Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - What did Kevin O'Connell say about JJ McCarthy's return to practice? (Part 1)

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

Matthew Coller breaks down Kevin O'Connell's comments about JJ McCarthy's return to practice and what he wants to see from the young QB. Plus, he does not commit to an answer on either quarterback -- at least publicly. 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 later on this evening, Brian Murphy and Manny Hill will be joining for our Monday night roundtable. We went out to TCO Performance Center today and had a discussion with Kevin O'Connell, a lot said about where J.J. McCarthy is at, what he did. last week when the rest of the team was on the by week, but J.J. McCarthy was at TCO Performance Center still working, and O'Connell went into detail about what that work entailed. So we're going to bring you all of that,

plus some other injury updates. We had a chance to chat with Donovan Jackson as well, along with Blake Cashman. Both of them seem like they are on their way back. Not sure if either one will play this week, but promising that they are both back at, practice. And then something that I wasn't really sure if we would see was Brian O'Neill was also warming up today as well at practice. And, you know, with the MCL's injury, always a difficult

timeline there that that injury could be pretty nasty. So him at least participating in some way was good news toward him getting back at right tackle. And then Andrew Van Ginkle working on the side. So there was a lot to take in there at TCO Performance Center. But I'll still. start the show by getting right into what Kevin O'Connell had to say about J.J. McCarthy. And then let's talk about it. I know a lot of you probably watching Monday night football doubleheaders. So watch the game in between plays, questions, comments, thoughts, and your feelings on what O'Connell had to say today about J.J. McCarthy. So we'll just start out with this. O'Connell was asked about what he saw from McCarthy last week when they were working out

together inside the facility, presumably with not a lot of the team, but at least doing some work with Kevin O'Connell. The coaching staff was still there during the by week. So this is what O'Connell had to say about his work with McCarthy. What did you see from JJ last week during his time with a buy? And then like, where do you think that is this week? Yeah, we had some good work last week. It was, it was great to get back on the grass and had, you know, some good sessions. out there kind of getting back to a lot of the principles of lower body mechanics and things that had, you know, been really good parts of his early journey here and didn't even hit me

until we were out there. He had practiced one time since we had left Chicago. He had practiced one time officially. So a lot of the things you're, you know, allowing him to get his health back and get his feet back underneath him, but then building that foundation of fundamentals and techniques that really you can talk about routes and certain throws and certain plays and things like that, but it's the foundation of throwing mechanics from the ground up that, you know, he's really taken to since he got here

and just the consistency of it, whether it was dealing through playing through that injury, you know, towards the second half of that Atlanta game or, and really you're not talking about an incredible amount a body of work when you're considering that when that injury happened in the week that he had leading into that game. So I'm very excited to get him back officially practicing. I don't necessarily want to put a percentage on where I think he's at health-wise. And I think we'll, you know, this week will be massive for our whole team. So there is O'Connell talking about last week. And

it was a theme for O'Connell to focus on the fundamental and technique, which I know is a little bit vague, but he also continued to talk later about the footwork element and how important that is for J.J. McCarthy to have right. And he kind of repeated something he said last Monday about the decision making of Carson Wentz and how he hopes that McCarthy has been able to see from Carson Wentz and take away that sometimes it's not the first read. It's just a quick checkdown, but getting through those progressions, so it sounds like what they've kind of done after that Atlanta game is wanting to get back to almost and I say this like this is just trying to feel out with the comments it's not something he said

but read between the lines a little get back to almost mini camp mode because all the stuff that he's talking about it sounds like what COC would have been talking about in mini camp back in the spring of the footwork and it has to stuff. start there and getting through the reeds and progressions, that's not usually stuff that you discuss during the middle of the season where a quarterback is coming back from an injury. Normally, you would just be talking about, well, we're getting him back and, you know, he's back in the lineup and we're going to play him and so forth. And I think that that shows you a couple of things about O'Connell's mentality with this.

Number one, I didn't walk away from today saying, wow, lock dead guarantee they are starting. starting J.J. McCarthy. I don't know if they will, and it might depend on what they see throughout this week in practice, but I definitely didn't think, oh yeah, it sounds like they're good to go. He's all set. It still sounds like what he sees behind the scenes is going to make a big difference with McCarthy. But I think it also shows the attention to detail with Kevin O'Connell in general that he needs to see this stuff. And he's got this list, this checklist of different techniques, fundamentals, footwork, all that stuff that sort of sounds like coach speak, but also is extremely true.

And McCarthy has to get them down. And I felt like this offseason, he did a better and better and better job as training camp went along of getting that stuff down. And in the first game against Chicago, as bad as it looked through the first three quarters, there were plenty of times where he did make the right decision or he did get the ball. out quickly or he did decide to scramble at the right time and then we go to the Atlanta week and O'Connell has mentioned it numerous times now about him missing that practice which I mean you can read into that however you want I think it's just a statement of reality that coming

off of a Monday night game and then not being able to practice in a short week he feels really impacted McCarthy and then now he doesn't get to go back on the field and play Cincinnati get locked back in to the timing and all that sort of stuff, kind of a get right type of game that it would have been for McCarthy because of the injury. So he's decided to bring it down to the brass tacks and say, all right, let's let's get back to these most simplistic things about this offense and about what you're doing as a quarterback because when you play without your left tackle and you play under pressure and you,

you play against the team like Atlanta that threw a lot of different looks at them, it can throw off all of that stuff. And I felt like even just as a thrower, McCarthy had gone back to some of the habits that he had early in his time and even in college against Atlanta. And I think that that's what KOC is kind of getting at here is let's have a reminder session of getting those things down. So he was asked directly, of course, whether McCarthy had a chance to start on Sunday, and here's what O'Connell said. Do you view him as a possibility for Sunday's game, or is it more of a longer-term thing like you're talking about with the fundamentals?

