Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - JJ McCarthy's hand banged up, KOC talks play calling (Part 1)

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

Matthew Coller talks about JJ McCarthy being limited in practice because of a hand injury. KOC addressed criticisms of his play calling/ The Purple Insider podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. Also, check out our sponsor HIMS at https://hims.com/purpleinsider 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 another episode of Purple Insider, presented by Fandul. Matthew Collar here, as always, and we got a lot to get to tonight, including J.J. McCarthy, a hand injury. Kevin O'Connell talked about play calling and your questions and comments. There's a lot of room tonight on the show to answer questions and thoughts. and feelings and takes. So make sure you fire those into the comment section. We'll get to them shortly after I give you a little bit of a taste of what happened out at TCO Performance Center today. The injury report, the Chicago Bears could not have been any more different than the Baltimore Ravens.

If you remember last week, the Ravens had nothing at all on their injury report. Well, the Chicago Bears had half of their roster. So it's hard to parse through a little bit. what was happening exactly with Chicago and their practice. I think the next couple days will get a sense for who is actually likely to be on the injury report and playing in which players matter in which we're having maybe recovery days on Wednesday because it was a very long list. For the Vikings, though, at the top of their injury list was J.J. McCarthy

who hit his hand on a helmet when throwing to just Jefferson, I believe it was the one that it was in the end zone and Jefferson did not make the catch, but it also could have been a different play. That was what some people brought up. But either way, he hit his hand on a helmet and obviously not a great feeling for him, I'm sure. So Kevin O'Connell came out today, announced that. I think just to let everybody know, yep, he's going to be limited in practice, but it did not sound from either what O'Connell said or J.J. McCarthy. about the hand injury, like there's any chance whatsoever that he is going to miss this game against the Chicago Bears.

So, well, let's just start there with what JJ had to say about his hand injury. Do you think that affected you after that? Well, like, you know, if you get your hand slammed in a car door, like it's going to feel different for, you know, everything you do with that hand. So, you know, there's no excuses whatsoever at the end of the day. You know, we're warriors and we've got to push through. Just to be super clear, like, you don't, do you anticipate this changing anything about how you prep for this game or how you play? So there you go.

J.J. McCarthy says the injury should not change anything about his preparation or what happens for him leading up to the game against the Chicago Bears. I think maybe the best takeaway is that as we were evaluating some of those throws that were not in the vicinity of some of his receivers, it is possible. that a hand injury may have impacted some of the accuracy there. I mean, these things happen. Guys get hit in the hand, quarterbacks all the time on their follow-through or something, hit it off a helmet, hit it off, you know, somebody else trying to go tackle them,

and you have to power through and you have to make accurate throws. And I think that's what he's saying there either way. But I think that it is fair to look at it, like there may have been some. I'm not saying that all accuracy issues from J.J. McCarthy, it could be explained by this one injury. We don't really know. We can't really tell without us going through the tape with him and saying, well, yeah, this one came out of my hand a little bit differently.

But I think probably does explain some that were a little confusing, possibly, where he had open receivers and even normally, whether it's training camp or what we've seen so far, he has been accurate. And on some of those, the ball came out differently. Again, that doesn't absolve everything. the technical issues and you know some of the footwork that we saw some of the late decisions that has nothing to do with your hand but it could have been somewhat of a factor there and it

will be something to watch for this week about where he gets to with the hand and if he is practicing in full again when he says that it won't affect anything about how he prepares for this game he was already limited in practice so it had at least some effect and while we were out there. He was not throwing at all. In fact, he was kind of tossed the ball around with a left hand. And then, you know, we as a media walk out there for 15, 20 minutes and then we go back inside once they start the real practicing. So we get to see the warmups who's warming up. And during that time, we did not see J.J. McCarthy throwing a football. I will say that I could just hear the collective groan of the state of Minnesota when it's like, yeah, oh, one more

thing to add j j mccarthy you're like what what is it going to be has you know a hand injury and it is unfortunate for him that he has to deal with something else here and said they're working through it and getting treatment and it didn't sound in any way from what kevin o'connell said like they expected to be problematic i also think that when it comes to nicks and cuts like this they are a product of playing the quarterback position it's not uncommon really at all for a quarterback to have a swollen hand or an injured hand or get your hand slammed in a car door during an NFL game. And that's how it goes.

Anybody who watched the documentary with Kirk Cousins, the quarterback documentary, he had a good season in 2022. But I think you realized just how much physical punishment he had taken throughout that year, including, you know, getting hit in the ribs against Washington and how that had to be something he dealt with for really the rest of the year. Again, that's the quarterback position. You take a lot of hits. It's dangerous out there. That's life. But as long as it's not going to impact his game

status for Chicago, then we all move forward. But that is at the top of the list for things to watch. Does he practice in full this week? Or does he continue to be limited by the hand injury? Because if he is limited by it tomorrow, Friday, well, then you might start. to go, is it going to be okay for him to play? But at least the tenor of the way that he talked about it and the way that Kevin O'Connell talked about it doesn't seem like you have to turn your panic meter up very high. And when it comes to any quarterback in the league, because I know where this heads when there's a JJ McCarthy, anything, where it heads is injury prone. And if you guys have watched or listened to the show for a long time, you know how much I hate that.

I'm just not a fan at all of calling players injury prone. A lot of times injuries are just a product of bad breaks, bad luck. Somebody falls on your leg or they don't. And one of my favorite examples was Kyle Rudolph, who got injured early in his season, got, or in his career, got called injury prone, then played like 100 straight games. And it's just like that's how it goes. So I don't like when I see that.

I mean, come on, we're talking about a guy hitting his hand on a helmet. it. This is something that every quarterback probably deals with at some point during a season. Does it impact him going forward? Does it look like it's impacting the way he's throwing the football? That would be the only part to talk about if we start to get a sense for those things. If there is more missed practice and if it seems like he's struggling to grip the ball at all with the injury, but he did continue to play the whole rest of the football game with this injury and sounds like he feels confident that it'll be okay going forward. So then then we're going to treat it for right now like we're confident that it

will be okay going forward and we will adjust that if we have to. So other interesting things from JJ, his press conference and Kevin O'Connell's. He was asked about staying calm late in the game. And I think that O'Connell more or less confirmed when we talked to him on Monday that he'd really like him in those situations to not press like they were in last week where they're down to scores. And I think we all who have eyeballs saw that there might have been some pressing from McCarthy, some throwing the ball too hard and getting away from those techniques

and maybe trying too hard to make a play where he didn't necessarily have to and could have taken an easy route. And O'Connell talked about using checkdowns and things like that. Well, he was asked today about staying calm and not trying to get too far ahead of himself when he does get in those moments where he feels like he has to put the team on his shoulders. I wouldn't say pressing, but there is, you know, a sense of, you know, I'm a young player and bad habits kind of show up in those moments where, you know, you're trying to be the competitor and will yourself to a first down, will the team to a touchdown, all that stuff.

