The toughest part about J.J. McCarthy’s season-ending meniscus injury during the 2024 preseason? He was stashed away on injured reserve, making him ineligible to participate in any organized practice settings for essentially seven months of his first year as a pro.
Head coach Kevin O’Connell and the Minnesota Vikings reportedly did everything in their power to mitigate the losses of McCarthy’s lost rookie season, and that meant a behind-the-scenes plan to educate the former No. 10 overall pick both in meetings and the classroom.
ESPN’s Kevin Seifert detailed a 2024 season for McCarthy that included weekly one-hour meetings with O’Connell, and tedious homework assignments from quarterbacks coach Josh McCown that would typically be handled by interns or low-level scouting assistants.
“McCown developed a list of tasks, some of them mundane and some at a higher level, to include McCarthy in everything he could,” Seifert detailed. “Some weeks, he would ask McCarthy to write out every third-down play the Vikings had in their weekly game plan, so that the rest of the quarterbacks could refer to it while going through a film session.”
Another assignment “included research and writing profiles of opposing defensive coordinators, including what coaching tree they came from to help connect their schemes with other teams, as well as scouting reports on defensive players. … On occasion, McCown would ask McCarthy to present information to the group,” per Seifert.
The goal was to have McCarthy master the mental game, so he could make larger gains on the physical side once medically cleared and eligible to participate in organized team activities in 2025. McCarthy impressed Vikings leadership enough for the team to pass on big-money free agents like Sam Darnold, Daniel Jones and Aaron Rodgers this offseason, and lean into the organization's plan to build around their 22-year-old QB’s rookie-scale contract.
"It's hard sometimes to know exactly how smart somebody is,” O’Connell told ESPN. “What are they really going to be able to retain when they start loading a lot of information? And I think he's demonstrated that he's got pretty high-level intelligence and there's a lot there."
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