Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - EMERGENCY POD: JJ MCCARTHY OUT WITH INJURY, WENTZ IN

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

Matthew Coller talks about KOC's announcement that JJ McCarthy will be out for an ankle injury and Carson Wentz is starting. The Purple Insider podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everybody, welcome to an emergency podcast, Matthew Collar here, and we are just fresh off getting the news that Carson Wentz will be the starter for the Minnesota Vikings this week when they go up against the Cincinnati Bengals because J.J. McCarthy is out with a high ankle sprain. which being reported by ESPN's Adam Schaefter is going to keep him out for two to four weeks. So let's go through every part of this, including, hey, a fan duel question of the day, kind of handed on our lap here. How many starts do you think Carson Wentz actually makes that is the fan dual question of the day? So let's go through everything about this from what we can expect from Carson Wentz to is this a real injury?

et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, let's just try to break it down piece by piece and what it means for the rest of the season and for J.J. McCarthy. I want to start with the conspiracy angle of it, which is Kevin O'Connell was asked, is this actually a real injury or is this a benching? And he said it is absolutely a real injury that J.J. McCarthy suffered. And so if you go back and you look at the tape, and I know that multiple people, have tweeted this out, including I think Ben Gessling put it out there on social media on a run for 19 yards. I think it was later in the game. McCarthy takes off. It was the one where

Aaron Jones laid a big block. He takes off and he's scrambling and he gets taken down by the sideline. And you can see that he is taken down very awkwardly and kind of spun around in a very similar tackle to what we saw actually when Patrick Mahomes got a high ankle sprain was that two Super Bowls ago for Patrick Mahomes and he had to play through the high ankle sprain. It was a very similar type of thing where he was running away from somebody. They came down on the back of his legs. And then McCarthy in the game did get up and had a limp to him. He went over. He talked to the trainer. He got it taped up. And then he did play the rest of the game, but came to the facility today with I'm sure

soreness swelling whatever it might have been and they determined it to be a high ankle injury. Now, I know that's not going to stop anybody from saying that it's a shadow benching and that they actually just wanted Carson Wentz to start for next week. But this is a play that you can see. And there was another one where he was sacked where he also got kind of twisted up and hobbled off the field after that.

So there is visual evidence of J.J. McCarthy having at least some issue with his leg, ankle, et cetera. And that makes me think that the shadow benching idea, well, it makes a lot of sense based on the way that McCarthy performed. I don't think that they wanted to do this. And O'Connell used the word devastating for J.J. McCarthy. This is, of course, his second injury, and he's only played two games. and this one is going to keep him out for some time. Now, if it was maybe something that he came in and they said, look, we can tape this up, we can shoot you up with whatever,

some painkiller and get you out there for next week. And they decided, well, based on the way that he's played, he can't really do a whole heck of a lot more, you know, with an injury. Like, he's not going to be an effective version of himself. So it would be a better idea to have. have Carson Wentz for a stretch of games where they really need to win. If you look at the schedule as a whole and the way that it plays out, Jake Browning this week and then a beatable Steelers team that just lost to Seattle

and gave up whatever it was 30-something points to the Jets. And then you're talking about the Cleveland Browns with Joe Flackle. These are winnable games that could very easily get this team back on track as then they go into later on the tough. or part of the schedule, and it may have just made sense to them because we don't know exactly the severity of this high ankle sprain, but it may have just made sense to them to let him heal back to 100% and play Carson Wentz because he already wasn't performing well, and he's definitely not going to perform better when it comes to trying to play with an ankle injury.

The other part of it that I thought of was, and again, I am going to go on the idea of that this is a real injury. So as I talk going forward, that is what I'm going to be assuming because we can see it and because Kevin O'Connell said it is not a shadow benching. I know what else would he say, but I don't think we have reason to think that they just decided after the game, we're going to fake an injury, so we're going to sit him on the bench. But maybe, you know, maybe. I mean, you can always leave the door open to that possibility.

but I'm just going to talk in the future, so I don't just get a million comments of everyone saying, it's a shadow benching. Like, I know that there's not, that that's not going to go away just because we can see where he got hurt. And it's going to be called a phantom injury. It's going to be called fake. I understand that. I am going to talk for the rest of the show and the rest of the week and how many of our other weeks that this is, that he is out, as if this is a real injury, okay?

So just that's your PSA. So now we get to the injury, I think it also could explain some of the performance when it came to the accuracy of throwing the football. Now, it certainly doesn't explain the entire performance because that was later on in the game, but some of the misses, he overthrows Jalen Naylor, he has an overthrow at the end of the game for an interception, some of the timidness in the pocket. that also could be explained by playing through an injury. And again, that doesn't wash away all the issues, not getting a snap correctly twice in the game, open receivers that were missed. But maybe, you know, a certain throw that he leaves up short

or doesn't time out correctly or doesn't put juice on it when you normally would have expected him to do that. That could have had something to do with him trying to play through this injury. and he was treated for this on the sideline, by the way, and did have his ankle taped up to get back into the game. And everything we've seen from J.J. McCarthy would tell you that he would be the type of quarterback that wouldn't want to go into the injury tent, wouldn't want to come out of the game, and would try to fight through this.