And, you know, it just all comes down to the basics and understanding in those moments. You have to have that, you know, presence of mind to really focus on your breath. So just being able to really simplify things in those moments, calm your heart rate, and just, you know, do the fundamentals. I mean, to me, this discussion of what we saw from J.J. McCarthy during that game and some of the times where it felt like he was pressing. you know, I think that that is a product of just a lack of experience and something I wrote about today, I was just trying to think last night about quarterback whispering and all those types of things, you know, the discussion of how much the coach and how much the system and how much is J.J. McCarthy to blame for a game like that and some of the early statistics that were seeing

and so forth. And, you know, I kept thinking about just how inexperience plays into everything when it comes to a quarterback, when it comes to your timing, how you are seeing the game in general, like how you're reading the secondary, how you're dealing with the blitz, how you're giving the cadence and preparing in a game to give the cadence, all those things that go into a game in general. I mean, you know, I think that every single one of them plays into having experience where the more experience you have, the more times you've been out there. There's a reason why Joe Flacco is able to drop into a team and a week later throw the ball all over the yard, make the Cincinnati Bengals competitive and fun where, you know, Jake Browning, who hasn't played as much, wasn't able to do that. And I mean, you could say Flacco is more skilled than he certainly is. but, you know, I think that experience just plays so much into it. And I haven't seen too many quarterbacks that are 10-year veterans have eight-fold starts. And I'm not saying it was all J.J. McCarthy's fault, but, you know, they talked about it in a way that, you know,

the quarterback needs to make sure everyone's on the same page there. And I think that's an inexperienced thing as well. But when we feel like we don't have time for inexperience, like this team was supposed to win, They are very good. They've got a lot of really good players. And the whole idea was that you could whisper J.J. McCarthy into being a very good quarterback. And if you could get 75% of what Sam Darnold was last year with a better team and a better supporting cast and very, very good coaching, that you could be a really good competitive

team and you can win and you can have a lot of success and you can smooth out those roller coaster moments. But I think what we are finding when it comes to quarterback whispering is that you can't whisper experience. You can't just coach in an empty facility during the by week, your way into, hey, all of a sudden now you know how to play this game, right? And you can, you've seen all the things that you've seen before. And you've been in and out of a huddle 10,000 times and etc, et cetera, et cetera, right? Like, you can only do those things by actually being out there. And that's what we're dealing with now and going through those roller coaster moments

that ultimately with J.J. McCarthy in the perfect world will play out much better for him in the future that he's been through them, but it's not easy to watch all the time. And it certainly isn't successful all the time. And so there's this conflicting things of he just needs experience. He just needs to go through them. and there's no secret and there's no magic wand and there's no method that you could just say, hey, we'll have him do this drill, we'll show him virtual reality, we'll have him out here studying defenses and helping in the defensive staff when he's not playing, or even

for training camp, we'll have him do a joint practice. There's only so much you can do away from the actual situations of the actual field to make this work. So McCarthy needs to have games where he's down to scores in the fourth quarter and figures it out. And until he has enough of those games, it's, there's going to be moments like there was against the Baltimore Ravens. And I think that that's the hard thing to accept is that you just need to go through this because everybody wants their conclusion today. Everyone wants to know right now today at this moment is J.J. McCarthy freaking good or not. And I think that it takes a long time to really know that about an NFL quarterback.

But I think that that's what everybody is constantly looking for is the answer to whether he is going to be your future franchise quarterback or he's not going to be your future franchise quarterback. And I think it's hard to accept that he has to have these situations play out time and time and time again before you get those under your feet. and into your brain of how different defenses play certain things and how the timing's got to work with certain stuff and how you calm yourself down in a spot where you're trying to go win the game for your team. So it's not, normally it's not, you just step into the NFL and you're able to do it.

I'm sorry, I'm noticing that the video is a little bit on the glitchy side tonight. I usually that doesn't happen. So I apologize for that if that's how it looks to you. don't have a good answer for why that would be. So we'll just carry on as long as you guys can hear the show okay and everything. But usually we're pretty smooth here on the show. Not sure why that is. Anyway, so let's talk about a couple of things from the press conferences today.

Kevin O'Connell, actually, it plays right into what I was just talking about with Kevin O'Connell. He was asked by Dane Mizatani whether it is harder than ever because of all of the outside analysis and the 24-7 breakdowns of the Minnesota Vikings from shows like this one and from the big head talking shows on TV and all that stuff and the internet never seems to sleep when it comes to quarterback analysis. He was asked about how he views developing a quarterback in this environment. My job is to, you know, not only by myself, but in conjunction with our staff and JJ himself,

just continuing to coach in a way where, you know, no stone is unturned, We're recognizing everything, progress, areas of immediate improvement. And then most importantly, what I look for is the consistency of being able to put some routine things in that category of I can expect them every time. And it becomes second nature. And sometimes when a guy's making his third or fourth start now or fifth start this week, it's a lot to ask in the midst of games, especially how they've kind of played out. but that doesn't change the fact that we're, you know, in a business of, you know, trying to go on and O this week.

And JJ's going to have a great week of prep and we'll continue to progress. And there's been a lot of encouraging things to go along with some things that, you know, we can improve. So there you go. I said improve on if that was cut off right at the end. What Kevin O'Connell there is getting at is that he has to approach something like this on a day-to-day basis where he can't have the reactions that we have, that he has to continue to focus on the things that he knows need to be focused on.

