One silver lining about Thursday night's miserable performance by the Minnesota Vikings is head coach Kevin O'Connell doesn't have a quarterback controversy on his hands. While backup QB Carson Wentz hasn't been completely irredeemable in his five starts with the Vikings this season, it's obvious why he's on his sixth team in six years.
With the Vikes now having a "mini bye" before their next game on November 2, that should be an ample amount of time for second year quarterback JJ McCarthy to get close to 100% after suffering a high ankle sprain 5-1/2 weeks ago. Heck, O'Connell even said this past week that if their week 8 game was this Sunday, McCarthy may well have been ready to go.
Given McCarthy has played all of two games this season and has looked (to be charitable) subpar in seven of the eight quarters he's been in, there was talk that if Wentz had success in his tenure as the starter, it would've been difficult to go back to the kid. The prevailing sentiment was the veteran laden team wouldn't have reacted kindly to removing a QB which was helping them win now and thus be agitated over the team starting to look towards the future. But now that it's apparent Wentz has hit his ceiling, it's time to see what you have in McCarthy. Heck, he may end up being a bust. But for those Vikings fans who are already wanting to move on from McCarthy after only two starts, I'll just say that you're (again, I'll be charitable) incredibly premature in that assessment. You need to look no further than two of McCarthy's fellow 2024 first round QBs. Do yourself a favor and check out the first two career starts of Chicago's Caleb Williams and Denver's Bo Nix. Good thing for both those guys that their respective team's fans don't have any influence on personnel decisions.
All that being said, I will concede that McCarthy's recent injury history is a concern. In the 18 months since the Vikings drafted him, he's only been physically available to the team in two of their 24 regular season games played in that span. So if McCarthy suffers yet another injury which causes him to miss multiple games over the final ten contests of this season, then there needs to be a serious discussion on whether to move forward. But until then, he needs all the reps that he can muster.
Time to rip off that band aid. It's go time.
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