Minnesota Vikings quarterback situation just got a little more interesting with J.J. McCarthy
The Minnesota Vikings have a lot of interesting elements at play with the quarterback position.
Just three days after struggling in the preseason game against the Baltimore Ravens, Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy is splitting reps with the second team as Carson Wentz also took second-team reps. The Vikings’ backup quarterback battle is getting a little more interesting.
The development shouldn’t come as a massive surprise considering what happened Saturday against Baltimore. McCarthy finished 5 of 10 for 81 yards, with one of those completions being a 50-yard throw to wide receiver Tai Felton that was slightly underthrown. Outside of that, he has not performed well during multiple practices since Kyler Murray earned the starting job, and the preseason games have been more of the same.
McCarthy’s future in Minnesota is in doubt
McCarthy’s trajectory over the last two weeks has raised more questions than it has answered. His future with the Vikings is in doubt, and the conversation around whether Minnesota may trade or cut him continues to build. For a player the franchise invested significant draft capital in, the lack of development is concerning.
For Wentz, the situation is far more straightforward. He is a standard backup quarterback. You could argue he’s a top-5 backup in the NFL. Being labeled a backup quarterback is a very distinct set of circumstances. This is not a player who could potentially be a starter, nor is it a developmental quarterback. This is the Chase Daniel tier. This is where Andy Dalton has been for the last half decade. Sign the guy, give him a few million dollars to be your QB2, and if he has to come in, he can run a stable offense, keep the team in games, and hope the defense is good enough to win it.
There’s value in having that on your roster. It would be nice to have a more explosive option behind the starter, but the nature of quarterback play in the NFL makes that nearly impossible to find.
The question for Minnesota heading into the regular season is straightforward: will the Vikings keep Wentz as their backup, or will they turn to McCarthy? Right now there’s no clear answer, and the team may enter the regular season without a firm decision on who actually serves as the backup quarterback, which itself says plenty about where McCarthy stands heading into Year 3.