Yeah, I think, you know, we've got to prepare to try to win a game on Sunday. And Carson, you know, as well, working with, you know, his left shoulder, he'll practice as well. But we really want to get our team ready to go. and in the process of doing that, JJ has his plan of attack that we want to try to make sure we maximize every single day and prepare all of our guys to be ready to go and make the best decision for our team and then also for individually for each one of those guys as we get closer to it. But not ready to say yet exactly where he'll be at towards the end of the week. Want to see how this week plays out first.

That makes sense to me that O'Connell would want to see all of practice and then decide. And there are only so many minutes in the day where you get to practice. But at the same time, like, these coaches go back through every second of the tape when it comes to practice and they go back and look at it and they analyze it. And even if it is a small sample and you don't want to be having a quarterback competition, I think what you're looking for is just does it look like it's supposed to look from a technical standpoint, is he making the right reads when he's taking his reps because you know that

Carson Wentz can have some limitations on his reps and still be fine and still go out there and give them a chance to win. It's not going to change a whole lot. The guys won two out of three games despite not being on a team until a month and a half ago. So he's not going to fall off the face of the earth if he splits some reps with McCarthy. But with McCarthy, they have to be able to use a small sample size over a couple of practices and a couple days to be able to say, does he look like he's ready to go? And I think that if the answer is even close to yes, that they should be ready to start McCarthy. And then I also think, and this just doesn't happen anymore, it's kind of odd that it doesn't happen anymore because you watch Justin Fields

the other day and you go, is there a law against benching quarterbacks? Because maybe it would be too devastating for J.J. McCarthy to start, play poorly in the first half and then bring in Carson Wentz if he's struggling. But it does make a lot of sense, right? I mean, we really have learned through this that as much as training camp is telling in a lot of situations, it doesn't always give us all the answers to how somebody is going to look when they're out there. And I think practice is the same way that there's plenty of players throughout history that have practiced and looked really good and looked locked in and then they get out there and the speed is just different and the violence is just different. And so maybe you could have that as a plan of if he looks

like he isn't locked in early on, you could make the change and go to Wentz. But I don't think you want that from a standpoint of the drama that goes along with that. If you throw McCarthy out there and then have to bring in Wentz halfway through the game due to performance, you know that's going to be a huge talking point, you know that it's going to be crushing to McCarthy, that it's going to look from the rest of the team at KOC, like, do we know what we're doing exactly here? So he probably has to be, again, in a logical world, in a not NFL, the whole world is insane. That would make sense. Like put him out there, see how he looks. If you don't like it, pull him back. It doesn't, it doesn't work in an illogical NFL. So what you have to

be if you're O'Connell is 100% that you feel fully confident in the way McCarthy has looked in practice in order for him to start this week. And the decision is going to tell us how far along he was able to come this week. If he was able to prove that to COC, then he will be starting. And if he wasn't, then he won't. And we'll go over what those scenarios mean. But I wanted to bring you one more of his answers where he was asked, like when he's going to make. the decision or if you have to make the decision pretty early or if you can bring it right up to game time and then decide on your starting quarterback. Here's what he said. Kevin, would you ever be comfortable taking a decision on a quarterback status like up to

game time or is because of that position you kind of need to know by end of the week just for continuity's sake? Yeah, I think, yeah, I think there's, I think there's the decision that is the public one, and I think there's the decision one with what we're going to do for the game, and those two things can be on different timelines, although I know that's not the most comforting thing to share with you guys, but there is a feel of, you know, making sure that we're preparing the quarterback position for the game, knowing that we've won games with two different guys this year, and we've found a rhythm at times on office. that as much as that quarterback plays a huge role in it,

we've got to make sure our offense is prepared to play with that true all 11 mindset. We've got to prepare that position just like the rest of our team where it's principles of playing good football that I think can be our separator and then we allow the health and kind of the readiness factor to help drive that decision later on in the week. So the end of that answer sounded to me like when he says health and readiness factor. So is the ankle responding well to a full week of practice? And when he says readiness factor, I take that as if he looks ready to me, then he's

going to play. And if he doesn't, then he won't. Which, black and white, do you look good enough in practice or not? That's a good way to make the decision. And I wanted to play one more because this comes up all the time, what Brady said here in the comments about JJ having the bad offensive. line and all that sort of stuff and all the excuses that a lot of people wanted to make for the game against Atlanta because O'Connell did kind of touch on that. And I think I think I got the

right clip here. I'm sorry if I don't. But he did kind of touch on like that's life in the NFL. And what you've heard from O'Connell is zero excuses for J.J. McCarthy. So I think that the spin from a lot of fans of, hey, it wasn't his fault. Everything was going wrong. Tell me where you've heard O'Connell do that because O'Connell is the first one often to step out in front when something goes wrong and say, hey, we got to make sure we got the right context or this was a reason or that was a reason for something happening. And he hasn't really done that at all with J.J. McCarthy. In fact, his conversation with us has been much more along the lines of the technique, the fundamentals, the timing, the progressions, the decisions all have to improve. So I'm just not.

