Eagan, Minnesota – For one hour a week last fall, the Vikings coach of Minnesota, Kevin O’Connell, has erased his calendar. He set aside game planning, preparation for preparation and cinema study. He made sure that he had no planned team meetings, no press conferences and no telephone call that was to be returned.
Instead, O’Connell turned to the most important asset of the long-term franchise: the quarter-rear JJ McCarthy.
The pair spent this hour meeting in head in the O’Connell office, the centerpiece of an extensive program that the Vikings organized (while meeting the immediate needs of a regular season of 14-3), to ensure that the recruit year of McCarthy was not a total loss.
Unable to play because of a meniscus torn in the right knee and prohibited from practicing by the NFL rules for players on the injured reserve, McCarthy has remained engaged and demonstrated enough development to enter the training camp in 2025 as an expected departure quarter of the Vikings.
“I just wanted to give him a platform with me,” O’Connell told Espn. “Maybe it was a football one day.
“The only thing I learned about it during these meetings is that he had big questions, and that validated that he was receiving and withdrew something from that time. And as I told him, that doesn’t really guarantee you, but once you fight the fight daily as part of the system, it would be able to rely on some of what we did together.”
Why the The Vikings made their farewell to the 2024 starter, Sam Darnold and, in doing so, became the first team in the history of the NFL to allow a quarter to leave a year after launching at least 30 Touché passes?
Why did they accept the releases of Daniel Jones and Nick Mullens, who both spent time on the Vikings list last season, and transmit the signature of the free agent Aaron Rodgers?
Why do the Vikings spend a team ready for the 22-year-old playoffs who became the first quarter-Arrière selected in the first round in the modern draft of the NFL (1967) to miss all its recruit season due to an injury?
Part of the response concerns the long -term philosophy of the Vikings. McCarthy’s recruit contract, which has a salary ceiling of only $ 4.9 million this season and $ 5.9 million in 2026, is an important chip to help build alignment. But the rest can be attributed to the behind the scenes of McCarthy in the five months following his injury (suffered on August 10), both during his meetings with O’Connell and through a growing workload of projects created by the quarter coach Josh McCown.
In the very structured world of NFL, the Vikings have found creative means of pressing McCarthy in their day.
The process began when McCarthy was confined to a post-surgery scooter which allowed him to cross the vast installation of the team practice, but avoid putting weight on his right leg. Always getting used to operating the scooter, McCarthy put it backwards and accidentally struck the door in the O’Connell office. “A small chip of painting,” said McCarthy, “but nothing else.”
O’Connell timed the meetings for what he called the “Sweet Spot” of the match week, after the coaches presented the majority of the offensive match plan, including the third package. Usually it fell on Thursday afternoon.
At that time, McCarthy had observed the assimilation by Darnold of the match plan during the quarter-back meetings. These meetings would end, and while active players would go to the locker room to prepare for training, McCarthy would go to the O’Connell office and go through a mental process that the recruit would have otherwise experienced on the field.
“In this way,” said O’Connell, “when he looked at the cassette of this practice that evening, and later, when he was finally able to start going out to look at the practice, he sees an extension of this meeting if we cure it in the right way.”
McCarthy had access to the traditional game film as well as a dedicated camera that the Vikings attached to the Darnold helmet, allowing the recruit to see not only where Darnold looked pre-Snap and post-SNAP, but also to hear what he said in conjunction with the offensive line and even the defensive signals. This film was visible on the wide screen that the Vikings installed in their draft room and with virtual reality equipment.
In a few weeks, O’Connell said, the emphasis was more on understanding how McCarthy kept his recovery while missing an entire football season. Speaking on “The Rich Eisen Show” in January, McCarthy recalled that “a large part was right on life, getting to know each other and developing this chemistry that a quarter-arre and a head coach, in particular a climate, needs”.
O’Connell said: “He was a guy who was successful at all levels he ever played and who had removed something for a whole season. And he is still very young, as the age and the experience of the NFL.
