After the NFL draft, J.J. McCarthy went on a “dreamy” escape to the Bahamas with his fiancée. A week after the Minnesota Vikings traded up to draft him 10th-overall, McCarthy visited Baha Mar with his wife-to-be, who he’s dated since high school. However, he says he’ll be sticking around the Vikings facility this summer, working on his game as he prepares to be Minnesota’s franchise quarterback.
“I’ve been doing a lot of traveling post-national championship, so we’re not going to go too many places or anything like that,” he said after Minnesota’s final minicamp on Wednesday. “We’re going to stay here in the great state of Minnesota, enjoy this weather, and maybe do a little golfing. But, you know, I’m just going to be in the facility as much as I possibly can and focus on building habits that I can rely on when it starts getting hectic and crazy in training camp.”
McCarthy says he drives for show but doesn’t putt for dough. While that hurts his handicap, it’s good for his development as a quarterback. Golf instructors tell their subjects to line up their feet to where they want the ball to go, and Kevin O’Connell is likely offering McCarthy the same lesson during Minnesota’s practices. O’Connell has said that footwork is fixable, and it has been McCarthy’s focus in minicamp.
“We talk a lot about things like base, balance, [and] body position when you’re making certain throws,” said O’Connell. “How you read. You’re reading obviously with your eyes, seeing coverage and everything. But you’re really reading with your feet, understanding that this time of year, it’s hard to replicate an NFL time clock or NFL pocket.”
McCarthy must learn an offense that Kirk Cousins and Adam Thielen found challenging when O’Connell first arrived in Minnesota. McCarthy’s fiancée is helping him out with play calls by reading them back to him (“It’s a hassle,” he admits, “but she understands”), and he’s learning other nuances of football like pocket management. However, footwork is McCarthy’s primary focus at this stage of his development.
“I would say the biggest area of my growth has been my footwork,” said McCarthy, “and just being able to adapt what Coach O’Connell and Coach [Josh] McCown and Coach [Wes] Phillips want me to do. And I feel like that’s helped everything because it’s the foundation [of] every single play.”
O’Connell and his staff are diving into the minutiae with McCarthy, hoping he marries his footwork to their playbook. McCarthy describes himself as a perfectionist and should be naturally inclined to pay attention to detail. Still, O’Connell’s offense is complicated by NFL standards, and Jim Harbaugh ran a run-heavy offensive scheme at Michigan. Therefore, McCarthy has a lot to learn.
“It’s small adjustments,” said O’Connell. “The different sequences of a drop, from the acceptance of the snap, the takeaway crossover steps, position steps to set your feet towards the target. Fifty-three-and-a-third (feet, the width of a football field), we like to have different concepts to attack the full width and as much depth as we can to the field.
“We try to really challenge the guys to read with their feet and the timing of plays and tying their feet and eyes together,” O’Connell continued. “A bunch of nerdy football talk to say how comfortable can you be playing in an efficient way, still be accurate, still be showing all the arm talent traits that J.J. has shown over his career.”
McCarthy said that O’Connell’s instruction differs from what his coaches had him do at Michigan, but many of the fundamentals are the same. NFL quarterbacks must get the ball out quicker and be more concise with their footwork because of the smaller margin for error at the game’s highest level.
However, O’Connell also matches McCarthy’s physical movements with how his plays unfold. The quarterbacks in his system must drop back to the proper distance on the field, knowing if they’re throwing off the drop or the hitch. Routes break at specific distances, allowing the quarterback to progress through his reads as his receivers break away from the cornerback covering them.
“There’s a lot of working parts,” said O’Connell. “Then, on top of that, sometimes it’s just decision-making where I like to challenge the guys too, as long as they’re reading the progressions the right way, playing with good timing.
“If they want to try to fit a football into a window or test their ability to stretch outside the numbers and get it there before a DB can undercut it and things like that. That’s the only way they’re going to really learn – the trial-and-error aspect of playing the position.”
Ultimately, McCarthy can only deliver an accurate ball on time if his footwork is correct.
“It’s different,” McCarthy said regarding O’Connell’s offense. “I wouldn’t say it’s verydifferent. But when you tie up all the individual footwork to all the individual concepts, obviously, this playbook is a lot bigger than ours back in college. And I just feel like every single day, it just keeps getting better and better.
“Things start becoming more instinctual, and it’s just the reps that are helping me progress the fastest along that path. I’ve heard many guys who have been in the league awhile talk about this offense as being difficult for just even an NFL offense.”
O’Connell said he and his staff are process-oriented and trying to get McCarthy to think the same way. McCarthy admits that’s difficult for him because he’s naturally a perfectionist.
“That’s something that I battled with in college, being process-oriented over outcome-driven,” he said. “And it’s just that ‘one play at a time’ mentality and realize out here it’s okay to fail. It’s okay to try to fit a ball in there and then watch the tape and be like, ‘Hey, we probably should have progressed on.’ So, you know, I’m just focused on the process, and the outcome will take care of itself.”
McCarthy’s locker is next to Justin Jefferson’s, but he has only thrown one ball to him this summer. Jefferson held out of organized team activities while waiting to sign his four-year, $140 million extension, and Sam Darnold has been practicing with the first team. McCarthy is still a ways away from taking the field as Minnesota’s starter. But that’s to be expected, given his situation. His is where his feet are, and things will work out for him if he has them pointed in the right direction.
Tom Schreier
Tom Schreier is the founder and proprietor of Zone Coverage. He created Zone Coverage with the goal of mixing new age media with old-school journalism. His goal was to create an economically sustainable platform for sports content for Minnesota fans. Before Zone Coverage, Tom wrote for Bleacher Report and Yahoo! Sports before joining 105 The Ticket in 2014.
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