{"id":218805,"date":"2025-07-19T06:37:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T06:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/218805\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T06:37:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T06:37:15","slug":"vikings-justin-jefferson-sends-strong-message-to-ex-michigan-star-j-j-mccarthy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/218805\/","title":{"rendered":"Vikings Justin Jefferson sends strong message to ex-Michigan star J.J. McCarthy"},"content":{"rendered":"

How will Minnesota Vikings redshirt rookie quarterback J.J. McCarthy fare in 2025?<\/p>\n

McCarthy won a National Championship with the Michigan Wolverines in 2023 before being selected 10th overall in the 2024 Draft. The heir apparent in Kevin O\u2019Connell\u2019s QB-friendly offense, McCarthy was sidelined for his entire rookie campaign with a torn meniscus.<\/p>\n

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Now, it is his turn to sling balls to Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, T.J. Hockenson, and others.<\/p>\n

Here is what Jefferson had to say about his new quarterback, via Jason Fitz of Yahoo Sports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cOur lockers are right next to each other, so every chance that I get to talk to him about football, about anything that goes on outside of football. Just try to get to know him as much as I can because when the season comes and whenever we\u2019re locked in, I want him to be just as confident as I am of him to make plays out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Confidence comes in abundance with McCarthy, who, before arriving on campus in Ann Arbor,tweeted<\/a>\u00a0to Michigan fans about staying calm during a historically bad start to the season. He had not even taken a snap for the Wolverines, yet, and was already assuring them that the reinforcements were coming.<\/p>\n

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McCarthy\u2019s situation in Minnesota should be no different. While he may not lead them to a title within three years of starting, he enters an incredibly helpful system and should thrive with unstoppable targets like Jefferson.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connell knows quarterbacks, and he knows how little it takes to get Jefferson the ball. Expect McCarthy\u2019s confidence to grow rapidly this fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How will Minnesota Vikings redshirt rookie quarterback J.J. McCarthy fare in 2025? McCarthy won a National Championship with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2073],"tags":[7,1519,2504,8265,2780,71,233,259,2529,8264,6,9250,234],"class_list":{"0":"post-218805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-vikings","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-j-j-mccarthy","10":"tag-jason-fitz","11":"tag-jordan-addison","12":"tag-justin-jefferson","13":"tag-michigan-wolverines","14":"tag-minnesota","15":"tag-minnesota-vikings","16":"tag-minnesotavikings","17":"tag-national-championship","18":"tag-nfl","19":"tag-t-j-hockenson","20":"tag-vikings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114878522634645751","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}