really going to give a free pass for the performance against Atlanta when the head coach has had every opportunity to do that and has not at any point. It's not always fair based upon how things are around them or the adversity around them from a, you know, standpoint of some of the injuries that have hit us. And that's just part of why the position is so difficult. But the beauty of the work last week was, you know, this is purely just about let's just work on the technique and fundamentals and break it down to a place where we can really take tangible, wow, that felt different, that felt great, or that's how, you know, that's why we coach it like that. And, you know, pretty soon he's, he's throwing the ball great and he's got a smile on his face

and you're stacking reps upon reps that will matter as now he gets to transition to actual real reps on the practice field and having the extra day here to get a little head start will be great. And then we'll work through it from there. there you go. Working in practice on those things, getting that footwork locked back in and sounded like that was going okay. I mean, I guess it should when there's no defenders out there, but the beginning of that clip from Kevin O'Connell, and he said, it's not always fair. Baker Mayfield won a game with his wide receiver four, five, and six in the game. And if you're saying, well, Baker's a veteran, right? But who are you competing against? What's your goals here? If your

goals are to win games and to compete for the NFC North, then we can't have every single time somebody is out of a lineup being like, well, too bad, can't win, just can't be done. Sorry, that's not how it works because Carson Wentz was able to win a game where he had four backup offensive linemen. Look around the league. I mean, San Francisco has half of their entire roster. A lot of people have injuries. A lot of people have shortcomings. Drake May doesn't have a very good offensive line, won a game yesterday and has had a couple good games strung together. And yes, it would have impacted McCarthy more because he is a younger player. Clearly it did. But there is every chance there for O'Connell to say, hey, guys, you're being

too hard on JJ. You've got to understand he didn't have his tackle or whatever. And he's never said that. So I think that the analysis of McCarthy's first two games is that the head coach felt like he did not see enough of the baseline stuff from McCarthy to succeed and then took this week to work directly with him to try to get that stuff back on track. Now, you can also say at the same time that one game where he lost track of his fundamentals and wasn't getting through his reads and was extremely slow getting out the football and made a ton of mistakes does not end his career. And if he gets back on track this week and starts against Philadelphia,

well, they just lost to Bo Nix and they lost to Jackson Dart. And McCarthy has a chance to have the light come on. He needs more football in order for us to really get a sense for it. But I think that we can put to rest all of the excuses that were made for the Atlanta game and pretty clearly say that it wasn't good enough. And you didn't need a great quarterback play to win that game, by the way. But we just don't have to relitigate that. game time and time again when this is how O'Connell has talked about it.

I also think that this right here, that discussion, is why you hire Kevin O'Connell, that he spends the by week identifying what the issues were and getting in the building and working directly with J.J. McCarthy trying to fix them to the best of his ability. And with some quarterbacks you can and some quarterbacks you can't, but needing more reps and more breakdown of the exact things that he was having go wrong against Atlanta. And as he said, like having a smile on his face, getting the technique back together. But you only get that if you have your head coach working with him. So he's going to get the best that you can get for coaching.

And then when he does come back, if it is against Philadelphia, then he will have his tackle. He will have his receiver and will get a better sense of where this can go. But I also wanted to add, before I get to your questions and comments, that we don't have to make, and I know a lot of people will, but you don't have to do this. You don't have to engage. If he doesn't start against Atlanta, I'm sorry, not Atlanta, Philadelphia. If he does not start against Philadelphia, it's not over, okay? It's not the end of his career.

JJ isn't cooked. He's not finished. KOC hasn't given up on him. The organization isn't bailing. I'm sure that if it's whence that starts the game, that will be a lot of the conversation, and it's just not. What it will mean is that he thinks this is going to take more time and that he is not just ready to play one game.

He's got to be ready to play two games in four days. And if he doesn't feel like he's ready to play two games in four days, that's okay. That doesn't have to mean, call it, folks. It's over. Good night, J.J. McCarthy dream and put that to an end. Let's start looking for the next franchise QB. It doesn't have to be that way. And I don't think that O'Connell is going to rush him out there

if he doesn't feel like he can get those things down because you're just setting him up to fail if that's the case. And it hits me hard every single weekend that I watch football is how many of these guys had pasts where their coaches were changed or their teams gave up on them or they had. a bad game or two and it seemed like it all devolved and collapsed from there, I don't think that Kevin O'Connell is going to let that happen with J.J. McCarthy. So questions, thoughts, feelings on what Kevin O'Connell had to say. Buddy, the dog is playing next to me if you're hearing

that. And let me get you the Fandual question of the day here as well, which is the Tampa Bay Bucks and Indianapolis Colts are top five teams most likely to make the playoffs on Fanduel. Who would have ever seen that coming that the Bucks and the Colts would have been in the top five at minus 1,400 for the Bucks and minus 520 for the Colts, both in the top five most favored teams to make the playoffs on Fandul. Give me your biggest surprise team. Good or bad, the team that's totally shocked you for the results through the first six weeks of the season. That is the Fandual question of the day. Your biggest shock, to me, it would probably be the Colts. I mean, I remember, remember when the Vikings got Daniel Jones, I said, look at this guy's performance recently. He had gone 3 and 13 with more interceptions than touchdowns. And I said, what's the point of getting Daniel Jones? The guy has been so bad that he just can't play and he's more of a backup and move on, right? There's no reason to have him.

And yet he's come out with Indianapolis and led them to the top of their division. And they're a very, very strong overall football team. Didn't see that coming. That would probably be mine, but interested in yours as well. So let me rewind here and get your comments, your thoughts about this situation. And then also there's a few other things that I do want to touch on. Let me just get to that real quick. Zadarius Smith just retired.