He has to focus on where J.J. McCarthy can build on certain good elements of his performance. He has to focus on where he has to improve on things that go wrong and coach the micro, micro details, and also have a process for that. We use the word process way too freaking much, but also have a process for that of this is how we are going to do it to teach J.J. McCarthy how to play quarterback in the NFL, and you can't waver from that because there's ups and downs. And you would think that, you know, these guys over the years

learn not to be prisoners of the moment, not to hear the outside noise. Oh, I promise you that they do that J.J. McCarthy is well aware of the things that are being said about him and that Kevin O'Connell is well aware of the things that are being said as well about J.J. McCarthy and their decision to move on from Sam Darnold and all that sort of stuff, but they have to continue to just focus on what they have to do to try to develop him. And I think that there's something we could take from that is just every single week. No matter how loud I say it, it's not, you know, I know it's not going to stop the internet, just like I couldn't

stop Justin Jefferson trade rumors a few years ago. So, you know, but I'll say it anyway, for everybody's benefit, we just don't have to do this thing where we decide that he is the next Tom Brady or he is the next Christian Ponder every single week. But you know, you see it. And you see this battle of, you know, the, now you got the people who are tweeting out, well, this is what Ponder did in his first four games. And now you got the people who are putting on.

social media look at all these great throws the media hates j j it's it's all nonsense okay it's all nonsense the truth is very boring here which is through four games we're nowhere close to conclusions and we're all including kevin o'connell going to have to just go through this and see where we end up with at the end of the season someone asked me today about the benchmark for where we all got to be to decide whether it's J.J. McCarthy show going forward. And my answer to that is if we all know it, then I think you're good. And if we don't all know it, then I think you need competition or it's going to be unclear or whatever. But there's so much football left to be played. There's eight more games of sample size to where in the best case scenario, assuming that he remains healthy the rest of the

way in the best case scenario, then we're going to be talking about a fairly big sample, not an entire season, unfortunately, but even if it is, would that be 12 games, a 12 game sample to know a lot more about where J.J. McCarthy stands. And if there was ever a corner that was turned in terms of accuracy, control of the offense, connection with Justin Jefferson, this stuff's going to take time. So the best I could say is just, you know, engaging. and all of that doesn't do a whole lot of good for anybody. But certainly, you can hear with Kevin O'Connell that he can't think about that too much himself.

So anyway, there was another thing that got brought up maybe 1 million, 5 gazillion thousand times, which was Kevin O'Connell and his play calling after the game against the Ravens. So today, I believe it was Will Riggins, asked Kevin O'Connell about the play calling. He directed it more toward the third. third and short, fourth and short stuff that we've talked about a lot.

And we've gone over the numbers here on the show. But he kind of made it a little bit broader himself. Play calling is something that, you know, we put a lot of work in as a staff. And I put a lot of work into it. And it's if it was, you know, it's a results-based thing. Play-to-play, game-to-game, well aware of that. But that does not mean that I'm not always evaluating the best way to, you know, play each and every snap sequence of games. and ultimately what's best for this team this year.

And I'm doing that. And I think you'll see some things reflected in that, but also the defense has a hand in it as well. And the last thing you want to do is just, you know, do it for the sake of doing it and then have it be not as productive as you would hope, you know, just to get some things in a column somewhere, statistical column. I think that with Kevin O'Connell, and it all directs back to the run and pass ratio.

and somebody said that the solar thing could impact how what's the internet and how this is looking. So, okay, I mean, that's kind of crazy if that's the case. I do see on my thing dropped, we're getting some dropped frames. So I apologize for that. But hopefully you all can, you know, hear okay. And even if I'm a little glitchy that we're doing just fine here. So anyway, you know, with O'Connell and his answers to these questions over the years, which, you know, after every game, why aren't you guys?

guy's grilling O'Connell about this, that and the other thing. And I think one of the reasons that sometimes we don't ask the question is because we've asked it in the past that we've gotten the answer and we understand his philosophy. And when it doesn't work out, you know, people want him, you know, grilled, tard and feathered, you know, criticized, yelled at in a press conference. And it's often, for me at least, well, I've heard this answer. I know this answer. I know his philosophy.

I don't know what more we're supposed to gain from this. And I think when you listen to them there, there's two takeaways. One is that O'Connell very much believes in, you know, dictating what you're doing versus what the offense is trying to do to take things away from you. So if, you know, the offense is trying to, you know, do things X, Y, or Z against you, then what you're going to do is counter it with X, Y, or Z yourself. So if the defense has a particular personnel package where the ravens are playing a lot of nickel, maybe you're thinking, all right, now we're going to handle it this way. Or if like the Lions, they got three linebackers, we're going to handle it that way.

And a lot of that is built into the quarterback's play calls. So I think one of O'Connell's points was, too, that some of these plays you guys are talking about that turn into passes may have been called runs and the quarterback checks out. out of it because the quarterback has control. So not every play call is just the play caller signaling it. And it may have been the kill. And it's a run play, but kill to this. Kill just meaning like, forget that first play. We're actually going with the second play.

Like that, that happens a lot too. So I think his point was that, like, look, we're going to look at what the defense is doing. And we're going to call plays based on it. And they have people up in the booth, uh, Ben Ellison, former tight end of the Vikings, I interviewed him last year for a story, and Ben talked about charting defenses. So he's up there. He's watching the defense. Everything that they do, he's writing down, and then he's on a headset, and they're communicating that to the play caller

as well. So play calling is not as simple as Madden, where a guy just stands there and looks through a playbook and goes, you know, I'm going to do about a pass. Like, there's a little more going on there. And I think that's one of his points. Now, what I was will say is that Kevin O'Connell's overall philosophy is to look for explosive plays with his offense. He

fundamentally believes that if you get an explosive play, your chances of scoring, shoot up huge versus if you're trying to have a 14 play drive and get a bunch of completions and a bunch of handoffs and stay on the field forever.