And that did not result in a lot of success last night against the Atlanta Falcons. But that, I just wanted to address that part of it, that the injury, you can see it, and it may have impacted his performance toward the end of the game. Now, going forward is the big thing here, because there's the short term, and then there's the bigger picture with J.J. McCarthy and this injury that will keep him out, according to Shefter, two to four weeks, but I want to start by going through that. So this week they play Cincinnati with Carson Wentz, and then they go overseas for two games. it seems very unlikely that anybody but Carson Wentz, unless he gets injured,

would be starting in Dublin and in London, because that would be a lot to ask to fly J.J. McCarthy over there to London and then ask him to play coming off of an injury in such an odd circumstance and questionable turf. We definitely have seen that in recent years, the potential issues with the turf. So it's very hard to see J.J. McCarthy playing, within the next couple of weeks. Now, there's different scenarios here.

If the Vikings in these three winnable games go three and O, then you are not likely to see J.J. McCarthy anytime soon after that. Because, A, that would mean that Carson Wentz was playing well. It would mean that they were four and one going into their tough stretch. And we've talked about this before, that they needed to get to four and one to be able to handle the rest of the schedule But then if you start going down this road, it's a really hard thing to figure out when exactly you would bring J.J. McCarthy back if the team is performing well, because if you go over and you sweep Europe and you end up two and all over there, if you win this week and you're sitting at four and one, then you come back from the buy and you've got the Eagles, then the chargers. are you bringing back J.J. McCarthy from an injury against the Super Bowl champions who have a freakish defensive line? Probably not.

Are you bringing back J.J. McCarthy on a Thursday night against a Jim Harbaugh team that's going to be crazy physical? No. And then you go to Ford Field after that. And then there's a home game against the Bears, I guess, if you were going to do it. And then you've got the Ravens mixed in. You've got a lot of great opponents that they're going to have to play in the second half of the season. And it's difficult from the seat right now to see when exactly is it that you are going to bring back J.J. McCarthy, when would it be ideal to bring him back if this team is playing well? Now, the other side of that equation is pretty clear. If they don't play well and Carson Wentz loses to the Browns and you're sitting there at two and three, then just bring him back whenever he's ready, probably after the buy, haven't played the Eagles, get his. much experience as possible, but this is going to be a lost season. And that's how these next three weeks really determine where this thing's going to go. And it is either going to go on a couple of paths. Path number one is Carson Wentz wins games. And it's a Sam Darnold situation.

It's a Case Keenham situation. We've seen this many times throughout Vikings history. Brad Johnson, Gus Ferrat, there have been many quarterbacks who have kind of come through for because of an injury, Sam Bradford and have led the team either to the playoffs, playoff contention, NFC championship, whatever it might be, that's one path for this team because if they get to four and one, then all you need to do is to go, what, six and seven or six, seven and six, the rest of the way to get into the playoffs to get 10 wins or to at least be in that playoff mix. So if you get to four and one and win over the next

couple of weeks with Wentz, that probably means he played pretty well within KOC system or at least kept the train on the tracks because let's be honest, Carson Wentz probably wins that game last night if he's in there. And if they play similarly and slow teams down on defense and he gets the ball to some of the wide receivers that they have the weapons. And look, Derisaw's coming back. Addison's coming back. Carson Wentz is going to have a better group with him than J.J. McCarthy over these last couple weeks, if they go three and oh, even two and one, it makes it very hard to make a change back to J.J. McCarthy with a bunch of veteran players on this team and a really good team that spent the entire summer saying more is required,

we're ready to win. Brian O'Neill saying, I don't care if we run it or pass it 75 times. We need to win. Thinking about it in those terms, there are a lot of gentlemen in that locker room who are very desperate to make this season worth it. And if Carson Wentz plays well, nobody is going to be asking for J.J. McCarthy to come back in the game. Even if they just split some of those tough games that they have on the way,

if they get a surprise win against the Eagles, or if they could beat the Chargers, if they can go to Lambo, they've done it plenty of times and beat the Green Bay Packers. Maybe they surprise them. Maybe you get another break. There's quarterback injuries everywhere this week. Joe Burroughs out. Maybe you get another break and there's another quarterback who's really good. Carson went or, you know, Justin Herbert or whoever ends up being out or Jordan

Love. They faced Jordan Love last year while he was banged up. These things happen. You get a break or two and then you are competing legitimately in the NFC North with Carson Wentz, just like we all drew it up, right? It wouldn't be a Viking season if this didn't happen, I guess. This is a motif that we've seen many, many times before. So that's a realistic scenario here.