He just played a few games. He played against the Giants the other day. And then just decided he retired. This is the best break the Vikings have gotten all year. as Zadarius Smith is a Viking murderer so much to the point they had to get him, get him away from the rest of the teams. And he was

great in the year that he was a Minnesota Viking unbelievable Green Bay Packer. He crushed them in the game last year against Detroit in week 18. Zadarius was phenomenal. If he should have waited one more week, my dude, one more week, Zadarius. And you probably would have got

three or four more sacks on the resume. He's just been unreal against them. And now when you look at Philadelphia, when they do have a Jalen Carter, assuming that he's going to be back and healthy, but when you look at Philadelphia and then compare it where they were last year, their defensive line that dominated the Super Bowl, now minus Zadarius Smith,

who actually was playing well for them, had like a 79 PFF grade, it still created a good number of pressures. They are very short on the, the D-line. And they are also potentially going to be short, Quinyon Mitchell. We'll see if Quinnian Mitchell ends up playing or not. We don't get a injury report officially. I think they don't have to put one out until Wednesday. So we'll start to get a sense for the health situation. But if they are questionable with Jalen Carter, down Quinnion Mitchell, their secondary

has been pretty brutal and now very short along with pass rushers in the outside linebacker position, then the Vikings might be looking at a lot less pressure than we will. would have thought when this game came out on the schedule now that Zadarius has just up and retired. In fact, I'm curious about last week with the Giants, how often Jackson Dart had time to throw. I'm going to check that right now. Jackson Dart, now he was under pressure 40% of the time, so they still were able to create pressure. He did a great job under pressure. They still were able to create some pressure. So that was, that was crazy that he just kind of decided, and that's kind of my experience covering Zadarius was you just, he didn't

talk to us a lot when he did. He could be very interesting and is a lit. I don't want to, I don't want to use the word aloof, but just maybe a guy that you don't always know what he's thinking. And he just plays against the Giants decides, you know what? I do want, I mean, it all, it goes through your mind. Is this a sign of what's going on in Philadelphia that Zadarius wouldn't want to stick it out? maybe wasn't enjoying that locker room.

I don't know. They seem like they're a little on edge at this point, but kind of crazy for a guy to just show up on Monday and be like, you know, I'm good. I've had a great career. I'm playing well, but I just don't want to play here anymore. I don't want to work here anymore. I'm out.

So the best to him, insanely good football player. He probably is not a Hall of Fame level player, but he would fall in the Hall of Very, very good to me. And maybe Hall of Most Underrated Player, as, you know, history has a ton of guys who are sack artists with X number of sacks. That gets them in the Hall of Fame. His numbers are good with sacks. It's not enough to reach that sort of Jared Allen type level.

But he was more of an overall impact type of guy because he could play inside linebacker. He was a move around guy like we talk about Van Ginkle, so powerful, so strong, so technically proficient. Just a man, an amazing player. It was awesome to watch him play up close for 17 games in 2022. And one other thing to mention just when it comes to, I thought there's a tie-in here. So Brian Callahan got fired, obviously. I could have told you that after they played the Vikings. I always think that I can evaluate an opposing teams coach with how they play against the Vikings.

Because you know the Vikings set a baseline. Some of you will say, oh, KOC, K. Look, we know that KOC and. Brian Flores are top coaches. Are they the best coaches in the entire NFL? Well, they're going to have to prove that with playoff wins and so forth that some other guys have. But I think we could say that easily in the top second tier of guys that don't necessarily have Sean McVe's resume or Andy Reid's resume right there, right?

So if your team just gets outcoached and run completely out of the building, I'm going to assume your coach is bad and that he's going to get fired soon. When the Vikings played the Titans, that's how I felt. I felt like Brian Callahan just had no chance. And his roster is bad and there's lots of excuses. But when your roster is bad and you never win any games and you're melting down all the time at the podium, it just, it's pretty clear you're not even squeezing enough out of it to look like a competent team.

So an unfortunate hire there in situation. But here's what the tie-in is. and about KOC and his handling of J.J. McCarthy. Everybody wants to see the young quarterback, always in forever, every single fan base, every single ownership, probably every player and you see so much hype and inside the building and everybody, everyone wants the young guy to play. And yet, I saw this today that the last four number one overall picks, their coaches got fired that year.

I mean, maybe there's something to this quarter. quarterback development thing, huh? Maybe the obsession with the rookie quarterback contract, and I know that's been me, but I mean, in terms of building timelines and everything else, that it forces these guys out too soon. And you still want to hit in that window, trust me, no one believes that more than I do,

that you want to hit your roster peaking with the young quarterback. But I think that there's so much to this rush, rush, rush because of the rookie contract that a lot of teams have put guys out there before they're ready to go, and then they're not good, and then their coach gets fired, and then five years later, they're succeeding with the Tampa Bay Bucks instead of the team that drafted them at the top. So there's been a lot of that in recent years, and I think that it's a little bit of a lesson of patience at the quarterback position that I'm going to keep pounding that table, even if nobody actually wants that.

So, all right. Now, I did promise to start getting to your questions and comments in about a half an hour, then we're going to get Manny Hill and Brian Murphy with their thoughts and also their answers to the Fandu question of the day, which is the team that is the most shocking or surprising to you good or bad with their results so far this year. uh okay let's see a guitar person says time for kOC to step up on play calling to help out the rookie a lot like the broncos did with bow nix i mean bo nix uh is in a bit of a different spot also didn't hasn't played well this year uh i know what you're saying like they believed that there was no way the jets were ever going to score so they just said don't screw up but they scored 13 points i'm not sure we can really look at that and say great stuff i mean maybe you mean last year easing him in to things, but it has always felt like Sean Payton is terrified that Bo Nix is going to make mistakes, which is not how KOC coaches. There is a balance here. There is a balance

because if you only throw short passes and then the occasional prayer, you end up like Joe Flacco yesterday. Like Joe Flacco, hey, they need more short, short, short, short passes. Okay, well, you can average five yards per attempt in doing that. You need to be able to have a balance offensively. I do think that there wasn't enough clear schematic stuff to get the ball into the hands of J.J. Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison that we did see in the last couple games, especially against Cleveland. The play that stood out to me the most was lining up Jefferson in the backfield. But there was also another really nice little slant that Jefferson ran, caught it, got eight or nine yards. Stuff like that is clearly just schemed up, get the

