It’s obvious how good his situation is with the Minnesota Vikings—with Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, T.J. Hockenson, Christian Darrisaw, Kevin O’Connell, Wes Phillips and Josh McCown, among others, giving the rookie a rock-solid supporting cast and football infrastructure. He also acquitted himself nicely, especially in riding out some bumps, in his preseason debut against the Las Vegas Raiders on Saturday, completing 11-of-18 passes for 188 yards and two touchdowns and an interception.
And maybe best of all is that he’s playing for a staff that won’t force him out on the field in the regular season before he’s ready.
Over the past few months, I’d heard about the detailed plan O’Connell had for whichever quarterback the Vikings drafted, a plan drawn up before Minnesota moved up a spot in the first round to take the former Michigan star. So being in the Twin Cities at the end of last week, that plan was the first thing I wanted to talk to O’Connell about, and he explained how it’s one he’s thought a lot about, and incorporates his experiences as a player, quarterback trainer and coach.
The first piece was how he stocked the room, with McCown as quarterbacks coach, and Grant Udinski as assistant offensive coordinator-assistant QBs coach, and Nick Mullens, who could help teach younger guys the system, and be ready in a pinch without taking practice reps that O’Connell wanted to give to McCarthy and Sam Darnold.
After that, it was about writing a script that gave McCarthy and Darnold the best chance to improve, as simple as that sounds. Darnold, of course, had played in different systems and for three different teams before arriving in Minnesota after signing a one-year, $10 million deal as a free agent, while McCarthy was coming from a very stable college environment. So while their needs would cross over at times, the areas where they could make leaps were different from one another.
“There is no one way,” O’Connell told me Thursday. “The process and the development plan need to be applied with detail and great urgency to individualize an approach. You have to be willing to evaluate step by step, day by day, while also preaching and building a plan where guys never say to themselves, . How that’s going is, both Sam and J.J. are further along than I probably thought they would be at this point.”
In other words, the benchmarks the Vikings are looking for Darnold to hit aren’t always the same as the ones they need McCarthy to hit. Those also aren’t always so apparent to the naked eye, which is where O’Connell really got to the crux of the matter.
The key, as I saw it, in what O’Connell was relaying was this—how the quarterback enables the other 10 guys in the huddle to do their jobs will go a long way in deciding who becomes the starter.
“What we’ve got to avoid is the illusion of quarterback play,” he continued. “It might be something as simple as, You get a top-10 pass rush in this league, and you took the wrong drop. You started your eyes in the wrong spot, and you fell into a completion where somebody watching practice may say, .”
And that part of it, obviously, comes down to what O’Connell knows and we don’t.
It’s his playbook, and he called the play, so he knows if Darnold or McCarthy read it right. He knows if either quarterback set the protection correctly. He knows who the ball is designed to go to, and where the coverage should push the quarterbacks. All the same, he, again, knows if the result on a preseason Saturday is likely to equate to a regular-season Sunday.
That, of course, isn’t to downplay any of the success McCarthy or Darnold might have (or seem to have) in the footage that the general public gets to see. It’s simply to try and apply a regular-season contest to a preseason setting, which you can’t really do if you’re not wearing a headset on the sideline.
Doing that is the challenge facing, and exciting O’Connell. Because he thinks both guys can play. And now it’s about picking one that’ll translate when it counts, which, in turn, protects the development of the younger one—because it implies he won’t play before he’s ready.
“I know what I called,” O’Connell said. “I know what you did, every single snap. I also know what was not exactly right, what was a little shaky. It might be little things. It might be calling plays in the huddle. It might be cadence at the line of scrimmage, remembering to send your motion. Every single time one of those things happens, that has nothing to do with your ability to play the position.
“That’s purely the comfort of making sure that 10 other guys in that huddle can break the huddle and run the play and be held accountable for the details of their job because I can do the baseline of mine, long before you have a ball leave your hands or make a check or an audible. That’s where I’ve seen the growth and development with J.J. He is getting better at that. Sam’s comfort of the system is growing on a minute-to-minute basis.
“The endgame of all that is a day where J.J. hits Justin Jefferson for some big plays and everybody’s feeling good. But there also might be a small third-and-9 where instead of forcing a ball, he checks the ball down and we get 10. I’m the most excited in the quarterback room when I see it, and they’re like dude, . Then after all of this, you get to all the layers of managing the game. Being a game manager is a pretty powerful thing if you’re as talented as these guys are.”
That explanation, and this is just me, goes a long way in explaining why, as good as Kirk Cousins was in Minnesota, I think the Vikings are going to be just fine at quarterback.
And that’s whether McCarthy starts in Week 1, or not until Week 1 of 2025.
