It’s a wonder Vikings fans haven’t given up on the NFL.
Whatever the Minnesota Vikings are doing right now, they need to stop and put themselves in a big old bag of brown rice. It’s probably their only path to try and salvage whatever is left of their 2024 season because I don’t think there’s an NFL Genius Bar that will fix what ails them.
There’s no other reasonable conclusion after watching rookie first-round quarterback J.J. McCarthy go down with what turned out to be a season-ending knee injury.
To be clear, unlike fellow rookie passers such as the Chicago Bears’ Caleb Williams, McCarthy wasn’t expected to play a significant role for the Vikings this year. Now entrenched starter/perennial journeyman Sam Darnold likely wouldn’t hand over the reins until later in the season. Initial expectations were not high for the No. 10 pick of the 2024 NFL Draft.
But even still — that thought process was part of the Vikings’ grand plan. It was the perfect timeline they wanted for McCarthy to get a semblance of valuable game exposure before getting him off the launch pad in 2025. They wanted him to get some sense of throwing passes to Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison, who ironically was carted off the Minnesota practice field on Wednesday.
You can’t clone those reps. You don’t get to put them in a backlog, saying you’ll save them for later. That’s not how it works.
(Vikings fans, I am handing out free hugs at any time. Let me know.)
All of that is out the window now. All of it. And the Vikings are left holding the bag in a situation that has seen them make some of the most unfortunate NFL history in a while. Well, for this perennially snakebitten franchise, it seems to be more par for the course:
Oh … my goodness?!
Think about all the quarterbacks drafted in the first round over the last approximately five decades. Teams reach on guys who don’t belong in the first round all the time simply because it’s often worth using a flier on the most important position in the sport. And even those guys didn’t miss their entire rookie seasons!
It’s so, so Vikings that they are the first team in the common draft era to lose a rookie offensive signal caller for his entire first year because of an injury. It just had to be this gut-wrenching team. That’s akin to saying the Dallas Cowboys will be a circus only worth paying attention to for drama.
Some NFL axioms are evergreen.
Look past Minnesota’s smoldering blaze, and the Vikings are still probably making the most prudent possible decision for McCarthy and their future. He’s so young that he doesn’t even turn 22 until late January of next year. Not that they necessarily could, but it wouldn’t have made sense to remove his meniscus and force him back onto the field as fast as possible. They want this guy shining in Minnesota’s purple for a long time, making a complete repair — and longer ensuing recovery time — the practical move, even if it effectively erases a critical early portion of McCarthy’s career.
That’s all well and good, but we shouldn’t overlook the dejection in the here and now. No one cruises by the quarterback of the team missing all 17 games of his rookie year for the first time since the 1960s. That’s so grim. Not even the Vikings, no matter how accustomed to disappointment they are.
Maybe, just maybe, McCarthy will break this despondent franchise’s curse … when he returns in 2025.