“So you had the impression of sometimes having to say:” Let’s not talk about protective blitz, progressions or fundamentals and techniques. “It is:” How are you? “And try to make sure that he also knows that we are building our own relationship.
One of benefits Of a quarter coach like McCown, who played for 12 teams in 18 seasons of the NFL, is that he saw everything. He knows that quarters at the bottom of the depth table, or on the injured reserve, can go through seasons with minimum attention.
“Sometimes” said McCown, “it’s just out of sight, out of the mind.”
The Vikings knew that they could not afford such inattention with McCarthy. McCown has developed a list of tasks, some of which are banal and some at a higher level, to include McCarthy in everything he could. A few weeks, he asked McCarthy to write each third Vikings game in his weekly match plan, so that the rest of the quarters can refer to it while going through a film session.
“Something like that is a tedious job,” said McCown, “but that helps you to memorize. And then we would steal moments when we questioned him or asked him about this, just at random when we could.
“We interact especially with Sam and question Sam on the pieces, and you do not know what I take and what he does not take. But from time to time, it was:” Hey JJ, what about that? “You try to hire him as if he were playing, and he was at the top.”
When the other quarters go to the locker room, McCarthy and McCown remain in the meeting room, passing by the mental exercises of what he would have experienced in practice or procedure.
“Can you change the information?” Said McCown. “This is what we are on, and he was always right, which was very encouraging.”
Another project included research and writing profiles of opposing defensive coordinators, including the coach tree from which they come to help connect their diagrams with other teams, as well as screening reports on defensive players.
“It was by ensuring that I knew all the ins and outs and all the work occupied on the front-end,” said McCarthy, “when I had time for that. So (this year), I don’t have to spend too much time on things that are not in the most important way and to make sure I can be effective with my preparation and my game plan.”
On occasion, McCown asked McCarthy to present information to the group.
“It’s not just about listening and learning,” said McCown. “But can you process this information and return it to me?
“And that’s what I said to him. I said to myself:” You have to take this time to prepare yourself as if you were the guy and understand the things you like and that you do not like in this preparation process that will help you get where you have to go once you are in this seat one day. “”
McCarthy took an initiative by itself. Defensive striker Harrison Phillips said McCarthy approached him shortly after McCarthy was injured in questioning him about the identification of alignments on the defensive front. “He was just asking these good questions,” said Phillips.
Each week, McCown asked McCarthy to put his notes back so that he could review what he was – and was not – picked up.
O’Connell assessed McCarthy’s work in this way: “It is sometimes difficult to know how intelligent someone is. What will they really be able to keep when they start to load a lot of information? And I think he has shown that he has a fairly high intelligence and there is a lot there.”
Despite their best efforts,, Vikings know that McCarthy has missed certain key development opportunities last season, including apparently harmless moments such as the management of the Scout team.
“It’s like going to the practice,” said McCown. “This is where you can practice all your clubs. There is in a way no consequence, so to speak, and you really learn different types of throws that you can make under different windows.
“Sometimes the defensive coaches ask you to launch it to this player, so I would better cut this ball early. I was better. So that explores your anticipation skills. And this is the most difficult thing you don’t necessarily get to replace, simply not be on the field.”
During the fall, McCarthy began to write in what he called a “gratitude journal”, a practice he learned at the University of Michigan from Life Coach Greg Harden, who died in September. McCarthy thought it would help him focus on the advantages of what he could do as a player on the injured reserve, rather than fixing what he couldn’t.
“I did not have an injury like this one that has been sitting for so long,” said McCarthy, “and I was very grateful for the occasion that I really had a step ahead of the mental side of the game.
“Going on the same wavelength with (O’Connell) was great. Last season, seeing how he calls games and just like that, as well as the team’s complex personality traits – and he can feed those who help strengthen the global group and help strengthen them individually – and be there for them when some things do not go their way.”
