What Does a Successful Season for JJ McCarthy Look Like?
The Minnesota Vikings are in a good yet peculiar spot right now. Their 14-3 record this past season was the franchise’s highest win total since 1998, yet they couldn’t win their division. They were tied for the second most wins of all NFC teams last year, alongside the eventual Super Bowl champs in Philly, yet fell short against the 10-win LA Rams in a Wild Card matchup that never even hinted at a Vikings victory. Their starting quarterback, Sam Darnold, underwent a career renaissance for the ages, but dropped the ball in the postseason and walked away to Seattle. In short, the Vikings are good but are just short of greatness.
It seems that Minnesota has fallen into the paradoxical realm unique to sports that I like to call the Superposition of Very Good. This means that the Vikings weren’t good enough to win it all last year, but were too good not to have a lot of pressure and expectations placed on them for this year. That’s a very stressful position for any team or player to be in, especially a rookie. Enter J.J. McCarthy.
McCarthy isn’t a rookie, but a big asterisk needs to go on with his name as a second-year pro. He infamously suffered a season-ending knee injury at the start of the preseason last year, immediately ending the Vikings’ plans of having him as the starting signal caller for 2024. McCarthy’s rookie season came and went without him ever seeing a single snap in the regular season. Unfortunately for him, that’s a lot of practical, valuable experience that was lost and that he can’t get back.
Fortunately for him, it's not like McCarthy was just fully absent from the Vikings after his injury. He was still a part of the locker room, still on the sideline for their games, still being trained on the playbook. McCarthy was able to take in everything that constituted being in the league and on the Vikings, other than being on the field itself. While it's not hard to assume that he would have rather been playing and learning on the field, McCarthy was able to spend his rookie year learning as much as he could without the pressure of on-field performance, something that has shattered the confidence of many other rookie QBs thrust into the starting role.
With all this in mind, and with McCarthy being cleared to start for the Vikings this season, many people around the league have been asking if he is ready to lead the team. It is a very fair question, especially with the lack of data that everyone was hoping to get from his rookie year. It is also a hard question to answer right now, before the season, due to the same factors. To answer that question, I believe that it is important to set some parameters on what McCarthy’s expectations are for this upcoming season.
A successful first year for McCarthy should look like the following. First, the Vikings should finish with double-digit wins. A 14-win season is hard to follow up on for any team, but anything less than 10 wins for this Vikings squad should be seen as monumentally disappointing. Secondly, they need to finish in the top two of their division. Don’t get me wrong, the NFC North is a metaphorical knife fight right now, with three of the four teams within reach of the playoffs last year and the one team who didn’t, still having upgraded substantially. Finishing in the top half of such a killer division almost certainly means a playoff spot as well. Lastly, McCarthy needs to finish with at least 3600 yards and 20 passing TDs, or at least place in the top 15 amongst QBs in both statistics. While Darnold was able to amass over 4300 passing yards and 35 TDs, some leeway should be given to a new, young QB. That said, he still has Justin Jefferson to throw to, and these benchmarks would put him roughly in the same spot as reigning Offensive Rookie of the Year Jayden Daniels.
While some may look at these expectations and think they’re too timid or lenient after the Vikings' performance last season, I want to be clear that these are just the threshold between “success” and “bust.” Success comes in many different forms and to different degrees. Vikings fans should be hoping that McCarthy blows by these measured expectations and keeps the Vikings in conversation as genuine contenders in the NFC. On the off chance that he cannot match these numbers, Vikings fans might start to ask themselves if letting Darnold go to the Seahawks was truly the right move.