And Carson Wentz is good enough to do this. Now, the last time he started was in Washington, and it was not a good scene, but that was Washington. That was disaster. That was late Daniel Snyder. And he played on a good Indianapolis team that was probably not as good as this offense and got them to the final day of the season

and they lost to miss the playoffs. But at least he has, in his recent history, had a lot of teams that, covered around 500, and he's a pretty inconsistent quarterback. It's oftentimes great or really, really rough, but at least you have the oftentimes great part. And we saw this from last year with Sam Darnold, where a guy came in who had had extreme inconsistencies, a lot of armed talent, a high draft pick.

I mean, this is feeling very deja vuie to even Sam Bradford, who had them in the playoff race in 2016 and won five games in a row. to start his tenure there. It feels very similar right down to the offensive line injuries to that one. So that's one path. The other path is that if we see J.J. McCarthy play again, and it's not because of a Wentz injury, it means the season is probably lost. And that's just the reality of this thing.

That's what it probably means. Because if Wence loses to the Bengals, which would be a catastrophic loss to the season, considering that Burroughs not here and playing, if he loses to the Bengals, goes overseas, loses to Pittsburgh, whatever, maybe they beat Cleveland, but even if they lose to Cleveland, you just go on a losing streak, then you put in J.J. McCarthy and you just say, learn as much as you can, and 2026 is going to be our year. And then it becomes one of the most disappointing seasons that we have ever seen versus

the expectations. And that would take me back to maybe 2018. If he plays again, this season, it's probably because it didn't go well at some point with Wentz. They fell out of the playoff race and they've just put him back in because whatever. I mean, you need to get him reps. He needs to play a lot of football. And compared to, I mean, this is really mind bending, right? Compared to where we were a week ago, which is, wow, the resilience of J.J. McCarthy. he's going to be able to fight and battle through even the tough moments.

And then last night, I think everybody probably had the same feeling last night coming out of that game, which was J.J. McCarthy needs to find a way, is there a spring league that could get him some work? Can he work on the side of throwing the football? Like, he just looks so inexperienced last night. And there was a lot of reasons to criticize other people. there were reasons to question the play calling. I know that's everyone's favorite thing to do no matter what loss it's ever been.

It could be a 45 to 42 loss and there would be questions about the play calling on offense. I know that that always happens. There are many, many reasons to question a lot of things about that game. But I think we all saw the same thing, which was that J.J. McCarthy did not in his eight quarters for most of them look ready to lead a winning team. And so that's why, of course, the shadow benching thing is going to come up, but he did not look like that. He was putting up numbers in these last two games over, even overall, even with the great fourth quarter, it was still brutal numbers over. He was the worst quarterback in the NFL through two games by a lot of metrics, whether it's ESPN's

QBR. I haven't checked his PFF grade, but I imagine that's pretty darn low. His QBR was a six. His quarterback rating was under what it would be if you just threw the ball into the ground every single play. It was not looking like he was really ready to start in the NFL. And so now, just because of this, the ripple effect could send us who knows where. And I want to talk more about Carson Wentz as a quarterback and get into that a little bit and take a look at just what he's done in the past because we're all just reacting to this. And you know, you talk about the irony that Carson Wentz missed out on going to a Super Bowl because he got injured as a young quarterback. And Nick Foles came in and, you know, the rest of that story. So we'll look a little

bit closer at that. But the ripple effect of this injury for J.J. McCarthy could send the Vikings organization in who knows how many different ways. It could send them in some sort of way that, look, he just comes back and they fight through the season and maybe they're eight and nine or nine and eight and they're looking toward next year. It could be that he's out for two games and he comes back against Cleveland and he's locked in when he returns and it's a great outcome. That's also on the table. And it's also on the table that Carson Wentz plays really well and you don't see J.J. McCarthy for the rest of the year. And then we go into another offseason next year going,

what do you do about J.J. McCarthy? And we've seen this outcome many times in history. And I know it's a two to four week injury, but I'm having trouble figuring out how that ends up being two to four weeks. Unless it just goes so terribly for Carson Wentz and they can't win it all and everyone's hurt and it's just a totally lost season. I'm having a very difficult time figuring out how exactly J.J. McCarthy

if they're still in the race, if they're still playing well, if they beat Cleveland going into the buy, how would they bench Carson Wentz at that point? If they got to four and one, they would have to keep him in. But this sends you tumbling down a path of wondering, what is this going to be? When you look at several quarterbacks of the past who have had early injuries and have just not been able to get on the field and develop,

it doesn't often work. and what came to my mind right away was three quarterbacks who were drafted high. One was Jake Locker. And there's a lot of similarities with Jake Locker and J.J. McCarthy. Locker got injured a lot. He was not very accurate, had a big heart, was really tough, great leader. All the boxes were checked from the character, but he wasn't very accurate. And he never got to develop to be accurate because he was never on the field.

