting job and slid to QB3 by the end of the preseason. When the Vikings opened the year, McCarthy was the emergency quarterback with a very good chance that he has played his final snap with the team.
This is a fate that some fans may have seen coming after McCarthy’s brutal 2025 and the Vikings’ choice to sign Murray and Wentz within the first week of free agency. But it’s a situation that McCarthy could have avoided if he had just shown some improvement during the preseason.
Instead, McCarthy remains an afterthought. After Murray suffered a concussion against the Packers, his preseason cost him a massive opportunity, and it could help Carson Wentz take the job and run with it if he starts and plays well against the Chicago Bears on Sunday.
J.J. McCarthy blew his clear path to the Minnesota Vikings’ QB2 job this summer
A section of Vikings fans believed the deck was stacked against McCarthy at the beginning of the offseason. The Vikings’ interest in Murray was apparent even as the Arizona Cardinals tried to work out a trade before ultimately releasing him, and SI’s Albert Breer reported that the Vikings pursued Murray because they felt like he was “the one guy on the market that they could see as a potential longer-range answer than a one-year Band-Aid.”
One week after Murray signed, the Vikings re-signed Wentz. The second move didn’t seem like much, as Wentz is a backup-caliber player. But it also brought back a trusted veteran who could run the offense without going into the gutter in an emergency.
Fans rightfully focused on the starting quarterback spot, where Kevin O’Connell may have gaslit everyone into believing there was a competition. But when Murray won the starting job as expected, McCarthy remained the backup quarterback. A solid performance or two to close the preseason could have given him that job and put him one snap away from replacing Murray, who has played a full season just once (2024) over his last four seasons. But as Vikings fans know, McCarthy only has himself to blame.
According to Pro Football Focus, McCarthy completed just 9 of 17 passes for 115 scoreless yards. While he didn’t turn the ball over, he left plays on the field, most notably missing Tai Felton and Myles Price for touchdowns during the second preseason game against the Baltimore Ravens. An ankle injury in that game made things even harder for McCarthy, who opted to prevent further injury instead of playing in the final preseason game, and it made the decision easy for O’Connell, who named Wentz the backup for the season opener.
In true Vikings fashion, it took 11 plays for that decision to matter. When Murray left the field after a helmet-to-helmet hit by Packers cornerback Javon Bullard, Wentz came into the game, completing 12-of-19 passes for 133 yards and three touchdowns, and the performance was so good that NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport speculated that Wentz could become the full-time starting quarterback if he gets the start and plays well against the Bears on Sunday.
“Where he finds himself right now is a really interesting situation,” Rapoport said on Tuesday night. “He played really well last Sunday [and] led them back [with] three touchdowns in the fourth quarter. If he plays well again, then we’re gonna have to have, at some point, a conversation about whether or not Carson Wentz has a shot at this job.
“Obviously, they would love if Kyler was the starter, that was the whole idea. But if Wentz continues to play well, in a system that he knows extremely well for an organization that brought him back for this reason, at the very least, the Vikings will have an excellent, excellent problem on their hands.”
Carson Wentz has the Vikings opportunity McCarthy let slip
This may not play out at all if Murray clears concussion protocol and is in the pistol formation for the Vikings on Sunday. But it’s hard not to see the opportunity Wentz could have in front of him and think it could have been McCarthy’s.
Showing a level of improvement could have meant McCarthy sitting in the backup role and going in for Murray when he got hurt on Sunday. If McCarthy played well, another start against the Bears could have been a key moment in his career, potentially giving him the chance to leave Murray in the dust. But his preseason performance cost him that opportunity.
Misfires and holding onto the ball too long are some of the problems on the field, but so are issues off of it. That includes calling the quarterback room “two guys in a classroom” during minicamp and reportedly questioning O’Connell’s coaching last season, according to Tyler Dunne of The Go Long Substack. Even learning how to layer a pass would have gone a long way, but McCarthy seemed intent on doing things his way, and it has cost him.
In the end, there are comments and throws from this summer that McCarthy would probably like to have back, resulting in another missed chance to work his way back into the Vikings’ long-term plans.
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