ball get it out of your hands you're probably not getting 20 yards but maybe you get you break a tackle and you get a first down you're just looking to make sure the football is in the hands of addison and jefferson but there's only so much of that you can do there's only so many quickouts that get five or six yards you've got to run the offense you have it's been called a ferrari that's what you have now with addison back you have addison and jefferson two of the best receivers in the league Naylor could catch the ball. Hawkinson is prolific at times in his career underneath. Everything shouldn't have to be all schemed up little short dinks and dunks

because otherwise the defense is going to know that and they're not going to let you get away with it. So the other thing is, too, that McCarthy didn't execute that stuff at all. They called it. They called it and he ran it and I've read the numbers before and it wasn't on time. And when we compare Carson Wentz, the throws under 10 yards,

Wentz is getting them out in two seconds. McCarthy wasn't even getting them out in three when he threw under 10 yards. So it's also on the quarterback to be able to execute that stuff. So while I agree, and while I praised O'Connell a lot for what he did against Cleveland, we cannot say, oh, well, just throw short all the time. It'll be fine.

Okay, well, that's not really what's going to win you games. Like sometimes you have to take the, profit and just get those yards, get a checkdown, get a break tackle or whatever. But you got to be able to run the plays down the field, 15, 20 yard throws to Justin Jefferson, or this thing doesn't work the way it needs to work to actually win. So that is a balance that he has to have, I think. Let's see. Yeah, I mean, Bo Nix threw for 175 yards on 30 attempts.

That's not good. like that's that's actually really bad so you're going to not win very many i guarantee you if you looked up how many times quarterbacks won a game where they threw for 175 yards on 30 attempts the answer would be very very low uh not not very many times that you're going to win a game like that so uh all right let me i've got i've gotten a tad behind sorry about that um let's see actually that was that's funny oh anyway uh adam says uh worst thing that happened to this franchise in the last five years is josh jobs winning meaningless games yeah i mean i brought that up last night after watching drake may there's a reason why kOC wanted to trade for may

and they weren't able to do it uh because in part they won those games and also a three nothing win against the los vegas raiders but i was told at the time by a lot of folks that you know tanking is the worst thing in the entire world, but that might have changed the fate a little bit. You can't go back in time, though, and it goes for everything. And I like to review the history as much as anybody else. But when we look at this whole situation, where you're at right now and trying to go back in time and look at it, we don't have enough information on J.J. McCarthy to really say

that stuff. Because right now, at this second, you could say, well, it's too bad they don't have Rogers. Yeah, it's too bad they don't have Darnold. Well, too bad they don't have Daniel Jones. Too bad they didn't tank then. Too bad they didn't get Jaden Daniels. Too bad they didn't get Drake May. Too bad, too bad, too bad, too bad.

In fact, the Vikings had a chance to get Baker Mayfield a couple years ago. And he was available. The Panthers traded, what, like nothing for Baker Mayfield. And the Vikings had Justin Jefferson then. And maybe they would be the Tampa Bay Bucks right now. So you can do it with a lot of different things, right? but we just don't know where J.J. McCarthy is going to end up. And if all those decisions from the past are going to be haunting them or not.

If Sam Darnold wins the Super Bowl, then yeah, you can definitely look back and go, you know what you should have probably done, kept Sam Donald. Although I will say, that man is playing awesome football. Their offensive line isn't that good. And he's making some throws. He's doing the Sam Darnold stuff. It wasn't a fluke. it wasn't a fraud, it wasn't a joke.

Is he the best quarterback in the league? No. And do I think the Vikings minus several players would have had a real shot at the Super Bowl with him? Can't quite get there at the moment. But Sam Donald's playing really good football, but we just don't have anything to compare it to. Aaron Rogers is playing fine football. Their division is an absolute joke, which is shocking. That's the most shocking thing for the Fandul question of the day.

their division's an absolute joke. They're going to win it by default because all the other teams are just bumbling over themselves. But still, we don't have anything to compare Rogers to other than two games. One win, one loss. One game where McCarthy plays well on national TV, enough to win in the fourth quarter and has some great moments in another game where it's not good and that's it. Well, we can't really go back in time and, you know, figure out, hey, you know, is it a

better choice to do this or that because we don't know yet we don't have enough to say so i mean i get where you're going with and i've had that thought and i probably said that a little bit last night after watching uh drake may play they it's no question about why kevin o'connell wanted to draft drake may he saw all that stuff and it was pretty evident that may had all the physical talent to be a superstar so um michael says as KOC should put JJ in the game and soft bench went. So, well, it's not a soft benching when he's the backup quarterback. That's not really how that works.

Let's see. Brady says sick of every single Vikings reporter making this a thing. Oh, scary, do you start them against the Eagles? Okay, the schedule looks hard. Where do you start them? You know, I think that's a fair point. And the Eagles don't look as scary right now. I think that the issue would be starting him in back-to-back games if he wasn't ready

on a short week before, then is he going to be ready on a short week now? And I generally overall agree with your point that if you try to wait until the perfect time, excuse me, the perfect time to start him against the perfect team in the perfect scenario, well, there really isn't one. It would have been, hey, Cincinnati, had he stayed healthy, would have been the best place because Cincinnati is just terrible from start to finish, from offensive line to defense to secondary to pass rush to quarterback. They're just awful.

That would have been a great get right game for J.J. McCarthy had he remained healthy through the Atlanta game, but you can't go back in time with that either. And all the opponents coming up are going to be difficult. But they're not impossible. The Chargers defense, it's flawed. The Eagles defense is banged up. It's not what it was last year. The Lions defense is banged up.