Because he got hurt all the time. So Jake Locker came to mind. Also, Anthony Richardson and Trey Lance came to mind. Two quarterbacks who did not play a ton of college football, and then they were thrown into the fire. They get in. They look pretty slow with reading things. They show some flashes.

You like some stuff that you see from them. But then they get hurt. And they don't have a chance to develop. J.J. McCarthy's only chance at getting better from what we saw last night was playing football. And that's why I believe Kevin O'Connell when he says he was devastated. I think that they wanted this to work. And also, I think if they had any thought that they would just bench McCarthy,

if it didn't work through two weeks, then I think that Carson Wentz would have been here a lot earlier. I don't think that Carson Wentz would have shown up at the very end of the off season and they would have screwed around with Sam Howell. I think that they would have made better offers for other backup quarterbacks around the NFL, if they may have even traded for Kirk, like if they thought that this wasn't going to work as they were going through training camp. And if they were looking at J.J. McCarthy and saying, oh, guys, I don't know. This is pretty rough. They might have traded for Kirk Cousins.

It would have made a lot of sense. He's certainly available. He certainly knows the system. And you know what? You never know in this world. It could still happen, depending on how this all goes. but I think that the plan was to fight through the tough times and to fight through the challenges of a young quarterback and trying to get him ramped up to win games as they're going into a stretch where there were winnable games coming up. That was the plan all along. It was to lean into McCarthy.

It was to do everything that they possibly could from him. I think they saw a ton of really nice stuff. this training camp there's no doubt about it i was standing there there was a lot of really good stuff but there was also the stuff that you've seen in these last two games of a guy looking and experience and no matter how many times anybody said it who was out at training camp the accuracy's got to improve the inconsistency from day to day is pretty tough the hype train was so far you know beyond uh and the belief in mccarthy it seemed from the team and the way they talked about it, it was all ready to, hey, this guy's a franchise quarterback, and then he

wins his first week and he gets NFC champion, NFC, NFC offensive player of the week and all that sort of stuff. And they spent the whole week celebrating it kind of like they had won a championship or something. And, you know, it was like, off we go. And then the realities of a young quarterback who hasn't played much hit you in the face. And I remember that there was another commenter who said at some point like oh thank goodness i'll never have to hear you say he hasn't taken snaps before after he finally gets out there i was like i wouldn't count on it because the fact that he had so little experience ended up mattering and then another bad break means even less experience for j j mccarthy going forward so now what do the vikings if they win the next

three games or even two out of the next three and wence looks pretty good and is moving the football do they just do they just what they just go back to him i don't see how that is possible for them to do that this is not the carolina panthers last year with andy dalton where andy dalton they bench bryce young andy dalton comes in plays okay then struggles but that was never a team that was competing and oftentimes this happens with teams that don't have any chance of actually competing this team does and i know that the injure right now are bad. And it's pretty crazy. And O'Connell talked about it today of, like, there's been a lot of bad breaks. I mean, Blake Cashman, Andrew Van Ginkle, like, those are bad breaks.

Cashman's just trying to chase down a quarterback. It pulls a hamstring. Some of them are probably foreseeable. Ryan Kelly has had this issue in the past. And Ryan Kelly's had a lot of injuries. Aaron Jones has had hamstring injuries in the past. And maybe if we're doing the whole second guessing game, there's a lot you can second guess with that because you're not miracle workers on the training staff. You've got a great plan, but you're not miracle workers. So you could go back and say, well, you could have seen this coming, you could have seen that, but not all of these. But if you look forward and if they get some wins here with Carson Wentz and you get Van Ginkle and Cashman back, although Eric Wilson's been fine, and then you get Darrisaw back,

which possibly this week, I think it's a very, very realistic expectation, and they might have to say you've got to get back in just because you're down to Walter Rouse right now. Ed left tackle, who I thought overall, you know, in his handful of snaps other than the holding, handled himself okay and was a better option than Justin's school who played at about a T.J. Clemmings level performance.

It was just a 30-something PFF grade. That's as bad as you can really get. It was as bad on tape as it could possibly get. And the fact that, you know, McCarthy, to me, looked like he was not identifying some things with the Falcon's defense and being able to adjust protections. That's kind of where you also need Carson Wentz in there to run this team like a veteran quarterback.

