One week into the 2025 NFL season, Minnesota Vikings fans were ecstatic about the future of their favorite team after second-year quarterback J.J. McCarthy led the purple and gold to an impressive comeback win over the Chicago Bears.
Fast forward to today, and Vikings fans have no idea if McCarthy is even going to be on the team's roster by the time the upcoming season begins.
Minnesota's 2024 first-round pick is now in the middle of his third year with the franchise, and CBS Sports' Tyler Sullivan believes the young quarterback is part of a group of NFL players "running out of time to prove themselves" as they enter the 2026 season.
Sullivan listed eight players in total, and for each one, he predicted whether they would end up being a bust or not.
For McCarthy, the CBS Sports writer, unfortunately, believes he will become the latest Vikings quarterback to be regarded as a bust.
Sullivan's explanation for why is pretty cut and dry.
"The Vikings brought in legitimate competition in Murray this offseason, and the veteran appears to have the inside track to winning the job. With Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, the general manager who selected McCarthy, fired earlier this offseason, arguably McCarthy's biggest supporter is no longer in the building."
J.J. McCarthy becoming a bust would continue a never-ending nightmare for the Minnesota Vikings
Minnesota hit the jackpot in 1961 when they used the franchise's very first third-round draft pick on former Georgia quarterback Fran Tarkenton. All Tarkenton did was go on to lead the Vikings to three Super Bowl appearances, set multiple team and NFL all-time records, and win the league's MVP award in 1975.
Tarkenton appeared in a total of 177 games in a Minnesota uniform, and since his retirement in 1979, no Vikings quarterback has appeared in more than 128 matchups with the team.
Ever since Tarkenton's career came to a close, Minnesota has been searching for its next great franchise signal-caller, and it's a void that they were hoping McCarthy would be able to fill.
But if he becomes a bust, as Sullivan predicts, then he will just be the latest in a long list of Vikings quarterbacks who have never even come close to sniffing the amount of success that Tarkenton had with the franchise.
At 23-years-old, it would still feel a little premature to declare McCarthy a bust, even if he doesn't play much next season, especially given the career turnaround someone like Sam Darnold has been recently experiencing.
But even if he's not a bust, it's starting to feel more and more that if McCarthy is going to ever have success at the NFL level, it's probably not going to happen in a Minnesota uniform.
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