Baltimore's defense has been horrible so far this year. Chicago is nothing special. These are the opponents that are coming up. You have to just decide if he's really ready. The decision should not be made on who you're playing. Because Philadelphia's defense just allowed Jackson Dart to be awesome. He threw for, what, 195 yards on almost eight yards per attempt, had an 89.7 pff grade, 68% completion percentage.

He was really good. And he's a young quarterback and he's just figuring it out. So it's not the Eagles for me. For me, it's not the opponent. For me, it's entirely, do you think that he is ready to do this in terms of the most baseline stuff of the offense? And I think by now we've seen enough KOC offense to know exactly what he's talking about. I mean, the Kirk Cousins special was that out route to Justin Jefferson. And then

we saw Wentz do it last week where drops back, hits the back foot. The ball comes out way before the break. He goes into the break. Bang makes the catch. And it's an easy 12 yards or an easy eight yards where you can get that to him or Addison anytime you want if you do it right. Like the interception is a good example against Atlanta. If you go back to that one in your head, that's an out route that he throws too late. And the defender just has a chance to close and then make a play on it. And it's not the most accurate ball or thrown into the right spot either. Those are the types of plays that O'Connell is talking about.

So it has to depend for me on when they look at the practice tape, how is the timing of those routes? The decision making is a little bit harder because you can't hit. him in practice. But in terms of those types of plays that are the ones we see time and time and time again in this offense. And that also might be seeing when Jefferson is going on a post and reading a safety. And this happens all the time. They'll have two deep safeties. Jefferson's going on a post over the middle. And if one safety leans one way, then you're throwing it. And if he leans the other way, then you're checking it.

And, and that's the type of stuff that has to happen lightning fast. So can he do that stuff? It's not, it's not to me, who are you playing? Because Philadelphia is okay, but they're not incredible. They're just okay. I assume it's Ryan, R.YN. I think the offense is 10 points better and a whole two seconds faster with Wentz. It is about a, about, it just speaks to football.

It's about three quarters of a second faster. when you look at the snap to release. But that's a lot when you think about like one misses, like that's some time. And that's how fast everything works in the NFL. And yeah, they have been better in terms of their production. But I also don't believe that Carson Wentz has played so well. If this was the way, just for example, if this is a different world, like imagine a world where instead of Carson Wentz,

It was Sam Darnold, and he played like he did last year against Houston, San Francisco, Green Bay, the beginning of the season. And he played like that off the bench. And it was a guy who was fairly young or just getting to his prime. And it was a top draft pick, and he had a huge arm. And he just set the world on fire. Then I would be saying, look, guys, don't worry about whether he was drafted 10th overall. That's kind of sunk cost.

Like, just roll with this guy. and see where it takes you. But that's not Carson Wentz. Carson Wentz is a veteran backup quarterback who has some limitations, including trying to make plays out of structure that he can't make anymore, trying to be a playmaker and taking sacks, taking hits, and making some mistakes throwing the football because he's trying to do a little too much. The accuracy has not been super great for Wentz.

It's really just been as good as you can get for a backup quarterback. So they are better at the moment when we compare his three games versus his two games. It's not much to work with. And I don't think it gets better with Wentz, where it can absolutely get way better with J.J. McCarthy as you go along. So let's see. Mr. Mayor says the Venn diagram of Kirk Cousins and people who keep throwing out excuses over and over for J.J. McCarthy. two games is a circle. Yeah, you know, I don't know about that.

I mean, I get what you're saying, because it does sound a lot like every time Kirk would lose a game, it would be the right guards fault, even if he wasn't getting rid of the ball or even if his athletic ability was limited and that cost them or just those disappearing act, Kirk games that were frustrating through the years. As many as there were great games, by the way. There were ones that you just didn't understand what happened, why. why, why was that, you know, ball thrown in a certain direction that was picked off? Why was there the strip sack? Why didn't they start succeeding as an offense till they're down 20 points?

But yeah, you're right. That often came from a lot of fans with, well, it was somebody else's fault. It's Zimmer. It's the guards. It's whatever. So it does, it has the same ring to it. But I think the context is very different where Kirk had his fans and those people had stuck the stake in the ground day one and decided Kirk's great. and he's going to take us where he's going to go. And they never moved off that. And that's fine. I mean, there's major media personalities that do the same thing. So you might as well.

But when it comes to McCarthy, this to me is much more wide of the entire fan base, the entire state of Minnesota and all folks who have moved out of the state long ago that followed the purple since 1961. All of those people are following J.J. McCarthy. wanting it to work because everybody knows no matter where you jumped on as a Vikings fan. If you jumped on in 1961, if you jumped on in 1989, if you jumped on in 1999 or 2004 or 2012 or no matter where you went, you would have said, man, that thing they're still searching for is a franchise quarterback.

And the only people who got to see it was those folks from the 60s, but they didn't really get to see it until Fran Targerton left and then came back and was so great and went to the Super Bowls. So even they, the early people would have been saying like, oh, you know, Fran's not good enough. Where's the next guy, Gary Quasso or whatever? I mean, just right. So at many times in this team's history, even the earliest days. And then there was a section where Franz, the guy, and he's one of the goats. And then past that, you're still looking for that true franchise quarterback, touchdown Tommy at one point looks like he's that. Dante Culpepper is that for a few minutes.

Teddy is that for a few minutes, but they've never locked into it. So when you have an opportunity with a top 10 drafted quarterback, everybody is leaning into the screen and wanting to see him and wanting him to succeed. And when it doesn't go well, also wanting to say, no, no, it's fine. It's still fine. It's okay.

there's a Great Simpsons bit. This goes back way too far. There's a Great Simpsons bit where Homer is barbecuing and Lisa pushes the pig down the hill and Homer says it's just a little dirty. It's okay. It's okay. And then it goes in the water.

