McCarthy Preparing To Deliver Brilliance In 2025 For Hungry Vikings

The Vikings have been a confident and winning team under head coach Kevin O’Connell and general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. They have had impressive winning seasons with both Kirk Cousins and Sam Darnold at quarterback. The 2022 and 2024 seasons cemented O’Connell as one of the best quarterback mentors in the league. But now comes his biggest opportunity.

He gets to work with J.J. McCarthy, a quarterback who has more skill, athleticism and ability than either of his two predecessors. He appears to have the kind of make-up that could make him one of the all-time greats at the position. O’Connell is in the process of preparing McCarthy for greatness.

It is as if DaVinci is getting set to paint the Mona Lisa.

The game’s greatest quarterback whisperer is set to work with the most brilliant quarterback prospect. While the game’s observers won’t truly know the truth about McCarthy until he proves it on a game-by-game and year-over-year basis, he appears to have the stuff that legends are made of.

Start off with the fact that he won an undisputed national championship at Michigan in 2023. That’s something that no Michigan team had done since 1948. (The 1997 team had to share the national championship with Texas).

There was no sharing any title when McCarthy led the Wolverines. He had the swagger and the finishing touch to lead a very talented team where it had not been in 75 years.

The Vikings have never won a Super Bowl and that fact is the dark cloud that hangs over this franchise. The team was good enough to win one NFL championship (1969) and get to four Super Bowls, but none of those losses were even close. It has been 49 seasons since the last Vikings team appeared in Super Bowl XI and dropped a 32-14 decision to John Madden and the Oakland Raiders.

Improved offensive line could spell difference for Vikings

The Vikings believe they have addressed the weaknesses they had on the interior offensive line by drafting Donovan Jackson from Ohio State to play left guard and signing free agents Ryan Kelly (center) and Will Fries (right guard) from the Indianapolis Colts.

This assumes that all three of these players represent improvement from the interior blockers who were overwhelmed in the regular-season finale against the Detroit Lions and the Wild Card loss to the Rams.

There is a confidence that this team has what it takes to build off a 14-3 regular season and become elite. The key is the development of McCarthy.

Wide receiver Justin Jefferson is arguably the best at his position in the NFL. He believes that McCarthy is taking all the steps needed to lead the Vikings to a new level.

“First of all, he understands the role that he has now. He understands that he is the starting quarterback at this moment,” Jefferson said. “I feel like he kind of brings that with him to practice, knowing that he has to have that leadership. He’s the captain of our team. So I feel like him being right beside me and him trying to learn as much as he needs to, I feel like just his awareness of the game and his intelligence has really grown.”

The players see that McCarthy has something extra that most young players don’t have before they have even stepped onto the field for a regular-season game. Defensive tackle Harrison Phillips equates McCarthy’s confidence to another top NFL quarterback he played with earlier in his career.

“Man, he’s got some confidence,” Phillips said. “It reminds me of Josh Allen, when I was with him in Buffalo, coming into his own and understanding the power that he has to lead this organization. And he’s doing a fantastic job.”

Phillips played with the Buffalo Bills from 2018 through 2021 before moving on to the Vikings in 2022.

It’s way too early to make any declarations about this year’s version of the Vikings. But it’s not too early to say that the team’s aspirations have never been higher. The team looks as good as it has in any season since the ill-fated 1998 season that saw the Vikings go 15-1 in the regular season before disaster hit in the NFC title against the Atlanta Falcons.

The mentor and his prodigy will attempt to deliver a masterpiece.