Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy is ready to hit the reset button in his return to the field.
McCarthy started the first two games of the 2025 season, but went down with a high ankle sprain and missed the following six weeks.
Carson Wentz served as his backup, playing through a torn labrum and a broken shoulder socket earlier this month. With Wentz set to undergo surgery to repair his shoulder, McCarthy will make his return against the division rival Detroit Lions on Sunday.
“I feel like there’s a lot that I learned on just playing the game of football at the next level. This is my second year. I’m still learning so much, and all that time is not time that’s wasted.”
McCarthy has missed the overwhelming majority of his career so far. He missed his entire rookie season with a torn meniscus he suffered in the preseason. The high ankle sprain caused him to miss six weeks.
He returned to practice after the Vikings’ bye week and was primed to return to the lineup for Minnesota’s Thursday Night Football game against the Los Angeles Chargers. McCarthy said he was “close,” but still felt as though his “foot was in concrete,” so the decision was made not to let him play.
McCarthy said the decision was hard.
“Everything in my past, how I went about things, it was always like if I felt, you know, 10 percent, 15 percent, I was going to go out there and give it my all,” he said.
“But understanding how this league works and how everything operates, I was just listening to my trainers and [head] coach [Kevin] O'Connell and obeying orders at the end of the day. But I think it was the smartest thing possible, and I feel great.”
With an extra week of recovery behind him, McCarthy said his ankle feels “amazing,” the mobility concerns are no longer there, and he is ready to go.
“I think it was just time,” he said.
“At the end of the day, with these high ankles, it’s like, stress it, and then ‘OK, I reached that I expanded that bandwidth of what I can do,’ and then just keep going from there. So, I feel like it was just the allotted amount of time to where I feel like I can do everything on the football field pain-free.
“A little bit [of] limitations here or there, but that’s how high ankles work. I’m going to be feeling this thing for a little bit from here on out,” he added.
Before the Vikings’ week 2 game against the Atlanta Falcons, McCarthy welcomed his first child and missed the entire week of practice except for the Friday before the game, which impeded his readiness for the game. He then suffered the injury, which hindered his mobility.
O'Connell stressed that McCarthy does not need to be perfect; if he focuses on his fundamentals, his ability will show itself.
McCarthy agreed with his coach’s assessment.
“The biggest thing I took away was just how we keep saying, ‘when we do the simple things, right? What does the outcome look like?’ So, really just focusing on my process this week, going through the reads, making sure I’m taking the right footwork and staying, you know, kind of calm-minded and duck mentality in terms of just how I go about each play and each situation.”
“I feel like he has the confidence to go out there and to do what we expect him to do,” Jefferson said on Thursday.
“It’s just all about having that energy and just [thinking] about one play at a time, not thinking about the big play and making the best play of the game or being perfect throughout the game. ... Leaning on everybody in that offense to go to work and just [leading] us.”