But you can see a situation where guys get healthy. You get Jordan Addison back. And suddenly you're receiving core looks a heck of a lot stronger. with one of the better young wide receivers in the league. And you can run the ball with Mason and kind of off you go. And like you're a competing team again. I know it's crazy to act like they're not after they lost one game in week two, which again made me think a little bit like,

do we live in a simulation? Because this reminded me that game of what it looked like in Pittsburgh with Case Keenum. And they eventually, and then Adam Thielen brought it up. And eventually they go. to the NFC championship game. But when it comes to the whole roster, there's a lot of injuries right now

and these players, when they come back, you're still going to have a very strong team that feels like it can compete in the NFC North. So when are you going to bring back in J.J. McCarthy to make sense. It only makes sense to bring him back in if Carson Wentz has fallen apart. But then you're getting into QB controversy at some point, because you're going to go through this stretch of the season, you can get some

wins, you can get yourself into that playoff discussion, and then you might arrive at Philadelphia, arrive at Los Angeles, arrive at those games that are going to be so tough, and then Wence doesn't play as well, and then it's going to be calling for J.J. McCarthy, and then Kevin O'Connell has to decide, do you put the kid back in? Do you stick with the veteran? I mean, this has become instantly with one ankle turn a very messy situation both for the short and the long term because depending on how far down the road

you want to get with this conversation and at a moment like this you kind of have to I think you have to start thinking of every possible thing that could end up happening here if they ended up at 9 and 8 and made the playoffs and played a good playoff game or something and Wentz played well you might end up looking around going, well, what do you do?

Do you turn it over to J.J. McCarthy next year? This is kind of the scenario that the Colts got in with Anthony Richardson and how they ended up with Daniel Jones at 2 and O leading their team because they had a very talented team and what do we do? Because if you keep rolling out the young quarterback who has never played, how are you going to get them to play? And this is why the timeline, it's very tough with the timelines to make them match up. The main idea here, and it's the right idea, and it's proven historically,

the main idea was to have the young quarterback on the rookie contract, and the idea on draft night 2024 was to develop him for a year behind Sam Darnold, the tried and true method, and then life got in the way with the injury, and it sets him back. And I remember talking about it. I remember talking about it this offseason. Well, he's got a lot of ways to go for a guy who has not started throwing since January. And then he has to get everything back up to full speed.

It's hard to do. And he showed some signs of being able to do it. He showed signs of being able to be a starting quarterback in the NFL. We saw those in the first couple games. There are throws you can point to. There are runs you can point to and go, I see it. I see exactly why this quarterback was a first round draft pick. I think the character is through the roof.

You see that. You see the toughness. You see the leadership. You see the resilience. But what's hard not to see is accuracy and execution. And, you know, I do agree that we could look back and say that they should have played them more in the preseason. I thought that at the time that, I mean, I bought the explanation of, well, then you're not playing it with the starting offensive line. But maybe the starting offensive line's got to play then because they did need more.

from him of development, but you start to get into this cycle of, well, he's never played, when's he going to play? And there's no good time to play a young quarterback who's struggling when you have a great football team. That's where it becomes very challenging. And they may have fallen backwards into a good scenario here with Carson Wentz, who I believe in this situation is going to be able to play football for them and get the ball to Jefferson. He's got a very strong arm. We've seen him throw in warmups and his arm looks very live. So this is still a huge guy with a big arm who has drafted high and has won some games in the NFL. And it's a veteran quarterback working with Kevin O'Connell. And if you, when we go through the tape last night and I've

only looked at, you know, some of it, just some of the plays that were on my mind, opportunities were all over the field for J.J. McCarthy last night all over the field. There's there's five. that are easy to name off the top of my head, the throat of Jefferson that came short, the play where he fumbles the ball and then can't get it to the wide open receiver. There's another opportunity for Jalen Naylor. Of course, the one at the end of the game

where he throws it over his head, but there's another one where he's open and he misses him. And it's just, if you have a quarterback like Carson Wentz, who even just executes the offense, halfway decently, you end up winning last night's game and you can have this defense hang on in games

and you can be in the conversation. But I think what ends up getting taken off the table is those words that everybody is always afraid to say in Minnesota because something always goes wrong. And this team did enter the season starting to talk about, you know, can you compete for a Super Bowl? And I don't know how you even begin to have that discussion is Carson Wentz is going to take over.

J.J. McCarthy is hurt. If he does come back, he's set back another month at least in terms of his progress. And this is the ultimate Charlie Brown type of situation with pulling the football out from underneath Vikings fans here because I did not want to go crazy last night with overreaction after the Atlanta game because we've seen historically, quarterbacks have bad games and I went through it last night Brad Johnson had a game

where he had under 40 quarterback rating Dante had a game under 40 Kirk had a game under 40 quarterback rating it happens sometimes every single thing goes against you in a game and it doesn't work out and I said last night

that my confidence in them winning 11 games had gone down but I was still not going to change it because I still was just thinking that they're good opportunities are there. And once those click, it's, it's going to happen for them. We've just seen it too much with quarterbacks that it's going to happen and they're going to be in these games and they're going to win some and they're going to get rolling and it's just

one game against Atlanta. But that changed everything when he was tackled from behind and now ends up out for at least a month, but it might end up being a lot more. And, you know, I think that's part of it too when it comes to the the theories that are out there about what kind of, you know, Is it real injury? Is it a benching and everything else? I mean, it's always, to me, easier to believe the conspiracy type of theory. And we see that a lot just in society in general. But I think the almost obvious explanation is the right one because it does nothing good for them to have him on the bench.

