Vikings coach Kevin O'Connell is already giving J.J. McCarthy special treatment

I have no problem with the Minnesota Vikings moving up a spot to take former Michigan star quarterback J.J. McCarthy with the No. 10 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. He was immensely talented coming out of high school, seemed to have full command of Jim Harbaugh's ground-centric offense and played with great confidence on college football's reigning national championship team.

However, there is one thing that I do have great concerns about with him going to Minnesota. While this is the best landing spot of any team that took a quarterback in the first round, I am not so sure coddling him is going to stick in the Minnesota locker room. The Vikings are already putting more on his plate at rookie minicamp, but he needs to assert himself as a leader in a locker room of alpha men.

Minnesota head coach Kevin O'Connell says that the coaching staff is treating McCarthy differently.

“We’re keeping it pretty tight for right now as a group, but J.J. is getting a little bit more – you know, a little bit extra here and there, a little bit of stacking some things together for him. So when Monday comes around, that’s the way I’m kind of looking at this weekend. … (It’s) really about preparing him to then step in with the full group next week, and then a week from there, we start our first OTA with the whole group," said O'Connell, h/t Vikings Wire.

I subscribe to the Jimmy Johnson philosophy of treating every fairly and not the same, by the way...

“He’s doing a great job of handling everything and just enjoying seeing the process, rep-to-rep improvement, taking coaching points from Josh (McCown) or Wes (Phillips) or myself, and just continuing to build on what we – we spent a lot of time together pre-draft, and one of the real benefits of that, is in a lot of ways, a lot of things we’re talking about he’s not hearing for the first time now.”

Besides having O'Connell in his ear, I think having Wes Phillips as his offensive coordinator and Josh McCown as his quarterbacks coach will do wonders in his development. I am concerned about how helpful Sam Darnold is going to be to him in McCarthy's growth as a quarterback. Darnold came over from San Francisco with the hopes of salvaging his career as a starter. This will be his last shot at it.

Are we certain that the Vikings giving McCarthy special treatment will not devolve into preferential?

Minnesota Vikings already treating J.J. McCarthy differently than rookies

Let's be real. This was always going to be the case for McCarthy, or whoever the Vikings took at quarterback in this draft. No, they were not going to guarantee the rookie that he was going to start Week 1 of the 2024 NFL season, but it would certainly be trending in that direction. Darnold came to Minnesota to get starting time. His reckless nature will probably give that up well before Halloween.

I keep going back to this one thing with McCarthy in Minnesota: They're going to put kid gloves on him, aren't they? Darnold did not have that luxury when he was drafted No. 3 overall out of USC by the New York Jets. His first pass in a game that counted was an atrocious pick he threw completely across his body, akin to what Brett Favre did in the 2009 NFC Championship Game. I have been out ever since...

In time, I suspect McCarthy will be able to ingratiate himself with his Minnesota teammates like he did with his former college friends at Michigan. Unfortunately, those were some of his best friends, and these are his new colleagues. It his differently, obviously. I would hope that McCarthy's leadership style remains authentic and he can play with the poise he showed in Ann Arbor in his NFL career.

Otherwise, McCarthy being treated differently is not going to take because veterans will sniff it out.