The 2024 Minnesota Vikings were one of the best teams in the NFL. Though they lost in the Wild Card round of the playoffs, they went 14-3 in the regular season and seemed like a team on the rise behind one of the league’s top young head coaches.
The biggest question was at the quarterback position. The team had used its first-round pick in the draft on Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy. Fresh off helping the Wolverines win the national title, he ended up missing his entire rookie season due to a torn meniscus in his right knee.
But the Vikings had also signed Sam Darnold in free agency and he performed incredibly well for the team. That put the Vikings in a tough spot. Do they re-sign Darnold to a massive deal or roll with the player they took in the first round?
The Vikings chose to go with McCarthy, which was arguably the right move. Darnold signed a three-year, $100.5 deal with the Seattle Seahawks. That’s a rich deal and the Vikings knew it would be costly to keep him. But that’s where the horrendous mismanagement of the quarterback position begins.
J.J. McCarthy now ranks 851 out of 852 in EPA per Dropback among qualified passers since 2000, per Tru Media. The only player below McCarthy is JaMarcus Russell.
h/t @Danny_Heifetz on that other website
— Anthony Amico (@amicsta) November 24, 2025
McCarthy was always going to be the No. 1 quarterback this season, but the team had another option that was perfect. After being released by the New York Giants last season, Daniel Jones was signed to the Vikings’ practice squad. He never appeared in a game for the Vikings, but it seemed the team could see what he had to offer and work on a future deal with him.
Instead, Jones signed with the Indianapolis Colts this offseason on a one-year, $14 million contract. Why did the Vikings let him get out the door?
Sure, Jones may have seen a much better opportunity to see the field in Indianapolis (he would have been correct), but the Vikings could have come up with a better deal than the Colts did and promised him a chance to compete for the job.
Instead, the team chose to trade for Sam Howell and then traded him before the season even started in favor of signing Carson Wentz, who was a street free agent. Wentz then had to make several starts this season when McCarthy was out with an injury, and that could have, and should have, been Jones.
Jones has flourished in Indianapolis while the Vikings ponder their future at the position. Following McCarthy’s Week 12 performance against the Green Bay Packers, there are serious questions about his standing with the team. To make matters worse, he could miss the team’s Week 13 game due to a concussion, forcing the Vikings to start undrafted free agent Max Brosmer.
The Vikings were either being too cheap or they just had way too much confidence in McCarthy, but it seems like a situation that promises to get much uglier for them, and it never needed to be.
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