He thinks that, and the statistics would back him up that if you can hunt explosive plays and you can hit down the field and you can get 20 plus, your chances of scoring go up a lot. And especially now when every team starts at the 30 to 35 yard line, you are one or two plays away from getting in field goal position. I get that. And it's also always going to be a quarterback driven offense. Now, we could go back and forth all day about, well, hey, you know, you're playing a younger

quarterback and you should run the ball more and your running game is. working and I agree with most of the things fundamentally that people are talking about that like at their core of building the pass off the run means that you do run and when you get a 12 yard run this is something that was seared into my mind from probably John Madden and my dad watching football when I was young was probably the idea that if someone's not stopping something that you keep doing it right so if the opposing team is struggling to stop your run game and gives up a 12-yard carry to Jordan Mason that you don't pass four straight times after that, make them show that they could stop it, right? And I

think the Ravens had a few good run stops, but overall, it didn't really look like they were having a great time and this season they haven't had a great time. So I do believe in that, that you sort of run until they stop you from running or if you're hitting on short passes, then you keep going with that. But I also think that if this is going to work with J.J. McCarthy, that he's going to have to be able to handle what Kevin O'Connell puts on his plate because he is not going to change this. He is not halfway through a season and probably not next year. Say, you know what? I built this entire offense and it succeeded last year and it succeeded with Kirk Cousins. and Justin Jefferson put up historic numbers and all this stuff

and was offensive player of the year in this offense and here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to tear it all down and I'm going to start running 18 screens a game. It's just not going to happen. The other thing about the quick game that I should say is that they're averaging 3.5 yards per attempt with J.J. McCarthy when he throws it between 1 and 10 yards just hasn't really been succeeding. So that's another part of it.

to mention as well. Now, yeah, you should have it be easy button stuff for him, but he also has to get to the easy button stuff or has to know that it's there because O'Connell builds in multiple things in any given play. So sometimes when you see a play called versus how it turns out and where he threw the football, you might say, well, why would you call a shot or a throw to there on this down? That might not be where it goes. But when it comes to the, the overall philosophy of the head coach to be a past first coach, that's how it's going to be. And he came from a past first coach and Sean McVe and they are passing their butts off in Los Angeles this year. And I think that they can do better things. And I think they can make some things

easier for J.J. McCarthy. But it's also the NFL. And the sink or swim method, I guess we're going to find out whether it works for him. But to me, just banging heads up against the wall constantly on play calling, play calling, play calling. I mean, it's such a complex thing that I get frustrated trying to talk about it and trying to break it down because there's so many layers to it. But I think the bottom line for me is they're going to throw. They're never going to be a team that hands off 40 times and throws 16. They're always going to be on the side of past probably 60, 40 type of area. And sometimes that's going to go wrong.

And it's going to frustrate you. And all other times it's going to go great. And you're never going to bring it up. And that's just how football works, I guess. When the plays work, everyone's smart. And when they don't, they're not. And that is how it goes. So I think that you can have a very reasonable opinion about, you know,

leaning more heavily into the run and about how the development. process goes in terms of what you put on his plate, but also this is an offense that was built for him as a quarterback. It's built for Jefferson to succeed and it has had some success in the past. So it's going to be either a matter of J.J. McCarthy gets it and locks into the timing and then it works, which is kind of what happened for Kirk Cousins in that first year. Early on, it was kind of messy in the first year of Kirk Cousins. His stats were not as good. And he would come to the podium after games and say, yeah, I don't really actually feel very good about this. And then eventually he got it. And he said, when was it? It was like the back end of

the year in 2022. I think he finally said that he felt like he really was getting it. So it does take more than four games to entirely download into your brain, the Kevin O'Connell offense, and we're going to see where this goes. And I want to see a bigger sample size myself to figure out where this is gone. So there it is. He was asked about the play calling. He gave you the answer about the play calling. And I think we just need to see a lot more of this before we decide,

hey, he doesn't know what he's doing when it comes to developing J.J. McCarthy. And also the myth about quarterback whispering is that there's some sort of button to push at all times. And if the quarterback isn't playing well, it's always on, why didn't you do this? Why didn't you call that play? Why not this, that, that, that, and the other thing. But there's a lot of quarterbacks over the years who haven't had success. And not all of their coaches were total fools.

It's going to be McCarthy and he's got to develop himself too. He has to improve and build off of games like Baltimore. So there's kind of the rants over at purple insider dot football. I wrote about this. So feel free to check that out. Let me give you the Fandul question of the day. And then we can get to your questions and comments. It looks like I smoothed out, so it looks like we're good now.

Okay, so here is the Fandual question of the day. J.J. McCarthy's over under for this game against Chicago on Fandul is 214.5 yards. Give me one key to McCarthy bouncing back. That is the Fandul question of the day. You're one and only key to McCarthy bouncing back. So, all right, let me get to your questions, comments, and thoughts. As I said, I've got plenty of time for. thoughts tonight.

I'm the open space. There's not a lot of other. I can go over the, let me just look at the injury report real quick. Was there anything else notable? Ryan Kelly's window opened, 21 day window. O'Connell did mention that he's going to have a different helmet.

He's going to have a guardian cap. And all I can say is that Ryan Kelly, this is a decision that to come back or not, that I would just say, like he's a grown man. He's been in the league for a long time. he can make this choice. He's not asking me for any help.

I'm concerned about him and his future, and I have such deep respect for him as a player, but he's going to have to make this decision himself. Think long and hard. Just think long and hard. Because, yes, there are helmets. Yes, there are guardian caps. There's no perfect method,

especially when you have guys lining up, you know, helmet to helmet right over top of you. So I guess that's all I would say. And they are proceeding with caution and bringing him back slowly and they're going to evaluate it. And that's the best we could say about it. But it worries me. It does worry me with Ryan Kelly. So, yeah, the injury report was kind of full of guys that were dealing with little things.

But Josh Oliver being back out there is an important one for sure that he's somebody who's been out for a little bit. And the fact that Christian Dera saw practicing in full, you know, that's something we're still keeping an eye on. but good news overall there. So I think that's really all that's notable for now. And then we'll see how it plays out through the rest of the week. All right. Let's get to your comments. Zumer KOs says what I like most about McCarthy is he seems to have a good feel

and natural ability to protect himself, even as mobile and a running quarterback. What have you liked about McCarthy most so far? So, yeah, I mean, I tend to agree that he has a sense for when he's running in space. It gets time to get down. I think that the dive forward can be a little risky because if you're diving forward, then guys diving at you, you're fair game. If you're diving forward. If you're sliding, then they can't dive at you, although sometimes they do anyway. But for the rules, they're not supposed to, the dive forward can be a little bit on the risky side.

As far as when pressure is coming, he hasn't been somebody that seems clueless about pressure. and I've always liked this about McCarthy that I think he has a feel for what's going on in front of him. Now, pocket presence is a different story because we saw in some moments where the pocket presence breaks down a little bit, where there's two steps up in the pocket and that's how you hit somebody's helmet with your hand. That's how you get balls knocked down where that needs to be one step up and then release the football as opposed to maybe multiple. and there's another play that gets knocked down where he kind of or maybe tipped and goes out of the back of the end zone where he's just sort of drifting a little bit

and he drifts right into where the pressure is coming from. So pocket presence is something that has been hit or miss. There are other times I've thought it's fantastic. Protecting himself, though, I think he's done a good job of that. As far as what I like about J.J. McCarthy the most, I mean, the tools for sure, the fact that he has a, very strong arm that your biggest issue is you're trying to harness having a strong arm. Well, that's better than trying to, you know, take out a, you know, a tire pump or something.

