{"id":286878,"date":"2025-08-14T07:36:27","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T07:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/286878\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T07:36:27","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T07:36:27","slug":"j-j-mccarthy-got-emotional-discussing-his-return-to-the-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/286878\/","title":{"rendered":"J.J. McCarthy got emotional discussing his return to the field"},"content":{"rendered":"<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Vikings?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">#Vikings<\/a> QB JJ McCarthy said he had a \u201clittle tear drop\u201d right before todays National Anthem in his first game back since last year:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis game is the best game in the world.\u201d<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/GoBbgRt6vR\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/GoBbgRt6vR<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 VikingzFanPage (@vikingzfanpage) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/vikingzfanpage\/status\/1954356423581630540?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">August 10, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The weight of Saturday&#8217;s preseason game against the Houston Texans wasn&#8217;t lost on J.J. McCarthy. It was his first live game action in 364 days, when he had torn his meniscus against the Las Vegas Raiders.<\/p>\n<p>Following the 20-10 win on Saturday, McCarthy told reporters that he went to bed the night before reflecting on his journey to get to this spot.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was just the journey that any injured player goes on to be back out there and doing the thing that they love,&#8221; McCarthy said, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nfl\/story\/_\/id\/45935173\/13-play-stint-caps-emotional-day-jj-mccarthy-long-awaited-return\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">according<\/a> to ESPN&#8217;s Kevin Seifert. &#8220;It just shows how much I care for this game.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It didn&#8217;t just weigh on him emotionally. McCarthy added that he had &#8220;a little teardrop&#8221; during the national anthem.<\/p>\n<p>He didn&#8217;t play perfectly during his first and only drive, but he did complete 4\/7 passes for 23 yards and ran for an 8-yard scramble on 4th-and-4. He may not have many preseason snaps the rest of this season, but it was important to get the emotions out of the way on Saturday before the Week 1 matchup against the Chicago Bears.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"#Vikings QB JJ McCarthy said he had a \u201clittle tear drop\u201d right before todays National Anthem in his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2056],"tags":[7,221,253,2368,19906,1519,11367,233,259,6,222,234],"class_list":{"0":"post-286878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-texans","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-texans","11":"tag-houstontexans","12":"tag-j-j","13":"tag-j-j-mccarthy","14":"tag-mccarthy","15":"tag-minnesota","16":"tag-minnesota-vikings","17":"tag-nfl","18":"tag-texans","19":"tag-vikings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115025975014989933","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286878","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=286878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}