J.J. McCarthy's Development to Become QB1 amid Knee Injury Revealed by Vikings HC

J.J. McCarthy missed his entire rookie season with a torn meniscus after the Minnesota Vikings selected him with the No. 10 overall pick of the 2024 NFL draft, but the NFC North team was still preparing him to eventually be the starter.

And the hope is that preparation will pay off in 2025 when he steps into that role.

As ESPN's Kevin Seifert detailed Sunday, Vikings head coach Kevin O'Connell and quarterbacks coach Josh McCown instituted a plan to help the Michigan product remain engaged even when he was sidelined with the injury.

O'Connell met one-on-one with McCarthy for one hour per week even during the season. Sometimes those meetings involved just checking in on the rookie, while sometimes it involved going over gameplans and watching film.

"I just wanted to give him a platform with me," O'Connell said. "Maybe it was football one day. Maybe it was no football. My time is very hard to find during the season, but I just wanted to make sure that we got together.

"The one thing I learned about him in those meetings is he had great questions, and that validated that he was receiving and getting something out of that time. And as I've told him, it doesn't really guarantee you anything, but once you're fighting the fight on a daily basis of growing within the system, he would be able to rely on some of what we did together."

McCarthy even got as close to a first-person view of things as could be hoped at times, as the Vikings placed a camera on starting quarterback Sam Darnold's helmet to create film that was then viewable with virtual-reality gear.

He also completed a list of tasks for McCown every week that included writing out third-down plays and creating profiles of opposing defensive coordinators after studying film.

"Something like that is a tedious job, but it helps you memorize," McCown said. "And then we'd steal moments when we would quiz him or ask him questions about it, just at random times when we could.

"We're mostly interacting with Sam and questioning Sam on plays, and you don't know what J.J. is taking in and what he's not taking in. But every now and then, it was, 'Hey J.J., what about this?' You try to engage him as if he's playing, and he was on top of it."

Whether all that preparation pays off will likely determine how successful the Vikings will be in 2025 after they didn't bring back Darnold after a 14-3 season and playoff appearance.

Still, McCarthy couldn't ask for a better position to be in as he takes the field for the first time in his NFL career. In addition to having the offensive-minded approaches of O'Connell and McCown behind him, he has a group of weapons that is among the best in the league.

Having Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, T.J. Hockenson and Aaron Jones all on the same offense means opposing defenses will always be facing matchup nightmares somewhere because they cannot double team all of them.

It will then be up to McCarthy to play the role of point guard and get the ball into the playmakers' hands as efficiently as possible.

Fortunately for the Vikings, he's been preparing for such a role for more than a year.