And, you know, if anyone's seen the episode of SpongeBob where he buys fake arms that look really strong, you know, you can't do that in the NFL. You can't make a guy's arm a whole heck of a lot stronger, but you certainly can tame a rocket arm. and we have seen Rocket Arms be tamed over NFL history plenty of times. I don't know too many examples of a guy who came into the league with no arm, and then all of a sudden they just, you know, said, hey, why don't you, you know, pump a little iron? Okay, now all of a sudden you are Jim Kelly, whew, right?

Like, I've, no, I've never seen that. I can't think of too many times I've seen it anyway. So you've got a great place to start with the arm strength, and you've got a great place to start with mobility. I am a huge fan of quarterbacks who could scramble for first downs. I think that's what, you know, keeps them in games if his accuracy is waning is the fact that he could scramble and make plays out of structure. And I like the way that J.J. McCarthy has managed all of this emotionally, or at least

in front of us. Like, I'm not in his house. I'm not with him behind the scenes 24-7. So I don't know all that, how, you know, coachable and all that sort of thing. he's been to the coaches from their eyes and so forth. I can only tell you what I see press conferences and when we're talking to him and the way he talks about things. But it seems to match up with his reputation, who he is,

who he's been as far as coachability and all that, that it's hard to have a bad game like that and have the entire world come out and scream at the top of their lungs that you are awful. And there's no way in the year 2020, to avoid that stuff. And he admitted that, you know, that stuff gets through to him.

I don't think JJ has ever pretended that he didn't hear anything. You hear that sometimes. I don't hear any of that. I saw Bo Nick said that today. I don't see any of that. Sure, he don't, man. Everybody, you know, Kirk said this one time. Everybody's got friends and family and everything else that, you know, shares.

Hey, I saw so-and-so said this. It's happened to this podcast. I don't know necessarily with McCarthy, but it's happened to this show and this writer here many times where somebody gets sent hey did you see this Matt said that kind of thing and it's like well you know can't control that for my seat but they have to deal with that mentally and work their way through it and work their way through failures and successes and deal with both of those things and I think that he's built to do that but I also think he's very very young and when you are very very young

How over the top, enthusiastic you get, how high you get, how low you get after wins and losses is a very difficult thing to manage. It seems to me like he's doing a good job with it. And I think if he continues to do a good job with it, he'll fight through moments like last week, as long as he doesn't let that stuff get to him. But it's, you can't make somebody age. That's what I'm talking about with experience.

You can't just, you can't push the gas pedal down. on time and experience. So I like the way he's handling all of it, especially in front of us. There's no, you know, defensiveness. And when he gets asked about, you know, accuracy or connection with Jefferson or anything like that. I think he's handled all that really, really well.

And if he flies even or tries to, then he can work his way through it because every quarterback has to learn how to do that. It was always something I greatly respected about Kirk Cousins and respected about Sam Darnold last year. so anyway long answer to your question there gave you guys plenty of time for other questions uh aaron says uh jj has only played four games it's hard but we need to be patient ups and downs are to be expected sucks with the roster we have uh to hope he keeps improving and sets up for 2026 but that's the hard part too is because i was having a chat with someone in the locker

room today about how crazy this league is and how right now it feels pretty brutal and yet the Packers are struggling and everybody wants their coach fired, which I mean, if you're a, if you're a Vikings fan, you're going, you're sending letters. Please fire Matt LaFleur. He's a good coach. They're struggling because their receivers are heard and Bo Melton got hit with a spear right in his heart from the football and didn't catch it the other night. I don't know. Eagles are good.

From the outside here, it's way easier to tell the Packers, hey, do you realize Matt LaFleur is a really good coach? But anyway, there's a ton of heat being sent his way. And Chicago is beatable. And you get these, if you get these two wins and go to, from a vulnerable Green Bay team and a Chicago team that I think isn't anywhere as good as their record, then all of a sudden, like, six and five,

and you're looking in the race again. and like everything changes so fast in this league that it's hard not to get caught up in it because that's what we do. And I do a daily show. I am the problem. Like I am part of the problem of the overreaction. But I think I could also say, hey, you know, we have to recognize that this could look very different in a week or in two weeks or in six weeks.

It doesn't mean it will. But the fact that we don't have the entire answer yet means we don't have to try to get there. And I was making this point the other day, and I just can't emphasize it enough that when we watch an individual game and do a postgame show and do a breakdown and a film review and all those things, that is an individual game where we can clearly say from all the numbers, everything that we saw, this was not a good game for J.J. McCarthy. And we can look at the Detroit game and say, this was a good game for J.J. McCarthy. But I love the way Jeremiah as Searles puts it, we don't have to crown or kill after every game.

And we tend to do that. And everybody around the league tends to do that. And that's why, I mean, even with with Green Bay, they lost the game. It's a bad game. But I mean, man, are you trying to send Matt LaFleur out? That's kind of wild to me. Somebody who's been a really, really good head coach for that team for a really long time. So it's not just you guys, by the way.

It's really everybody. It's really football. It's one of the reasons it's so successful. It's so compelling. it's so tense, it's so thrilling, but also so frustrating because I can't spend the whole week being like, yeah, well, you know, we'll see, like give me, give me like five weeks. Let's sit here quietly and reflect for five weeks and then we'll have more answers. Do, do, do, right?

I can't do that. So we got to talk about it. But I think we could talk about it in a rational enough way to where we're saying, well, here's what we've seen through four games. And if you see a clean pocket completion percentage where it is for McCarthy through four games, that's concerning. If you see the on target percentage, that's concerning. And I know that, you know, he has thrown the ball down field, which inherently has a lower

completion percentage. But at the same time, you have his coach saying, I really don't want you to be doing that as often as you are. I want you to be checking down and getting easy completions. so built into completion percentage is decision making. So if you have a low completion percentage and his completion percentage above expected in this game was minus 12%. So there wasn't anywhere close.

