There are plenty of reasons to make sure a team protects its injured quarterback, but what the Minnesota Vikings are doing with J.J. McCarthy is a bit over the top.
The Vikings are working with McCarthy as he recovers from an ankle injury that has kept him out of the last two games against the Bengals and Steelers. Minnesota has been able to ride the ship decently with a 1-1 record in those games.
Going into this week, Vikings head coach Kevin O'Connell had a plan of if McCarthy was feeling up to it, he would do light work with the scout team to get some reps. They are slowly working him back, with the target date for his return being the Week 7 showdown against the Philadelphia Eagles.
How the Vikings are going about protecting McCarthy from injury, though, took a wild turn on Friday that might have some fans thinking they aren't going about it the right way.
Minnesota Vikings held J.J. McCarthy out of practice for the oddest reason
On Friday, the Vikings had already ruled McCarthy out of the game against the Cleveland Browns with the final injury report. The team also went through practice, but the weather made for O'Connell to make an interesting decision.
Instead of letting McCarthy practice, O'Connell shut him down, and the second-year quarterback did not participate. For O'Connell, it was all about being as cautious as possible with their franchise signal caller.
"He got through [the week] pretty well. Obviously, with the weather today, my hope was to try to get him some work during individual [drills], but with the weather and the tight field space -- we're working on a 100-yard field -- we wanted to be smart with that. But very much looking forward to spending some time with him next week and see where he is at coming out of the bye."
It makes sense to a point to try to ensure your quarterback is not in harm's way, but McCarthy practicing in the rain would actually have been a good thing. They need to see if his ankle will hold up well in a slick area.
The team should feel comfortable that if anything went wrong with McCarthy, Carson Wentz would be able to hold his own. Wentz has already demonstrated that in the last two weeks, despite running back and offensive line injuries to contend with.
Minnesota can't be this cautious when they are back from the bye week, as that would be a disservice to McCarthy. It's okay to test his limits to make sure he is 100 percent, but if Wentz puts up another stellar game on Sunday, the Vikings might end up being even more cautious with McCarthy than ever.