Nothing good except for, hey, they can beat the Bengals and maybe have a slightly higher chance to beat the Bengals. But everything else now just became extremely. extremely, extremely muddy for this season and for the future. And it's really, really hard to talk about this team as having any shot at beating the real contenders of the NFC. When you're playing a quarterback in Wednesday, it has not started in a long time now. Really, he was benched in 2022. That's still several seasons ago. And yeah, we have seen this from time to time in the past.

We've seen it from Darnold, who was on the bench in San Francisco. Francisco. We've seen it from, you know, Randall Cunningham. We've seen it from Jeff George. It's not totally impossible that that could happen. But when you look around and you see how well the Packers are playing, you see Detroit pick it up, you know, it's just, you see the way that the Rams are playing. It's very hard to look at this situation and say, oh, yeah, this is going to go okay. So I don't think that they would want J.J. McCarthy on the bench. the only scenario that you could see would be if everybody was on board with like that

we just our season's going to be over before it even starts if he keeps playing it would have had to have been that bad in their minds after watching the tape but when you can actually see him get hurt you could see him limp off the field you could see him get treated on the sideline and knowing how bad this is for them

because at very least what you would have had in a lost season where McCarthy starts at very least, if they went six and 11 with McCarthy as the starting quarterback, what they would have had is information. They would have been able to look at a season, even if it had gone horribly wrong. And every single game looks like that. And even if, I don't know,

even if Justin Jefferson ended up with 30 catches at the end of the year, and it was just a total catastrophe, at very least you would know. But now, this doesn't even let you know. And if he doesn't come back this year, because Wentz is playing pretty well, what do you even do with the future of J.J. McCarthy? So this injury puts everything into question about the future of McCarthy and of the Vikings at quarterback.

And it's very possible that there'll be 500 with Wentz, as we talked about many times, like, hey, you can go 500, and that he'll play 10 games and that they'll have a big enough sample size. But when it comes to that theory about the shadow benching, that's the one that doesn't make sense. Because what you, these guys have extensions. They just signed extensions. They're not firing them if they have a bad season where their quarterback that they put all the eggs in his basket can't play. They wouldn't, they, they would not want to do this. They would want to find out every bit of information about him as a starter. And whether he had the, the chance to be the quarterback that they want him to be, they would want to find that out.

And now the sample size becomes more limited. And then you're in a position where if Wentz plays, but they're not good enough to get the playoffs, then you're talking about playing JJ at the end of the season, trying to evaluate small sample sizes. Then you get into the Bryce Young fallacy, which is, you know, Bryce Young has a few good games at the end of last year for Carolina then comes out. He's the same Bryce Young. It's just not good enough.

What do you do? What do you do from here? This is much more than just a little ankle tweak, and he'll be back in a couple weeks. This is a could start something of a ball rolling in a direction that I don't know that anybody saw coming or wanted to see coming. And the last impression of J.J. McCarthy is him looking as lost as we've ever seen a quarterback look in that game against Atlanta.

So it's a very difficult situation for the Vikings to be in. So I want to talk about Wentz and his future. I mean, the Fandall question of the day is pretty simple. It's just how many starts do you think Carson Wentz will end up making? Also later on tonight, I'll be back live with Brian Murphy and Mani Hill. And we're going to pick that schedule again now with Carson Wentz. And you are one play away also from. Max Brosmer starting and, you know, it would be the, it would be the most, the most Brock

Purdy thing ever, the most Brock Purdy thing ever to have Max Brosmer come off the bench and Kurt Warner this team. So nothing's impossible in the National Football League. And they have now a quarterback that does know how to play and can win some games for them. And in the short term of this season, Carson Wentz playing is the best case scenario for them, based on what we saw from J.J. McCarthy, for them to actually reach the playoffs. But if you reach the playoffs with Carson Wentz at 9 and 8 and you slide in because of some sort of tiebreaker or something, and then you lose in the first round, then what is this? What do you do? You just go back to J.J. McCarthy after sitting him the whole season and then you say, well, it's actually good. because he got to practice.

I don't know. I do not know. Let me get into what Wentz has been recently in just a moment, but a couple of sponsors to remind you of here on this emergency podcast. Let me tell you about hymns. Our friends at hymns offer a convenient, well, actually, you know, let me tell you about hymns here. There's no way to prepare yourself for hair loss.