That's a next gen's that. It wasn't anywhere close to where it should have been in this game. That's the game against the Ravens. That's not the entire answer. And I think we can do that. As a society, I know we can't do that. But I tend to be a hopeful person. Purple Soda says, remember the good old days

where Vikings fans didn't have to be concerned about the Bears. Well, you know, I don't know what good old days those were because my first time ever covering a Vikings and Bears game was 2016. It actually has recently been the good old days, right? Like now is the good old days because Kevin O'Connell owns the Bears. Overall, I mean, how many losses do they have to Chicago since he got here? it feels like is the answer it can't be none right they must have lost at least one game but i mean it feels now i got it now i got to start thinking i don't remember in 2022 they didn't lose to

the bears because the first game in 2022 was cam dancelor uh with a strip of amir smith mar set to seal the game there the last game of 2022 was oh wait oh i know it i know the one i know the one so the second game of 2022 was when they played tim boyle and nays Peterman. But the loss came in 2023 when O'Connell couldn't stop pushing the pass button for Josh Jobs and he threw a bunch of interceptions, didn't go for a fourth down at the end, punted, Justin Fields ends up driving and winning the, that, that was the one. That was the one that he lost. So it can happen. But when I got here, actually, it was interesting because an article I had you all, some of you have been listening long enough to know Paul Hodewanek, who,

was an intern on the show and on the writing side. And I had him do a project back in, I want to say it was 20, 21, where he looked at the Vegas line and the performance of the Vikings every time they went to Soldier Field. And the number of times that they were upset by bad Chicago Bears teams at Soldier Field was absolutely insane, like defied any type of odds or analytics or data or reason. reason, right? And 2016 was one of them. It was a terrible Bears team. The Vikings were coming in, mostly hot. They had had a loss to Philadelphia, but they were still, or was it? Yeah. Yeah, they'd lost to Philadelphia, but they were going to Chicago and here they go, right? Like, they should crush this team, move on, be six and one. And then Zimmer hurts his eye, Norv quits, who was the guy Howard, who was his first name? Howard ends up running back, ends up running for a huge play in the first play of the game. and then the wheels come off after that. It was just crazy.

And then the one in 2018 where, you know, Kirk before the game said they switched this game to national TV because of us. I think he said that. They flexed this game because of us. And then they lost. So O'Connell versus the Bears has been the best version. But I think you've always had to worry about the Bears. And you want to go even farther back in history.

How about the time that Jim McMahon came off the bench injured and then came back against the Vikings? So, you know. there, oh, there's the, there's the excuse, John said, yeah, I mean, what, in terms of the game last week? No, I don't, I don't think it's an excuse. I mean, it could be, it could explain some of the throws that happened with McCarthy if he was dealing with a hand injury in the second half of the game. But that doesn't change the fact that overall he's been inaccurate as a quarterback in general. It's just, you know, I think that there were maybe some throws that if he was

dealing with a swollen hand throughout the game might have impacted the way you throw the ball. I think that's really it. So, uh, Skull Velhollis says I think we're going to be battling injuries to JJ's whole Vikings career. See, I don't want to, I don't want to say that. I don't, I don't want to say that. That's why that's my point about injury prone. I won't say it about anybody. I mean, so Blake Cashman has had been a little banged up the last two years, but nothing abnormal for a linebacker. He was hurt early in his career. The guy plays like a total psycho but that's like that's football though right i mean i wouldn't call him injury prone and he's had some injuries because he's playing football McCarthy with the meniscus thing is really bad luck

uh the ankle injury maybe circumstances played into how long he was actually out that if they had had a sunday to sunday noon home schedule and not traveled overseas maybe that would have been a little bit different but again quarterbacks get ankle injuries there's probably three quarterbacks dealing with it right now. So I don't, I don't want to go there with that. If anything, having a lot of injuries makes me always just feel really bad for whatever player it is. So when you say injury prone, it's almost like they did something to themselves to cause it.

So I always feel very uncomfortable with that. You know, Jonathan Grenard had injuries before he came here and hasn't had any problems. Now he gets a shoulder thing. Like, oh, is he injury your problem? again like we don't have to do this with every player um i yeah it's just very uncomfortable with that kind of idea of oh he's he hit his hand on a helmet as every quarterback does probably at some point in their career he must be injury probably that just seems like an overreaction to me let's see uh john says is kOC giving up play calling nope it's not worth talking about in my opinion

it's not even worth discussing it's not going to happen he's not he's not going to give up like calling that connection with the quarterback for him is incredibly important and as we go forward with o'connell calling plays to j j mccarthy it's either going to work and be very good or it's not or or it's that relationship is not going to click in the way that they needed to and he's not going to get the offense the way he's supposed to get it and that's how it's going to be but he's it's very clear here. He's not changing the offense and he's not given up play calling. And these things of people talking about like suddenly he's going to become Mike Zimmer and start handing it off two thirds of

the time. It's not going to happen. Nor do I think that that's really the right answer for J.J. McCarthy. Do I think that it's maybe too complicated or asked too much at times. Oh, yeah. Oh, I do. But some of these ideas are just senseless. And I don't understand why you, last year it's the quarterback whisper and it's magical the relationship he's got in the headset with his quarterback and now he should stop doing that like okay like past matters and i'll continue to throw this out there the stat about him with kirk cousins or sam darnold 31 and 11 with either one of those two guys starting a quarterback does not make me scream this man can't call plays i think the plays are there to be made for the quarterback he's got to execute him he's got to understand them and

If you're saying that he's pushing too hard early on, that may be true, but also if you run an offense that is so truncated that the defense knows all your tendencies and everything you're doing and maybe it helps you for a week or two, but you can't really get by with that, well, you're not going to win there and you're not going to find anything out. So at very least, if you're pushing the gas pedal down the way that they have done, then you probably are learning a lot more through trial by. fire. So anytime I say, oh, I think that the idea of talk, even discussing giving up play calling is ludicrous or that I think overall a passing offense is the right way to go. These are things that I have forever believed in. I was more against the side of Mike Zimmer wants to hand off on first down, second down and third down if he can. So now it's, it's funny that we've flipped around like that. But if those are my opinions, I often get sort of attacked by bees on, you know, the internet or comment sections of that you need to stop defending O'Connell.

