JJ McCarthy Ahead of Schedule and Ready to Go for Vikings Offseason
We are now just a handful of days away from Super Bowl LIX, meaning the 2025 Minnesota Vikings offseason is that much closer to officially getting underway. Pretty soon, teams will start placing franchise tags on players they don’t want to lose, while draft prospects and team scouting departments gather in Indy for the NFL Combine.
Then before we know it, it’ll be March and teams will start setting their roster with free agency. Between now and then, however, the Vikings have major decisions to make. The most important one, obviously, is at quarterback. Do they bring back Sam Darnold or hand the franchise over to 2024 No. 10 overall pick JJ McCarthy?
Up until recently, there were very little updates floating around regarding McCarthy’s meniscus rehabilitation. Then last week, Darren Wolfson (SKOR North, KSTP) reported that those close to McCarthy are 100% confident he will be ready to go by September.
JJ McCarthy a full go already?
On Monday, NFL insider Albert Breer (Sports Illustrated) reported that the Vikings are “really happy” with where JJ McCarthy is at on his rehab schedule, but offered little detail. Tuesday morning, however, he went on the Rich Eisen Show (NFL Network) and offered all of those missing details and more.
According to Breer, McCarthy is ahead of schedule and “able to do just about everything now” during workouts and that he “isn’t going to be limited by anything this offseason”, which would assumedly include his knee injury.
J.J. McCarthy is “ahead of schedule” and “able to do just about everything now”, per @AlbertBreer.
— The Purple Persuasion (@TPPSkol) February 4, 2025
The @Vikings are also comfortable with him as the starting QB in 2025 👀
“He’s ahead of schedule. He’s able to do just about everything now… he’s going to have a full offseason.… pic.twitter.com/gKHJMNroPb
“[JJ McCarthy] is ahead of schedule. He is able to do just about everything now. The second surgery was really just a cleanup and he’s going to have a full offseason. So he isn’t going be be limited by anything this offseason.”
“JJ’s checked a lot of boxes and I can say they’d be comfortable with him as their starting quarterback in 2025. That does not mean they are kicking Sam Darnold out the door, but I do think it gives them a lot more flexibility in the way they handle Sam’s situation.”
Albert Breer (SI) – Rich Eisen Show
This is a massive update, and a major domino in the Minnesota Vikings 2025 offseason. As Breer points out, it does not mean Sam Darnold is out for sure, or that they won’t tag him before free agency. We can probably rule out any sort of long term extension, though.
Minnesota Vikings aren’t kicking Sam Darnold out the door…?
So no matter what happens in the short term, with Darnold, head coach Kevin O’Connell and GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah can retain some peace of mind knowing the kid they hand-picked to lead the Vikings organization into the future will be ready to go, not just for the start of the season, but for offseason activities and training camp too.
The Vikings admit (per Breer) that they may have lost some development time with JJ McCarthy. But as he wrote in his update Monday, JJ has been as locked in as humanly possible during his recovery process.
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He’s been working with state-of-the-art virtual reality and sitting in on every QB and team meeting possible, among anything else that would help him get an advantage. The Minnesota Vikings also take solace in knowing that, prior to JJ McCarthy’s injury, he was pushing Sam Darnold for his starting spot during training camp in 2024.
“[JJ McCarthy] did lose 4-5 months of development time, but he was very locked into every part of the football operation that he could be a part of. When they went out to practice, he would do his rehab work. Then all the stuff that was in the building, he was a part of. So he was in the quarterback room pretty much all the way through.
He started traveling with the team with their trip to Los Angeles in October so he could be around the team for the game day operation, for the trip and be on the headset during the game. So he is doing everything he possibly can to put himself in position to play in 2025 and start in 2025.
And here is the other thing. When he got hurt in August, he had played well enough early on in camp to at least complicate the plan to start Sam Darnold and just redshirt him and sort of put that decision off for another year. He played well enough to make it a real discussion point.”
Albert Breer (SI) – Rich Eisen Show
At this point, I will not sit on the other end of this internet connection and tell you that the Minnesota Vikings will have a new quarterback under center at the start of 2025. But given the reports we are now hearing, it’s getting more and more difficult to see a reality where Sam Darnold is quarterbacking the purple next season. This is looking more and more like JJ McCarthy’s team.
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