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Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy signs an autograph following an NFL preseason game against the Tennessee Titans on Aug. 22 in Nashville, Tenn. (AP file photo)<\/p>\n
EAGAN, Minn. ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/9-8-2b-BW-vikes-mccarthy-611x500.jpg\")
\u2014 Nearly 18 years ago, as J.J. McCarthy strolled out of Soldier Field after attending his first Chicago Bears game, his father stopped to buy them a program for a keepsake to mark their time together that far outweighed the home team\u2019s loss to the Minnesota Vikings.<\/p>\n
The next visit to the old stadium for the McCarthy family will warrant more than a few more souvenirs.<\/p>\n
With dozens of relatives and friends in the seats, putting aside their allegiance to the Bears, McCarthy will play in his first NFL game on Monday night for the visitors who just so happened to be the opponent he saw on that first live look at professional football as a 4-year-old kid.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s not just suiting up, either. The 10th overall pick in the 2024 draft, whose debut was delayed by surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his right knee, will start at quarterback for a team with a Super Bowl aspiration stacked with Pro Bowl players at nearly every other position after winning 14 games in his absence last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just try to be completely present,\u201d said McCarthy, who grew up in La Grange Park, a suburb less than 20 miles west of Soldier Field. \u201cThere\u2019s going to be anxiousness, excitement and a whole lot of adrenaline, but at the end of the day that\u2019s completely normal. It\u2019s accepting those emotions, able to let go of them a lot quicker rather than try to deflect them and avoid them.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Sam Darnold thrived under coach Kevin O\u2019Connell and his system, playing his way into a rich new contract this year with the Seattle Seahawks, McCarthy could only watch and learn.<\/p>\n
It was hardly a lost season, though. The Vikings were particularly intentional about immersing McCarthy into every aspect of playing quarterback for this team, whether it was sending him to defensive meetings for exposure to game plans on that side of the ball, sitting him down with the virtual reality video of Darnold\u2019s reps in practice or one-on-one time with the head coach and resident expert on the position. Quarterbacks coach Josh McCown served as another invaluable resource.<\/p>\n
Whenever he wasn\u2019t in the training room rehabilitating his knee, McCarthy asked questions of anyone he could get an audience with, endearing himself to the players and staff and building the foundation for the leadership role he\u2019s now fully immersed in.<\/p>\n
New center Ryan Kelly, who came from the Indianapolis Colts, compared McCarthy\u2019s composure and maturity to what he saw with veteran quarterbacks such as Andrew Luck, Philip Rivers and Matt Ryan. McCarthy was voted one of eight team captains this year, before taking his first snap.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole organization holds him to a high standard, but it\u2019s not nearly the standard he holds himself to,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cYou rally around that because you know that he\u2019s doing everything he can to be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Vikings realize they\u2019ll have to be patient this year, a unique scenario for a team in win-now mode in a daunting division that sent three teams to the playoffs last season with the last-place Bears bringing plenty of potential to join them behind new coach Ben Johnson.<\/p>\n
But the Vikings, from the front office to the coaching staff and everyone in between, have done just about everything they could to help make McCarthy\u2019s debut as smooth as possible. They\u2019re not simply winging it with a quarterback who\u2019s essentially still a rookie.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most prepared I\u2019ve ever felt in my life,\u201d said McCarthy, who was 27-1 as a starter in college at Michigan.<\/p>\n
For the Bears, though there\u2019s familiarity with a division rival and O\u2019Connell\u2019s offense to draw from, only a few film clips of McCarthy throwing passes in purple even exist from his brief appearances in exhibition games \u2014 one last year and one this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to create that rookie mistake,\u201d safety Kevin Byard said. \u201cWe try to mix and disguise coverages as much as possible. We don\u2019t want to give him an easy test. You don\u2019t want to just line up in coverages so the offensive coordinator and head coach can just tell him what to do: \u2018Hey, this is what they\u2019re playing.\u2019 We want to try to confuse him as much as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
After all McCarthy has endured to reach this point, any such confusion that might lead to an unsuccessful play on Monday night is unlikely to rattle him. While playing his final season of high school at IMG Academy in Florida, he struggled with depression prompted by the absence of family and friends, the pressure to perform in comparison with other elite athletes, and the isolation of social-distancing conditions during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
He leaned into his mental health during that year, particularly his practice of meditation that became visible to the public throughout his career at Michigan when he\u2019d sit cross-legged with his back against the goalpost, hands clasped in his lap and eyes closed about two hours before each game.<\/p>\n
When he was asked this week to reflect on the magnitude of making his NFL debut against the team he grew up rooting for in the stadium where he first watched a game, McCarthy didn\u2019t hesitate to keep his focus away from the big picture. He sure sounded as if he\u2019s mastered the art of staying present to the moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like home is in Minnesota,\u201d he said, \u201cso at the end of the day it\u2019s just a business trip. I\u2019m going to go down there and execute some football plays and see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NFL: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/NFL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy signs an autograph following an NFL preseason game against the Tennessee Titans on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2073],"tags":[62992,62990,62991,7,46450,233,259,2529,6,234],"class_list":{"0":"post-351108","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-vikings","8":"tag-ex-wolverine-mccarthy-finally-gets-1st-shot-in-nfl-tonight","9":"tag-ex-wolverine-mccarthy-finally-gets-1st-shot-in-nfl-tonightnational-sports","10":"tag-ex-wolverine-mccarthy-finally-gets-1st-shot-in-nfl-tonightsports","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-michigan-sports","13":"tag-minnesota","14":"tag-minnesota-vikings","15":"tag-minnesotavikings","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-vikings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115167701701354009","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351108","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=351108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}