You're afraid of him. Oh, yeah. I'm really, uh, after covering Mike Zimmer, very afraid to ask a coach who's really nice answering questions something. I mean, come on. It's, look, I think what ends up happening is when something isn't going well, then we freak out and look for any possible explanation or answer. And Kevin Seifert says it the right way. It's like, whatever you did that didn't work, you did it wrong if it didn't work. And I don't think it works that way. So I'm not saying the play calling is perfect. My God, I'm not even close to saying that.

It's just, is he going to give a play calling? No, next question. Is he going to suddenly turn into the Mike Shanahan, 1998, Denver Broncos offense? No, next question. We just don't need to spend every day with that stuff. So they're playing a big game, by the way, against the Bears this week. and if they get a win, then they go to Lambo with a chance to be in the race. That's exciting.

Let's see. Sean says seriously asking, has there been any thought on the team to end to tell on the team's end to tell JJ to bring the gimmick quotes down nine and warriors? You know, I've been just chalking that up to generational. I don't know. I just assume that younger kids talk this way. I mean, maybe if I was a 40-year-old sports reporter in 1967, I would have been like, man, this Joe Namath keeps saying groovy and stuff or whatever. Like, oh, this youthful, I don't know.

I think that there's different approaches to that. You could take the extremely, extremely corporate. way of going about it, which is to really give no insight at all, like Eli Manning at the podium. And it was in New York or Sam darn old last year. And Sam came out of his shell, but Sam took a very like cautious approach and a very straightforward approach and he didn't tell you what he's thinking. But, you know, J.J. McCarthy strikes me as the type of guy who reads a lot and tries to look for a lot of insight from the world and has taken it in and is.

pumping himself up with a lot of that stuff, trying to get himself hyped with a lot of that stuff. And that's just kind of how he talks. Everybody's got a different personality. I don't think that he's making himself look bad or anything. I mean, if you, if you, people are way too damn afraid of being made fun of, right? Like, as a society, I mean, you know, J.J. McCarthy is always not supposed to say

that he's got kind of an alter ego when he goes out there. But hey, let's call just the Jefferson Jets. and Harrison, uh, Smith, the hitman, but it, but no, this is cheesy and all that. I don't know. I, I, I, I just feel like that makes me seem old. I don't think it makes any difference at all, by the way. I think for the most part, like, if he wants to look at himself that way, hey, like, I'm an alter ego. I'm, you know, we're warriors out there. Like, that's all right. It's like, no one, no one equates that with like actual people in the army or something. You know what I mean? Like, we're, we're grown up enough to deal with

that I think it's all right that doesn't buy that stuff doesn't bother me at all uh let's see uh slide to play says it's a cutter a bruise he's not in a full body cast yeah that's uh my point about overreacting to uh you know stuff like on a day to day basis like we break down the day's news but you know we don't have to overreact to the day's news in that kind of way. I agree with Eric. It's not an uncommon injury. In fact, it's extremely common.

John, do I believe what I'm saying? I think that what you were addressing is maybe me saying that he, sorry, I'm behind in the comments as always, but with me saying that it probably impacted some throws in the game, I mean, he was limited in practice today with a hand injury and said it got, it felt like it got slammed in a car door in the middle of the game. I don't know. Doesn't seem crazy to suggest that maybe some of those throws were potentially impacted. That doesn't mean they didn't happen.

And it doesn't mean it doesn't happen to a lot of quarterbacks. You got to work your way through it and everything. I'm just saying that maybe it did because some of them looked like they were much higher than you would expect. And, you know, maybe some of that was rushing. Maybe some of it was technical throwing the ball 10,000 miles an hour. and having it bounce off of, you know, Justin Jefferson down the sideline. I mean, that's not, that has nothing to do with your hand injury.

So just, just trying to be fair here. Just trying to play referee. Zumer K.O., the line is still minus three. So Fanduel doesn't think the hand injury. Well, I mean, Fanduel might know one way or the other, but they all came out and said, it's not like, it's not something that they expect to impact his playing status. Now things change.

so we'll go out there tomorrow and see and then we'll go out there, you know, and see on Friday and see if he's limited or back to full participation or whatever. If he is limited for the entire week, that definitely makes you think about how much it could impact the game. And if somehow it gets a lot worse, I don't know what I don't really know what it is. He didn't show the hand. He didn't say, anybody want to look at it? like, who's a doctor?

Do we have a doctor in the house? How do I deal with this swelling in my paw? That didn't happen. So I don't really know in terms of like how bad if it's something that could get worse or swell up more or what I don't know. But the way that they talked about it doesn't seem like it is so serious that we need to be majorly concerned. But as far as the line being minus three, yeah, I mean, I think that's very reasonable

for the Vikings to be favored in this game because the line. are not usually made off. I know you didn't ask this, but the lines are, are not just made off of wins and loss record, you know. I wish the people who made power rankings would make them a little more often, not just off the standings, but that's a different story. A reminder, though, since you mentioned it about the Fandul question of the day, J.J. McCarthy over under on fan duel is 214.5 yards. What is your key to him bouncing back? I'm sure I'll get to some of your answers once I scroll more. Nicholas said Jair Alexander might be retiring. Lucky we we lucked out not chasing him. Yeah, something felt off with Jairier for a couple years. Yeah, that's, that's, I,

I hope he's okay. I hope he's in a good spot because even when he was in Green Bay, just didn't seem like he was in a comfortable place. And I'm judging from some very small, sample size of a handful of clips and reports and things like that. But just, you know, that weird incident where he went out and took the coin toss when he wasn't a captain and all that sort of stuff. I don't know. Uh, let's see. Super Rod says, can't wait to have Kelly back dudes going to calm down. JJ. Uh, do think that Blake Brandel's done a good job over the last couple weeks. I'm concerned about Ryan Kelly coming back. I also think that if we're being honest about Ryan Kelly's talent, then we have to admit that he is one of the better players

at the position in the NFL. So separating those two things, my concern for him personally and my hope that if he does come back, that it's a very cautious approach to coming back, a very methodical approach to coming back and well thought out with him and his family and the team and the medical team and all that sort of stuff. If he does come back, separate that. he's a really darn good player he is a really really darn good player and i don't know if they have the issues that they had last week with the cadence and all that if ryan kelly is in there probably not uh a med says unfortunately i'm convinced c oc is an analytics beholden head coach it is the only way to explain the deep pass on third and two and then going for a fourth and two

