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EAGAN, Minn. — Cliches become cliches for a reason. They say that when it rains, it pours, and if you had any doubts about that being true, look no further than the current state of the Minnesota Vikings.
As if Sunday night’s beatdown at the hands of the Atlanta Falcons wasn’t enough, head coach Kevin O’Connell said Monday afternoon that young quarterback J.J. McCarthy injured his ankle. He will miss Sunday’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals. The Vikings will re-evaluate him from there.
Backup quarterback Carson Wentz will start for the team in the short term. O’Connell added that, as of Monday, he did not anticipate McCarthy needing to be placed on injured reserve. When asked whether or not performance factored into McCarthy sitting out at least a game, O’Connell replied directly: “No.”
“Not at all,” O’Connell said. “In fact, it was pretty crushing this morning to hear that for me. Look, for J.J., he’s in a long process, a long journey right now, where there’s going to be some ups and downs.”
The fluctuations of emotions in the last couple of weeks have felt like whiplash. Begin with the Week 1 offense, which started slowly before McCarthy became the hero in his debut on national television. Not even a week later, McCarthy was holding his new baby boy, Rome Micah McCarthy, in his arms at a local hospital. That preceded Sunday night’s debacle, which included his injury.
O’Connell said his QB was hurt on a second-and-20 play in the third quarter. Third-string left tackle Walter Rouse was turnstiled by rookie Falcons edge rusher James Pearce. McCarthy climbed the pocket and scrambled to his left, bouncing the run toward the left sideline. Falcons linebacker Kaden Elliss chased him and dragged him down from behind, landing on McCarthy’s ankle.
A play later, following a false start, McCarthy skipped a throw to superstar receiver Justin Jefferson. Because the blue medical tent was being used between series, O’Connell said the training staff tended to McCarthy on the benches. Minnesota’s staff taped him, and McCarthy remained in the game, only to discover a more serious diagnosis Monday morning.
“It’s crushing,” O’Connell said. “You just want it to be a daily process of activating every aspect of the development and learning because you’ve just seen it out of him. In game, his response, to finding a way to win that opener in Chicago. We weren’t able to get that done yesterday. And there were some plays that could’ve changed the game.”
The way O’Connell relayed the news conjured the scene of last fall, when McCarthy emerged from his first preseason game with a torn meniscus. The severity of this ankle injury seems starkly different, but it does speak to some of the pre-draft skepticism about McCarthy’s ability to stay healthy.
He is like many young, highly drafted quarterbacks in that he did not arrive in the NFL with polish. It was not to the level of Trey Lance or Anthony Richardson, neither of whom tallied even 400 attempts in college at North Dakota State and Florida, respectively. McCarthy threw 713 passes at Michigan and managed his way against elite competition. Still, that figure was half the number of attempts quarterbacks like Jayden Daniels, Michael Penix Jr. and Bo Nix amassed in college.
The Vikings hoped McCarthy could participate as the scout team quarterback early in 2024 for a reason. That chance, the brass believed, would have given him endless low-pressure reps to view complex defenses and troubleshoot different throw trajectories. The torn meniscus shattered that plan. The current injury will, at the very least, delay McCarthy from attaining anything resembling an offensive rhythm.
How fluid will the operation look with Wentz, who signed with the Vikings less than a month ago? It’s fair to wonder. O’Connell said the Vikings wouldn’t have altered the call sheet if Wentz had played Monday night, speaking to the staff’s confidence in his ability to orchestrate what is widely known as a complex system. There is carryover in language and concepts from the two games Wentz played in 2023 with the Los Angeles Rams for head coach Sean McVay.
“He was really impressive last week (in practice) stepping in,” O’Connell said of Wentz. “You felt the veteran presence and the command. He’s really smart, and a guy who has played a lot of football.”
Wentz hasn’t started full-time since 2021, when he threw for more than 3,500 yards and 27 touchdowns for the Indianapolis Colts. His arm strength isn’t a concern, and the Rams leaned into his athletic traits as a runner. Accuracy has been an issue, though, as well as Wentz’s field vision and decisiveness.
Quarterback play won’t matter if the team does not remedy its offensive line problems. Veteran center Ryan Kelly is currently in the concussion protocol. O’Connell mentioned Monday that the early signs have been positive, but this is Kelly’s fourth known concussion in the last decade. His backup, former seventh-round pick Michael Jurgens, has trouble anchoring.
There is still no guarantee that elite left tackle Christian Darrisaw will be back Sunday. If he’s absent, the Vikings will either be starting Justin Skule or Rouse against Bengals star pass rusher Trey Hendrickson. Skule already has the worst pass rush efficiency metric among all tackles, according to Pro Football Focus.
Neither rookie left guard Donovan Jackson nor priority-signee right guard Will Fries has been reliable enough, either. Fries has the second-lowest pass rush efficiency mark among 65 qualified guards. Not to mention, right tackle Brian O’Neill committed at least one mental error on McCarthy’s fumble Sunday night.
Throw in running back Aaron Jones’s hamstring injury and the looming trip overseas, and the extent of the storm that must be weathered in the short term cannot be overstated. The questions now are endless. What happens if Wentz sparks the offense? Would the Vikings stick with him, recognizing how invested they are in the short term? And if that were to happen, how would McCarthy respond? What if Wentz, who has navigated more than 10 injuries since his debut in 2016, goes down? Would the Vikings have enough faith in undrafted quarterback Max Brosmer, who was effective in training camp?
Spending time considering answers to all of these questions is a jarring beginning to the 2025 season. As O’Connell reiterated Sunday night, there are a lot of games left to play. The Vikings stumbled out of the gates two years ago and recovered. The steepness of this climb may be even greater.
(Photo: Stephen Maturen / Getty Images)
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