Vikings Make Opinion on McCarthy Abundantly Clear After Rodgers Rumors

If a four-time NFL MVP calls, you pick up the phone. The Minnesota Vikings had a good problem when Aaron Rodgers contacted head coach Kevin O’Connell about a possible one-year run together.

But the Vikings were already invested in J.J. McCarthy, although their confidence in the 22-year-old quarterback couldn’t overcome the echoes and threat of Rodgers.

That’s until now.

In a longform feature with Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer, the Vikings cleared the air on the Rodgers fiasco and doubled down on their readiness to run with McCarthy as their quarterback of the future.

It’s a bet that the Vikings staff, after helping Sam Darnold piece together a 14-win season, is “emboldened” by, knowing what they have in McCarthy.

From Breer:

When the four-time MVP reached out to the Vikings, with the idea of making a one-year run at a Lombardi and tying it to being a willing mentor for McCarthy, the team felt it had to listen. The proposition, of course, was different than the other two—they’d be jamming the pause button on the idea of playing McCarthy, rather than generating competition and multiple quarterback options.

In the end, faced with all that, the Vikings found themselves emboldened to give McCarthy the runway to seize the job, the staff the opportunity to build the offense for him, and see how that looked at the end of the spring.

So the Vikings passed on Rodgers, pushing their chips in on a 22-year-old.