J.J. McCarthy became the victim of a problem he wasn’t exactly the cause of. Two things can be true: McCarthy played miserable last season, looking nothing like a future franchise quarterback like Minnesota hoped, while also not being the ultimate reason the Vikings offense struggled the way it did in 2025.
Minnesota is faced with the same problem it had a year ago. The only difference is Kevin O’Connell shoved McCarthy to the bottom of the depth chart, then Nolan Teasley traded him to New York and now the two quarterbacks that were ahead of McCarthy have collectively played worse in their combined eight games, than McCarthy has in his two-and-a-half games he’s played in New York.
The Vikings didn’t have a McCarthy problem. Minnesota's quarterback problem survived the McCarthy era with Kyler Murray, and now an elite defense is paying the price. Now, the Vikings have traded for Kirk Cousins — and that puts all the onus on the head coach, O'Connell.
What’s gone wrong in Minnesota?
Minnesota spent this offseason trying to find a solution to their quarterback problem that McCarthy attributed to last season. They turned to Murray, a cheap veteran that became Arizona’s leftovers. The hype was real throughout the offseason. It even carried to Week 1 when the Vikings scored 29 unanswered points and beat Green Bay to start the year. Murray then battled concussions and Carson Wentz regressed.
Now Minnesota has the No. 27 scoring offense and the No. 31 offense in yards per game. For context, the Vikings finished the 2025 season with the No. 26 scoring offense and ranked 28th in offensive yards, per Pro Football Reference. Halfway through the season, the offense has quite literally regressed in McCarthy’s absence. Why? A lot of it is attributed to the quarterback they chose to be their starter having durability problems. But it’s more than that.
2024 Sam Darnold | 2025 J.J. McCarthy | 2026 Kyler Murray/Carson Wentz | |
|---|---|---|---|
Passing YPG | 254.1 | 163.2 | 160.8* |
Total PPG | 25.4 | 20.2 | 18.3* |
Total OFF YPG | 347 | 275 | 266.8* |
EPA per play | 0.03 | -0.17 | -0.5* |
Running back YPA | 4.1 | 4.5 | 4.0* |
* = Through the first eight games of the 2026 season
Why can’t O’Connell tap into his quarterback room to produce an offense worth fielding each week? This isn’t a quarterback problem; this is an offensive problem. Right now, Minnesota can’t run the ball, which is drastically changing their offensive scheme. With O’Connell and Sam Darnold back in 2024, the system worked because they could have a vertical offense with the threat of a run game — Aaron Jones Sr. ran for 1,138 rushing yards in 2024 and Minnesota didn’t have a 1,000-yard rusher last year and potentially won’t this year either.
So getting a running back like Jonathan Taylor should solve their problem right? Not necessarily. Until the Vikings actually have a run game worth compensating for, teams are going to force them to pass. When the Vikings are forced to pass, they’re not a good offense. And this defense is becoming a casualty because of it.
Will Kirk Cousins actually address Minnesota’s biggest problem?
Minnesota thought the problem was McCarthy so they changed quarterbacks for the 2026 season. Yet, the results remained essentially the same. So no, even Kirk Cousins might not solve their problems. It could just be a smoke screen that makes them feel better about having a solution to their struggles. Based on how this offense has looked this year and last year, compared to when it was a top 10 offense with Sam Darnold, they need to refine this offensive system for the quarterbacks they currently have.
That's why the pressure is on O'Connell, though. He needs to prove that McCarthy and then Murray were the reasons that the offense was limited. It's rich in irony that a reunion with Cousins is going to be the final test case there. However, if the offense remains as substandard as it's been, then it should come down on the head coach.
The quarterback play has been bad this season. That’s now getting magnified as the Vikings have lost the last two games and have scored 21 combined points in the last two losses. When your offense can’t score, it doesn’t matter how good your defense is. This is one of the best defenses we’ve seen in the NFL in a long time.
Minnesota thought getting rid of McCarthy meant getting rid of the offensive struggles. Instead, it just got passed down to the one person that was supposed to give Minnesota a prosperous offense. We'll see if Cousins can help O'Connell save face, or if the Vikings head coach is finally out of scapegoats.
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