On Tuesday, the Minnesota Vikings announced that rookie quarterback J.J. McCarthy will miss the entire 2024 NFL season after undergoing surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his right knee. Following a medical procedure on Wednesday, The team announced The team’s main player needed a complete meniscus repair, ensuring that Sam Darnold will be the Vikings’ starter next year.
Head coach Kevin O’Connell said McCarthy saw team doctors on Wednesday morning, who determined he “needs” a full meniscus repair. McCarthy is just the eighth quarterback selected in the first round of the NFL Draft since 1967 to miss his entire rookie season, but the first to do so due to injury, according to CBS Sports Research.
“I’m devastated for the excitement felt by our team and in that stadium and for our fans. I feel the most sorry for JJ. But as our fans already know or will know in the future, this guy is incredibly driven and extremely focused,” O’Connell said of McCarthy on Wednesday. “I was excited to draft him, and he delivered on everything I expected from him from early in training camp to his first performance last Saturday. I think our fans and everyone should be excited about the fact that our young franchise quarterback is joining our team. This is a unique aspect of continuing that very important developmental process for him, and he may not be able to work physically in the short term, but this is just a small bump in the road. Other quarterbacks in our league have gone through similar things early in their careers and come back stronger than ever. And that’s not just my expectation, I know it will be the same for JJ.”
McCarthy visited the facility on Monday and complained of knee soreness, which led the team to remove him from practice. Per ESPN, head coach Kevin O’Connell said of McCarthy, “It was just kind of routine soreness that a lot of our guys have sometimes after the first game of the preseason and we wanted to address it smartly.”
“As a precaution, we will continue to evaluate him and conduct further testing,” O’Connell said.[He is a] “Obviously he’s a very important player so we want to be wise and make sure we know his status before we bring him in.”
Clearly, those tests revealed bad news.
“He had the mindset that, regardless of what news he woke up to and what they did to make sure he was healthy going forward, this was temporary,” O’Connell said Wednesday. “He’s just looking forward to getting back in the quarterback room and playing with his guys again. And really, there are so many ways that can happen now that there’s obviously a pathway beyond the physical practice, the physical aspect and how we want to play the position.” [need to] “Really stressing him mentally above the neck and figuring out how many different ways, different sequences, different environments we can put him in to get as close as we can to those repetitions and allow him to make that seamless transition when the time is right.”
McCarthy played in Minnesota’s preseason opener two days before the injury and had a strong debut, completing 11 of 17 passes for 188 yards, two touchdowns (one each to Trent Sherfield and Triston Jackson) and one interception. He has been operating as the No. 2 quarterback behind Darnold during the offseason. Darnold, meanwhile, completed 4 of 8 passes for 59 yards in the preseason.
“When you check in from an athletic standpoint, there’s no question about JJ’s athleticism,” O’Connell said, “and for those of you who watched him come back from the first day of spring through Saturday night, you saw him transform into a really good player, starting to look like an NFL quarterback.”
SportsLine’s Stephen Oh projects that Minnesota’s win total has been halved to 6.5 wins without McCarthy. The Vikings’ odds of winning the NFC North have dropped 2.2% and their odds of making the playoffs have dropped 4.7% to 10.3%.
Minnesota is already facing key player losses early this season, as tight end TJ Hockenson is still recovering from a torn ACL he suffered late last season, and wide receiver Jordan Addison could also be sidelined. Addison is expected to serve some sort of suspension following his arrest for drunk driving earlier this summer. Addison also sustained an injury in practice Wednesday, but it is not expected to be serious.