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monoxidil and finesteroide prescription required see the website for more important safety information okay carson wents here is his recent history he obviously played for the philadelphia eagles until 2020 they tanked uh with carson at quarterback in 2020. Their plan was clearly to move on to Jalen Hertz, who they had drafted that year. And they were looking to draft higher to get was at Devante Smith, possibly, that they took at the top of the draft that year. And then in 2021, he was traded for a first round draft pick to the Indianapolis Colts, where his overall numbers were pretty good. But the way that that season played out was a very big disappointment for the Colts. He ended up with

3,500 yards, 27 touchdowns to seven interceptions, which is a pretty good stat line for a good team, did get sacked too much, had 32 sacks, he peaked as high as 50 sacks in his career, which does give you some pause and concern based on where the offensive line is at right now. But he ended that 21 season with a 94.6 quarterback rating. And overall, they were on the precipice of making the playoffs and should have and lost to an urban mire jacksaville jaguars team maybe they had fired urban already maybe he was still there whatever it was uh it was a disaster for them with wence and the biggest thing with his 2021 season that i noticed looking through it is the crazy ups and downs that wence had that year i mean he had a 400 yard passing game at baltimore

in which he threw two touchdowns and completed 70% of his passes and had 128 quarterback rating. Then the next week followed that up with another great game. And then the two weeks after that was awful at San Francisco and then against Tennessee. And that has really been Carson Wentz's history where it's been some steps forward and steps back. There's a game in here against the Jets where he throws for 272, three touchdowns. The very next week against the Jaguars, he averages five.

5.3 yards an attempt, no touchdowns, 55 PFF grade, the inconsistency has been an issue for Carson Wentz. And that's why when you look at his career yards per attempt, only 6.7 yards per attempt, because he's not the most locked in accurate, dead eye accurate type of quarterback, 62.7% completion percentage over his career, which I know is not a perfect statistic, but I think does tell a story with Carson Wentz. Big arm, downfields. throws he had a very good big time throw percentage for his career he's made a lot of them that 2019 season he they were a bad team and he played pretty well and grinded through it and was one of the league leaders in big time throws so he's got that tool in his bag and if

there's one thing that you're going to look at with Carson Wentz and say you know what call me crazy but that might not be the worst thing of all time like that might work with Kevin O'Connell, it is because the arm strength that he has the arm strength to make the throws in this offense. We talk about pushing the ball into tight windows. We talk about downfield stuff, all the things with, you know, Sam Darnold, where willingness to take risks, willingness to be aggressive. And Carson Wentz has a lot of that in his bag.

So they've got a chance to face off with the Bengals, get a win, go overseas, fight and grind and tooth and nail. I mean, Aaron Rogers played terrible yesterday. What is his stat line? Let me find his stat line from yesterday. Aaron Rogers was horrendous against the Seattle Seahawks. He, after that first week of a bunch of screen passes that turned into touchdowns, Aaron Rogers looked like the Aaron Rogers from last year. Oh, what an awful game. He was 18 for 33, one touchdown, two picks, and 203 yards.

A 58 quarterback rating was sacked three times in this game. Held on to the ball too long, has no athleticism left. They're facing Jake Browning a broken Aaron Rogers and Joe Flacco with Carson Wentz. They might have the better quarterback in all three games. And then you just have to see where this season is going to take you after that. because there's a lot of paths, there's a lot of roads, there's a lot of possibilities now that are on the table that last night, we thought, well, it looks pretty bad and they're going to have to fight through it,

but there was no other thought leaving U.S. Bank Stadium from me that we would be discussing Carson Wentz, not based on any injury that we saw and not based on the idea that they could bench him. I thought that's pretty far down the road. I would have thought that he would have had. had to have played badly for six to eight weeks in order for him to end up on the bench. And I'm not saying it's a benching. I'm just saying that none of us walked out of the stadium with any thought that this was

what we were going to be discussing here on this day. But it would not be the Minnesota Vikings franchise if we weren't, I guess. It is unbelievable, unbelievable how many times this has happened. and that's why you can't count out what comes next with Carson Wentz a quarterback and on we go from there. But they can't, they can't treat this like a lost season and they really can't treat it like a development season. They can't be four in one or three and two and then be facing Philadelphia and just be like, okay, JJ's back in. Not if Wentz plays well. If Wentz plays well, they need to keep fighting for that playoff spot no matter one.

What? They need to get into the postseason. The owners of this team spent more cash than anybody else in the NFL this off season. They need to keep fighting for a playoff spot. This is not a situation where you're just like, well, time to tank. There are years that I've thought that. 2020 was probably the best example. There are years. And you go back to Kirk and the Achilles and all that.

