Despite letting both Sam Darnold and Daniel Jones depart in free agency, the Minnesota Vikings still felt confident in their chances to compete with J.J. McCarthy. Reinvesting the money saved from not spending on Darnold and Jones into other areas of the roster was supposed to help give McCarthy a stronger foundation to work from. But it didn’t matter.
Once McCarthy got out there, it became evident that this was a very young quarterback who still needed a lot of seasoning. The youngest QB to start a game in the NFL last season, McCarthy finished with the lowest completion rate among all players with at least 10 starts in 2025.
It’s not like the Vikings weren’t spending countless hours coaching McCarthy and helping him refine his technique. They even tried removing some passing concepts to help dumb things down for the 2024 first-round pick.
According to The Athletic‘s Alec Lewis, the Vikings actually took over-the-middle passing plays out of the playbook when McCarthy was in the game.
“Applying touch to passes — a pre-draft question the Vikings themselves had — remained a struggle. In 2025, Minnesota also removed most of its over-the-middle passing concepts throughout the season to keep his line of sight as simple as possible.”
The Athletic’s Alec Lewis on J.J. McCarthy
McCarthy still finished with the highest interception rate in the NFL, throwing a pick on 4.9% of his passing attempts. While taking some passing concepts out of the playbook may have been an attempt to help McCarthy regain some confidence, he’ll have to spend the offseason trying to refine the amount of touch he places on passes.
The Vikings will have a better idea of where McCarthy is at in his development than anyone else, but they could still determine that they need another QB to compete with him in 2026. If not, things could go from bad to worse.
Related: NFL Insider Connects Minnesota Vikings to Pro Bowl Dual-Threat QB
