J.J. McCarthy's time with the
Vikings has arrived. He'll face his favorite childhood team, the Bears
[September 08, 2025]
By DAVE CAMPBELL
EAGAN, Minn. (AP) — Nearly 18 years ago, as J.J. McCarthy strolled
out of Soldier Field after attending his first Chicago Bears game,
his father stopped to buy them a program for a keepsake to mark
their time together that far outweighed the home team's loss to the
Minnesota Vikings.
The next visit to the old stadium for the McCarthy family will
warrant more than a few more souvenirs.
With dozens of relatives and friends in the seats, putting aside
their allegiance to the Bears, McCarthy will play in his first NFL
game on Monday night for the visitors who just so happened to be the
opponent he saw on that first live look at professional football as
a 4-year-old kid.
He's not just suiting up, either. The 10th overall pick in the 2024
draft, whose debut was delayed by surgery to repair a torn meniscus
in his right knee, will start at quarterback for a team with a Super
Bowl aspiration stacked with Pro Bowl players at nearly every other
position after winning 14 games in his absence last season.
“I just try to be completely present,” said McCarthy, who grew up in
La Grange Park, a suburb less than 20 miles west of Soldier Field.
“There’s going to be anxiousness, excitement and a whole lot of
adrenaline, but at the end of the day that’s completely normal. It’s
accepting those emotions, able to let go of them a lot quicker
rather than try to deflect them and avoid them.”
While Sam Darnold thrived under coach Kevin O'Connell and his
system, playing his way into a rich new contract this year with the
Seattle Seahawks, McCarthy could only watch and learn.
It was hardly a lost season, though. The Vikings were particularly
intentional about immersing McCarthy into every aspect of playing
quarterback for this team, whether it was sending him to defensive
meetings for exposure to game plans on that side of the ball,
sitting him down with the virtual reality video of Darnold's reps in
practice or one-on-one time with the head coach and resident expert
on the position. Quarterbacks coach Josh McCown served as another
invaluable resource.
Whenever he wasn't in the training room rehabilitating his knee,
McCarthy asked questions of anyone he could get an audience with,
endearing himself to the players and staff and building the
foundation for the leadership role he's now fully immersed in.
New center Ryan Kelly, who came from the Indianapolis Colts,
compared McCarthy's composure and maturity to what he saw with
veteran quarterbacks such as Andrew Luck, Philip Rivers and Matt
Ryan. McCarthy was voted one of eight team captains this year,
before taking his first snap.
“The whole organization holds him to a high standard, but it’s not
nearly the standard he holds himself to," Kelly said. "You rally
around that because you know that he’s doing everything he can to be
successful."
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The Vikings realize they'll have to be patient this
year, a unique scenario for a team in win-now mode in a daunting
division that sent three teams to the playoffs last season with the
last-place Bears bringing plenty of potential to join them behind
new coach Ben Johnson.
But the Vikings, from the front office to the coaching staff and
everyone in between, have done just about everything they could to
help make McCarthy's debut as smooth as possible. They're not simply
winging it with a quarterback who's essentially still a rookie.
“The most prepared I've ever felt in my life,” said McCarthy, who
was 27-1 as a starter in college at Michigan.
For the Bears, though there's familiarity with a division rival and
O'Connell's offense to draw from, only a few film clips of McCarthy
throwing passes in purple even exist from his brief appearances in
exhibition games — one last year and one this year.
“We have to create that rookie mistake,” safety Kevin Byard said.
“We try to mix and disguise coverages as much as possible. We don’t
want to give him an easy test. You don’t want to just line up in
coverages so the offensive coordinator and head coach can just tell
him what to do: ‘Hey, this is what they’re playing.’ We want to try
to confuse him as much as possible.”
After all McCarthy has endured to reach this point, any such
confusion that might lead to an unsuccessful play on Monday night is
unlikely to rattle him. While playing his final season of high
school at IMG Academy in Florida, he struggled with depression
prompted by the absence of family and friends, the pressure to
perform in comparison with other elite athletes, and the isolation
of social-distancing conditions during the pandemic.
He leaned into his mental health during that year, particularly his
practice of meditation that became visible to the public throughout
his career at Michigan when he'd sit cross-legged with his back
against the goalpost, hands clasped in his lap and eyes closed about
two hours before each game.
When he was asked this week to reflect on the magnitude of making
his NFL debut against the team he grew up rooting for in the stadium
where he first watched a game, McCarthy didn't hesitate to keep his
focus away from the big picture. He sure sounded as if he's mastered
the art of staying present to the moment.
“I feel like home is in Minnesota," he said, “so at the end of the
day it’s just a business trip. I’m going to go down there and
execute some football plays and see what happens.”
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