And you think about the Dobbs game and all the different things that transpired. if they didn't win a couple of random games with Josh Dobbs, a quarterback, one being three, nothing, that maybe Michael Pennix is your quarterback instead. I don't know. But now, J.J. McCarthy's future, there's an up-in-the-air nature to that. I don't think his career is done, but how do you handle this?

With so many great players on this football team who are in their prime or late prime, how do you handle this going forward is going to be a major, major challenge with some difficult decisions, I'm sure, at different points for Kevin O'Connell. And I mean, maybe, yeah, I don't know. Maybe the best case scenario because, of course, the one that comes to all of our heads is like Jeff George or whatever, right? It's just case Keenum, we've seen it.

But it's possible that the best case scenario for them is that it just, the wheels come off and a lot of guys end up on IR hoping for next year and they win four games, five games, they draft high and you go from there with J.J. McCarthy and you're going into 2026 finding out. That's a pretty, that's a pretty bleak best case scenario. But that would mean if they're winning five games or something, that means McCarthy would play the second half the season and you would find out about it because if you're comparing if you're comparing long-term outcomes and this is just this is how tough this is right now if you're comparing long-term outcomes it's probably better if wence doesn't play well and they lose two out of the

next three games and McCarthy just comes back and he just plays and you learn as much as you can about j jay mccarthy no matter how ugly it gets no matter how miserable and how tough it ends up being. And I'll say this, that, you know, there's going to be a ton of second guessing of every single thing that they've done. All the moves. You didn't make this move. You didn't do that move. You should have done this. You shouldn't have got rid of that guy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I will maintain that this was the right plan that was executed in a way that made sense all the way. I'm not going to change that because of what happened here with this ankle injury for J.J. McCarthy. The way that they invested a ton on veteran players,

it's a model that's worked building around a young quarterback in his second season. It's a model that's worked. But you know what? The truth is, nothing works 100% of the time. So we don't know yet whether it's still going to work or not going to work. But the different ways that you can go after this, it's tough to figure out. like if they play well, when McCarthy gets on the field and it's, if they, if they don't play well, then it's a lost season. And you're hoping to just find out whether McCarthy could play or not going into next year. Not what you guys wanted to wake up to today. Not what you wanted to wake up to today. The Vikings organization once again put into a corner by a quarterback

injury. You know, I said unbelievable. I really can't believe it. I mean, Dante Culpepper, Teddy Bridgewater, the times that you think Culpepper is coming off the 0-4 season, which is incredible. You think you're good going forward. You got your quarterback for five, seven, ten more years. Teddy Bridgewater coming off a division championship in 2015. And then all of a sudden, Sam Bradford, it's your quarterback. It's just remarkable.

You finally get, and you nail the draft class, right? 2024, great draft class, lots of talent. You nail the draft class. You get the top pick, you trade up a spot to get a guy that makes a lot of sense. And now here we are, gosh, how many days, a year and a half from the day that they drafted McCarthy's played two times. That's not how they expected it to play out. And that is life in the National Football League.

So I'm going to wrap up this emergency podcast now. And later on tonight, 7.30 Central, we will hear from Brian Murphy and Mani Hill. We will react to this news and we'll try to play out some of the scenarios with different perspectives than just mine. And we will also find out how many wins do those guys think the season can have now? And what is the expectation now for Kevin O'Connell, this offense, defense, whence, when McCarthy comes back, so much to continue to discuss. So thank you all for popping in and joining this emergency podcast. It's not my first. It's not my first rodeo.

And those who have followed the show for a long time, no. My first day in Minnesota, my first day when I got the job for 1,500 ESPN to move from Buffalo to here, to work for 1,500 ESPN radio in Twin Cities. My first day was when Teddy Bridgewater got hurt. And it was maybe my fifth day when they traded for Sam Bradford. and I've seen it all since then. The Bradford injury,

the Keenham run to the NFC championship, the Josh Dobbs game, where we thought for two weeks that Josh Dobbs could be the bridge quarterback. It's been a crazy, crazy time this last decade in quarterback history for the Minnesota Vikings, and this is the latest chapter

with J.J. McCarthy getting hurt. So this is, It changes everything, my friends. Okay, take a deep breath. We'll check in with you all later. 7.30 tonight roundtable, myself, Brian Murphy, Manny Hill. And we'll break it down all week leading up to Vikings and Bengals. Two franchises looking shell-shocked.

I mean, imagine being the Bengals. You're one of the best quarterbacks in the league and he can't ever seem to stay on the field for two seasons in a row. It's a tough league. It's a tough league. Well, I feel bad for Vikings fans who have been through this many times, but it's not your guys' first rodeo either. And off we go into whatever future may hold for the Vikings.

But thanks again for joining, and we will see you all very soon. Football.