It's just a little wet. It's okay. That's kind of how it's felt over the last few weeks. But I don't want to say that this is gone any direction yet so far. it's gone no direction there's been a little bit of good there's been too much bad and then there's been an injury incomplete grade through the by week very much incomplete grade through the by week so i get but i get why people would have that feeling and would have that reaction to any criticism of j j mccarthy in his game against atlanta but when you listen to

the head coach of the football team didn't hear a whole lot of lot of excuses or even explanations that, oh, it was this or it was that, he's essentially just come out and set it. The fundamentals were not there to win that football game. And there were way too many simple baseline type of mistakes that were the cause of him not being able to win that game. So, or at least perform at a level that would have given them a chance. And it happens. And now it's O'Connell's job and it's McCarthy's job to get that back to. a spot where he can get in and he can win. And the first step is for McCarthy to go out there and practice.

Look, it's Carson Wentz. It's not Josh Allen that you have to beat out in practice this week. It's Carson Wentz. Go beat out Carson Wentz. It shouldn't be that high of a bar. You know the offense way better than Carson Wentz does over the last couple of years. Everyone wants you to be the starter. They want you to succeed.

Go out and do it. And at some point, you just have to, instead of, well they didn't call the right plays they didn't block this right whatever it's on him it's on him he's had a long time to learn the offense and he had all summer to be QB1 and he didn't perform that great in the first two games but now it's on him to prove to O'Connell to prove to Jefferson to prove to Addison to Hawkinson to everybody on this team that came here to win that he's ready to do it and if he's not then they stick with Carson Wentz and then we go from there but there's just there's a lot of like, oh, it's not his fault, it's okay, it's okay.

Well, at some point it's the NFL, and if he can't do it, then he can't start. And they're, like O'Connell said today, I mean, first and foremost, you have to win a football game. I mean, there's so much of the attention on, hey, can McCarthy get his feet in the right spots, but they're three and two. And look at the NFC, it's very mid across the board, including the Philadelphia Eagles. It's just very me. The Packers, did they impress? you yesterday didn't really impress me they were okay the lions played a good team and for the

second time this year the lions played a good team and lost they have four wins against bad teams and one win against a good team or in no wins against good teams so is that who detroit is that's not that mind blowing they've got half their team hurt so i like they have to they have to make the decision of who's going to be able to win and uh if mccarthy isn't that guy then they're going to have to go with Wentz and he's going to have to prove it at some point. So whether you, you know, make excuses for him or not, like, that's the reality. Zumer says, Zumer Kev, are the Eagles actually imploding? That would be so great.

We're going to find out. The only hesitation for me is on whether they're imploding is that last year at one point, there seemed to be a major beef between A.J. Brown and. Jalen Hertz. And then all of a sudden, there wasn't. Then all of a sudden, they got it together and they clicked and they went and won the Super Bowl. So we can't totally dismiss the idea that those two and this offense can work it out. Jalen Hertz has not been fantastic so far. Also, they're in the pressure cooker to where being four and two and having just okay results is getting destroyed.

where most teams at 4 and 2 and looking at the performances of the quarterback and receivers and defense and everything would be like, well, we're pretty good. But if you're the Eagles and you've won the Super Bowl, your standard is higher than that. I could see, though, here's what you really want. And I don't know why this clicked into my brain.

There was a game many years ago with Gus Ferrat starting against Jeff Garcia. The 49ers came to Minnesota. And Gus Ferat played amazing. I think it was Nate Burleson's first touchdown ever. us played incredibly well, just throwing bombs. And at one point, Terrell Owens totally loses it on the sideline, just melts down. I was watching this game, I don't know, a couple years ago.

And he just freaks out on the sideline. Like, if you can get A.J. Brown to that point, then you have won the game. If you could get A.J. Brown to the point of having a meltdown, then you will win this football game. And that's what the Vikings need to do is they need to take advantage of where Philadelphia is at, with their drama because it's teetering it's that's how i see them they're not fully off the cliff yet but they're teetering on that drama so if you can get them down early get them frustrated by a few three and outs then you could see a pretty early sideline gatorade bottle throw or

something from a j brown um but this is how things go in the nfl where one year you win the super bowl and you're unbelievable in the next year i mean they got eliminated from the playoffs by Tampa Bay the year after they went to the Super Bowl last time. It's really hard to do it time and time again. And I think we see that all the time. Michael says, how long are you willing to wait on JJ? Jefferson and Derisaw will be 30 by his fifth year and we rank 25th in age. Yeah, that's a good point.

It's a really great question is how long. And I think what history would tell us is that if this year, I mean, it almost seems impossible that he wouldn't play again this year, right? They want this to happen. You heard O'Connell say, like about getting him back out there, performance and health, like, is he good to go? But if we get to the end of this year and still feel like there isn't even hints one way or the other, so just for example, Atlanta's playing tonight.

And I don't think any of us really knows about Michael Pennix and whether he's a franchise quarterback or not. but Michael Pennick sold Atlanta on being that guy last year when he got in the game. And it wasn't a huge sample size, but he showed their coaching staff and performed at a level that they thought, okay, we believe in this guy, we could trade a first round pick for a pass rusher, we can go all in around this guy, we buy it. You need to be at that point by the end of the year where at least you feel like, yeah, okay, maybe it's small sample or maybe we're just talking about a high, hot streak at the end or something like that, but you need to have confidence that he can be that

guy next year because a lot of the checks are already written for this roster and there isn't a ton else you can do. And if they don't at least have that feeling, and it's, it's a know it when you see it thing. I think we'll all be able to know it when we see it. When you guys watch, even Drake May when they were losing last year, you had to be like, okay, if they get anybody around this guy, he's going to be pretty darn good. And you also know when somebody doesn't sell you. I mean, you've seen Justin Fields play in Chicago. Was any Viking fan surprised?

