The Minnesota Vikings decided to end their QB competition on Aug. 11, naming Kyler Murray their starting QB ahead of their first preseason game against the New York Giants on Aug. 15.
As a result, Murray can now focus on learning the Vikings’ offense by getting all the first-team reps. Meanwhile, the question is what happens with J.J. McCarthy, who slides into the QB2 role. McCarthy’s future in Minnesota looks uncertain, especially if Murray can lead the Vikings to the playoffs.
Nonetheless, while it’s easy to take digs at McCarthy while he’s down, Nick Wright of FS1 did sort of criticize Minnesota for how they’ve handled the young QB’s development after deciding to go with Murray.
“I hate everything about their process from the moment they drafted J.J. McCarthy to right now,” Wright said on the Aug. 11 edition of “First Things First.” “And it’s borderline unprecedented. For their entire MO to be, we can win 11, 12 games with Kirk Cousins. There’s a ceiling there. It’s not good enough. We’re going to draft a quarterback. We then, after we draft the quarterback, he gets hurt. That was before they had soured on him at all.
“He’d played a preseason game, played well in it, got hurt. Sam Darnold, we win 14 games with Sam Darnold. Doesn’t matter. We want the upside of the young player… You drafted an incredibly raw, very young first-round pick, had 10 starts, and you’re just out on him. For me, in service of, in my opinion, a very limited player, the process of it to me is disastrous.”
Vikings Couldn’t Afford to Wait on a Young, Raw Talent
Moreover, Wright put into context how young McCarthy is and perhaps spotlights the team’s impatience to deal with the development of a player who is pretty much in Year 2, given that he missed his entire rookie year due to injury.
“To give that young player, who, by the way, when I say young player, he is younger than Ty Simpson, who was drafted this year,” Wright added. “He is younger than Carson Beck, who we saw in the Hall of Fame Game. He’s younger than Drake Maye.
“He’s younger than Cam Ward. He is three years younger than Bo Nix and Tyler Shough. Tyler Shough’s going into Year 2. Bo Nix going into Year 3, same as [McCarthy]. To give that player 10 starts and be like, we’re washing our hands of you, essentially. It’s not unprecedented, but it’s close to it.”
The former first-round pick will now need to be QB2 and wait for any opportunity that arises this season. Murray does have an injury history, so there’s the possibility Minnesota could lean on McCarthy at some point.
J.J. McCarthy Could Find Success Elsewhere
While McCarthy’s future in Minnesota looks cloudy, that doesn’t mean his future in the NFL should be. Former head coach Eric Mangini believes there are several examples of high draft picks who needed to go elsewhere to find success.
“The nice thing for him is there have been enough guys who have recovered and gotten a second and third opportunity,” Mangini added in that same segment. “And that’s different than it has been historically. So he does have a chance to potentially go somewhere else and restart his career.
“But at this point, they feel like they can win now. They feel like they’re in a position to compete right now. And if he’s too far away developmentally, the rest of that group is sitting there going, ‘We don’t want to wait for you to catch up to us.’”
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