Minnesota Vikings Training Camp: A new J.J. McCarthy trend may be developing and it could be concerning
Through two days of training camp, the Minnesota Vikings quarterback competition has an interesting trend developing.
We are two days into the Minnesota Vikings training camp, and the quarterback competition is in full swing.
Kyler Murray and J.J. McCarthy have started the competition and two days in, neither player has truly started to separate themselves from the other. In fact, both have made good throws and ones they would love to have back.
Murray has been more volatile early on, but has been more willing to attack down the field. He hit Dontae Fleming on a deep ball in team drills, and it was beautiful.
Is J.J. McCarthy playing it too conservatively?
The competition is very new, but it appears that Murray is getting more reps with the first team through two days. Head coach Kevin O’Connell did emphasize that it wouldn’t look 50/50 in terms of reps, but that it would be thorough and handled like a real game.
“It’s probably not something that we’ll do by the day. It’s going to be more by certain periods. What maybe a guy’s gotten a little bit more third-down work, so then we’ll make sure we kind of try to even it out. But I will say this, and I told the quarterbacks, we don’t need to make this 50-50. When we get into some longer practices, there’s some move-the-ball periods. There’s some periods where the amount of plays is unknown sometimes as you really start to get into what real football is. So there may be some where, by the day, it’s going to be hard to really quantify. Because as practices get going, it’s it’s not that exact science, but over the sequence of many days or as many days as we hope to have before we make a decision, I know we’ll be thorough,” said O’Connell.
Where things are really interesting is with how McCarthy has performed. Through two days, there have been reports of him not pushing the ball down the field in some capacity, whereas multiple clips have surfaced of Murray attacking vertically.
Could this be a trend moving forward for McCarthy? Is he more unwilling to attack down field, choosing to throw short? Could that be due to playing more with the second team? It’s also possible that players just haven’t been open to throw the ball down the field to.
It’s way too early to make any kind of sweeping conclusions about anything, but even so, this is something worth keeping an eye on moving forward.
