J.J. McCarthy, welcome to primetime. The Minnesota Vikings will host the Detroit Lions on Christmas Day 2025, according to Ben Gossling of the Minnesota Star Tribune. This is a significant spot for the league to put Minnesota in, considering we've never actually seen him play at the professional level.
The entire NFL schedule has not been released yet — and this likely isn't the very first time McCarthy will play in a primetime game — but giving Minnesota a Christmas Day game on Netflix is a huge endorsement from the league for McCarthy.
After missing his entire rookie season with a menicsus tear, McCarthy now takes the reins of the Vikings offense from Sam Darnold, who had a coming of age in Minnesota and signed a huge free agent deal with the Seattle Seahawks this offseason.
Is J.J. McCarthy ready for the big stage?
The schedule-makers at the NFL seem to think so. The other Christmas Day game that's already been announced is Chiefs versus Broncos, which features the best quarterback in football and last year's Rookie of the Year runner-up. That's some starpower! Including Minnesota in one of the other Christmas Day games is a pretty big vote of confidence that the NFL believes the Vikings will continue to trend upwards in 2025 after Darnold was the surprise of last season.
The weapons are definitely there to make it happen. Aaron Jones is back in the Vikings backfield, Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison form one of the league's best receiver combos, and first-round pick Donovan Jackson should help shore up the offensive line even more.
Essentially, you can't fault the NFL for thrusting McCarthy into the spotlight like this — he was a first-round pick himself in 2024, and the team around him is stellar. Christmas Day will be a lot of casual fans' introduction to McCarthy, and the league is betting on him to deliver.