not smart bad game awareness well i i don't think analytics beholden is any way I would describe Kevin O'Connell. I mean, when you match up the analytics for even like going for fourth downs and things like that, he has not really been one of the top coaches for how they match up. And I also don't think that analytics these days are screaming at the top of their lungs about, you know, always passing. I don't think there's any data that says always pass on third and two or fourth and two. I'm actually quite sure that there's not. So it feels like pass equals analytics, just like when you hear I loved the other night with Troy Aikman. Joe Buck said, well, you know, the analytics say here that they should punt. And it was

just stunned silence from Troy Akeman. You're like, yeah, dude, sometimes those actually do say to punt. Just like it's not analytics to pass. He's a former dang quarterback who won the Super Bowl with his quarterback throwing for 5,000 yards, not that deep. It's a really, it's a really, isn't. I mean, Matthew Stafford in 2021, when they won the Super Bowl, let me check how many yards it actually was for Matthew Stafford in 2021. It was a lot. I promise you that. 5,000, no, 4,888 yards, 41 touchdowns, 36 big time throws, but also 17 interceptions for Matthew Stafford when they won the Super Bowl in 2021. It's probably more rooted. in his experience of winning a Super Bowl

with Sean McVeigh than it is him reading Purple Insiders you know breakdown of pass efficiency it's but it is a fundamental truth of football that explosive plays will result in better chances to score I mean that's just absolutely true and look who his defensive coordinator is

this all matches up my friends it is an aggressive risky type of way of playing it reminds me a lot of Bruce Ariens no risk it, no biscuit, you're going to throw down the field when Nick Mullins is your quarterback, you're having Nick Mullins throw

or when Kirk is or when Darnold is or when J.J. is. This is the offense and we've seen it win a lot when it works. And I think that he believes that it works. You just need to figure it out, but I think he also knows that it takes time for it to work. So in the interim, I mean, it's kind of, I don't know,

like can we compare it to some sort of like a movie where it's somebody being trained to do something and they're teaching them the hardest possible way and then there's a montage and then after the montage it finally clicks and they get it. Oh, that's how you do it and then it works. Like that's what it feels like with O'Connell and quarterback play where there's a lot.

But when it clicks, then it's very good. It can take some major jumps up and down along the way though. But I don't think I don't think there's a analytically beholden. In fact, it sounded today like stats drive him crazy is what it sounded like today when he was mentioning like how if they have a run play called, but they slouched to a pass, they counted as a run. And I'm like, sure.

Yeah, why not? You know, like I think that some of those when he said, you know, put in a statistical column and all that sort of stuff, you know, um, he's saying that some of the numbers drive him crazy. more than that he loves them. Nick says your whole show is based on judging stuff each week. Yeah, I know.

I admit, I admit. But I like football too much not to talk to you guys all the time. So what we try to do here, and this goes to the reporting background and why I go out every day to TCO Performance Center and into the locker room and talk to the players and all that sort of stuff. And the other various folks around the National Football League

that I speak with on a weekly basis is to try. try to gather as much as I can to contextualize as much as I can with every situation we're in. Because if we just wait till we have all the answers, then I'll see you in February and how fun is that for me? That sounds terrible. Oh, let me, or January in this case, but even about the NFL at large, if we could only react after we had all the answers, then I guess it's the Purple Insider offseason show where we have all the answers. And we can only do the show until March, because once they start making moves and we don't know what the answers are going to be, then we got to wait till all next season to see if the answers are right.

And then this show will exist from February 6th until March 12th. And that's it. So old purple insider and everybody else has to work with the information we have, but we can use our brains, folks. We can do as we can look at the history of the league and quarterbacks and development and all those things that we could say four games is probably not enough to know and four games in this offense. I think it's got to be even more than that to have a good sense. And we can also say that if they win back to back games here, McCarthy plays like he did against Detroit, that

I promise there will be a lot of reaction the other way around. So yeah, you're right. It is part of the problem to do a daily show. But we try to do it the best that we can and the most reasonable we can, because the overreactionary stuff is not my favorite. So Nick says Jeremiah said it best. We won't know until the end of next year at the earliest give J.J. McCarthy time. That's absolutely true that in terms of really knowing, yeah, it probably will be 2026 before we really, really, really know as far as, hey, can this guy be somebody that you're going forward with for a really long. time. But I don't think it has to be that long before we could start to draw better conclusions than the one we have now. What we have now is a very exciting win against Chicago, a very

poor game against Atlanta with lots of circumstances around it. We have a very good win against Detroit that had some ups and downs, but a lot of high-end stuff. And then we have a loss to the Ravens that had some high-end stuff and some concerning stuff. Is that enough to write a Nobel Prize winning, you know, piece about? Like, no, it's not. That to me is less than a quarter of a season to work with. Imagine about the Timberwolves if you were trying to judge them by the end of November last year or something, right?

Or even into December. And they go to the Western Conference final, but they weren't a great team. well, we're trying to do that with J.J. McCarthy in his entire career. So it's just, it's just not enough. That doesn't mean it doesn't count. It doesn't mean we can't work with it and talk about what it needs to get better. But I think that that is on the way in the next eight games, not, oh, my gosh, he's Joe Montana or he is Kyle Bowler. But do we all have the sense that it's trending in the right direction by the end of the year?

do we all have the sense that the inaccuracies or the timing or the turnovers that those things have dissipated and his comfort with the offense is much greater and his comfort throwing and his technical parts of throwing is much greater as we go forward week to week and I've always thought if you win half of these eight games that it's probably gone pretty well but there's going to be other ones where we spend a week going man what the heck happened there. I guarantee that. But if we're getting to the end of the season and it looks like yes, if every thing about this, if 90%, because there's always going to be jokers, if 90% of Vikings fans in the state of Minnesota and abroad could all check yes to do you want J.J. McCarthy for your

quarterback for 2026, then we've probably seen him make gains and look pretty good. If that's 50%, 40%, then, and I know that we'll talk about an unscientific, unanalytical way to do it, but that's what I think is that we'll have a sense for it. It might not be a statistic that gives us the answer there. It might not be, oh, his completion percentage is this, his QB rating is that, his QBR, his PFF, his, I don't know, like all that stuff. It might not be one answer. It might be a more of, do we all sense that he's really getting it?

that's that's what we're looking for i think i don't think you need until next year for that i think we can figure some of that out by this year uh carl says i don't know how he could say it's a result-based thing with also ignoring the results