Vikings must stick with J.J. McCarthy for remainder of season no matter how bad it gets
The Vikings fell to 4-6 with Sunday's loss to the Bears as their QB had another bad day. But that actually makes it easier to leave him in the starting role.
J.J. McCarthy spent almost all of Sunday’s game against the Chicago Bears looking lost.
The Vikings quarterback underthrew a pass for Jordan Addison and overthrew Justin Jefferson on the opening drive, he had two passes intercepted on consecutive possessions in the second quarter, and heard boos on a couple of occasions from the fans at U.S. Bank Stadium in the third quarter after sailing passes over his intended targets.
When McCarthy and the Vikings got the ball back at their own 15-yard line with 3 minutes, 14 seconds left in the fourth quarter, they trailed 16-10 and the QB had completed 10 of 24 passes for 74 yards. That gave him a putrid passer rating of 14.9. McCarthy had thrown only five passes in the second half and had no completions.
McCarthy did his best to erase the vitriol directed his way in that final offensive possession as he completed six of eight passes for 76 yards, ending the drive with a 15-yard touchdown strike to Addison to give the Vikings a one-point lead.
It wasn’t McCarthy’s fault that a breakdown by the Vikings’ special teams enabled Devin Duvernay to return the ensuing kickoff 56 yards to the Minnesota 40 and set up a 48-yard game-winning field goal by Cairo Santos as time expired.
But the Vikings’ 19-17 loss put the focus where it belonged: on McCarthy’s performance.
Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell and McCarthy both answered numerous questions on the subject — many of them focused on McCarthy’s accuracy issues — and O’Connell declined to get into what it would take for him to bench McCarthy and put in Max Brosmer.
O’Connell’s answer — if he had given one — should have been that nothing short of another McCarthy injury would cause him to make a change. In fact, Sunday’s loss makes it easier than ever to allow McCarthy to start the final seven games of the season.
The Vikings are 4-6 and in the basement of the NFC North. They are 10th in the NFC, putting them on the outside of the seven-team playoff picture, and their chance of making the postseason has dropped to 3 percent, according to the model established by The Athletic.
That means there is no time like the present to find out if McCarthy can overcome his accuracy issues — and get the game to slow down — or if the 22-year-old is in so far over his head that there’s little hope for success.
Of course, there have been plenty of quarterbacks who have looked terrible early in their career and eventually turned it around. For some it has been a quick turnaround, for others it has taken years and there also is a list of guys who never figured it out and disappeared from the NFL.