You've seen that game from Justin Fields. You probably knew, just like me, after about three times of seeing Justin Fields. Like, this guy can't play. This guy can't be an NFL starting quarterback. We need to see McCarthy enough to at least have that general vibe and sense. And I even go back to, you know, my dad growing, he's in Buffalo. I grew up in Buffalo for most of you. You already know that.

And so he was watching early Josh Allen. And Josh Allen was struggling statistically. And they were losing some games and everything. But he was telling me, people really believe it in this. Like they're like what he's flashing, just like Drake May last year, like what he's flashing, it's going somewhere. And so I always feel like we should all know at once. If you're fighting about it, it tells you the answer, doesn't it? Like, if the whole fan base is arguing every single day, whether is he good, is he not good?

Well, you already know the answer then. That's, that's the Kirk thing. Like, you already know the answer that it's probably not good enough if everybody's fighting about it every single day. Because I went back two years ago to Buffalo, and I went to every grocery store had Josh Allen everywhere. And it's like, these people don't argue about the quarterback. I promise you that. So it's, that will take time. By the end of the year, you at least need those hints.

You need that vibe. You need that feeling about McCarthy in order to feel good about going forward. If you do not have it, then you're looking at quarterbacks and you're talking about who else you're going to bring in to compete with him. And it becomes like a Brock Purdy and Trey Lance situation or Daniel Jones and Anthony Richardson. It kind of becomes like that. And that's how fast it happens.

Anthony Richardson is in year three. That's how quick it can happen if they don't believe in what they're seeing. So they're going to have to figure it out fairly quickly, whether at least there's reason to go forward. And I know I've said, hey, patience, and there's a lot of evidence that patience is good. And I'm not going to change my mind on that, that patience overall is better for young quarterbacks. But hints, a feeling, a sense, was a corner turned? Did he get back in and win some really cool games and start to show you something? And then I still think there's a high end of this where it goes really well in the second half of the season.

And then you start to see the first round, 10th overall draft pick. It's just so hard when you haven't been able to get him actually on the field and playing to assess anything. Zuma Kev Colts were dead last in fan optimism before the season started at 7% lower. than the Saints. That's interesting. Now they look like an AFC contender. Yeah, the Colts are the most shocking for me. That's the fan dual question of the day. The Colts are now minus 520 to make the playoffs.

So very much favored to make the playoffs. Never would have seen that coming. I thought that would have been a team competing for the first overall pick. Blowfish says the game is faster than college and it's natural for young quarterbacks to adapt. I mean, that's the thing, right, is that McCarthy having so little experience playing at this speed, it is not shocking that there's an adjustment period. And that's why he needs to show O'Connell that he can get these most simple things about playing the position right, because it does move so

fast. And if you don't have those right, you are just completely screwed. I mean, if you don't have the most simple things, then you are totally and wholly out of luck at adjusting to the speed. But if you do, at least you can get to a point where you're completing the open passes and where you're throwing with anticipation on the core concepts of the offense, which we know work really well. So those are things that he has to improve on. And then you can adjust on the fly to some of the speed. I mean, I didn't, I didn't think that the game was too fast for him in the first week with his decision making.

It was really when he got sped up by getting hit. I mean, that's what, that is where the great quarterbacks are separated and where you have to learn. It's like, you're going to get hit. Jay says, come on, Matthew. I do not want JJ to start. He sucked in the first two games. Well, there's no debate about the performance in my mind and what it said in the first. two games but it also like think about what you just said like two games they went one in one

one of them was bad one of them was pretty good in the second half and in the final score they end up winning the game his final box score wasn't bad is that enough that's enough for you to say hey that's that's enough i mean i i know people have been saying the same things about McCarthy forever and Adam bringing back Mick handoffs, which is, you know, I, that's very clever of you. And congratulations on that. But I'm sure you've told many of your friends that, but no one really knows what he's going to be able to do when he gets back in until we see him actually do it. So there's folks that are super confident on either side of it, but I don't think we really can be until we start until we actually see him get back.

So, you know, there are some of you who want to see Carson Wentz that kind of surprises me that some of you actually want to see Carson Wentz play for the rest of the season going forward because McCarthy's performance scared you so much. But I think that that is the vast, vast minority, the extreme majority of Vikings fans want to see him back in the game and want to see where this is going to take them. But I would just suggest that if O'Connell doesn't feel comfortable with that, that we give him more time. And if we get to the middle of the season and they're middling or they're starting to fall behind, then there's a much better argument for, yeah, just throw him out there, see what he can do. But at this moment, they have to do what's best to win and not just what's best for J.J. McCarthy to get experience. I don't think we're quite there yet. It is a dicey situation for Kevin O'Connell.

Even just making this decision is going to have to be on a handful of practices in what he's seen from McCarthy this week. did not come away with a clear answer, thinking, all right, I've got it. I think he's going to start McCarthy. It seemed to me like, show me, kid, just show me. Reminder, got some good answers there on the Fandul question of the day, that the Tampa Bay Bucks and Indianapolis Colts are both top five teams favored to make the playoffs on Fandul at minus 14 and minus 520. Both of those teams are pretty big surprises through six weeks.

Who is your biggest surprise team good or bad? So, as always, on Monday night, we have our roundtable. And if you give me a moment to get Brian Murphy and Mani Hill in here. But one of my favorite things every single week is talking with these guys on the show. So I'll let you answer that question as I load up Mani and Murph here into the show.