After watching Carson Wentz effectively throw away a “revenge game” against the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 7 with poorly executed pass after poorly executed pass, Minnesota Vikings fans are borderline desperate to see Kevin O'Connell make a change under center.
Has JJ McCarthy been perfect in limited action for Minnesota? No, he's looked, well, like a rookie outside of a very impressive fourth-quarter drive in the season opener, but as one of the youngest quarterbacks in the NFL, that's sort of expected, right? Drake Maye didn't win many games last season, but now leads the top-ranked team in the AFC East in one of the more shocking turnarounds in recent memory thanks to extensive on-field experience.
But what has to happen for the Vikings to actually get McCarthy back into games heading into the holiday season? Well, bracing for a Thursday Night Football showdown against the Los Angeles Chargers, Kevin O'Connell commented on just that, explaining what he needs to see from the redshirt rookie to really get his season back on track.
“It's some of the movements, the reactionary movements within the pocket. Being able to use his athleticism to protect himself in the pocket and then as he's able to work through progressions. I feel really good about the work we've done on the foundation of his fundamentals. That's been pretty evident through the work that he's done, and really, his commitment to doing that. It's really just about, ‘Hey, there's maybe a guy gets edged, and I don't really know the movement I'm going to have to make.' That's where he still feels it, and if he doesn't have the ability to do that pain-free, we obviously risk setting him back, which would be very, very unfortunate with the time lost already,” O'Connell noted via The Athletic's Alec Lewis.
“But also, giving him the best chance of going out there and having success is ultimately what we're looking for. Having to overcome certain things has been the story of our season if you look at it for J.J. Whether it's early on in the Chicago game, we didn't have a great all-11 feel to our execution. Then we did late in the game, and had a bunch of success and won that game. Then, clearly, the circumstances involved in Week 2 made it less than ideal from the standpoint of preparing a game to play in a football game. Now, you have the injury as part of it. No, it's not going to need to be something where he's 130 percent, ot we're being in a situation where we're waiting for this metric that, quite honestly, with this kind of injury, he's got to work through some of that here late in the rehab stages. But it's about his effectiveness and his ability to go out and do his job for 60 minutes without having any setbacks or making his job more difficult than it has to be.”
Considering the Vikings are taking on one of the better passing defenses in the NFL on a short week in Week 8, it makes some sense that Minnesota will opt to give Wentz a shot against the Chargers. But eventually, McCarthy will need to return and show what he can do; otherwise, the seat could grow hot for members of an organization that allowed Sam Darnold to leave for nothing and continue to play well in Seattle.
