Give J.J. McCarthy an A+ for how he’s responding to his season-ending knee inury.
The young dude dropped some Latin on us football-loving meatheads, here in the year MMXXIV.
“Love you Viking nation,” McCarthy posted on social media last week. “I’ll be back in no time. Amor fati.”
Amor fati is Latin for don’t overreact when someone steals your tunic and sandals.
Per the Daily Stoic, its prompts us to say: “We will put our emotions and exertions only where they will have real impact.”
Carlsbad’s Kevin O’Connell could be forgiven for saying “Et tu, Brute?” to the football gods.
Since last October, the Vikings coach has seen four of his quarterbacks miss games with an injury. One was Kirk Cousins, whose right Achilles ruptured last October, ending the starter’s fine 2023 season and sending him toward the Falcons in free agency in March.
McCarthy, whose torn knee cartilage required repair with surgical sutures, was having a much-praised training camp and threw two touchdowns (and an interception) in his lone preseason game after which the injury was announced.
But he is only 21, not a great age for taking the NFL by storm.
A slender 6-foot-3 athlete, he gained 20 pounds this year after playing at 200 pounds with Michigan. Well-coached but cocooned at Michigan, where the running game and the defense dominated, he now can get up to speed at a more measured pace.
When O’Connell called the rookie’s injury detour a “small bump in the road,” I doubt he was kidding us.
The redshirt season will allow McCarthy to learn O’Connell’s playbook and the play-call verbiage, forward and backward, before appearing in an NFL game that counts.
He can go to school on Vikings veterans Sam Darnold and Nick Mullens without being thrust into a “when will J.J. play?” drama.
Patrick Mahomes said he benefited from backing up San Diego’s Alex Smith for all but one game of his rookie season. Mahomes went in the draft’s same No. 10 spot as McCarthy and passed a lot more for Texas Tech than McCarthy did for Michigan.
Jordan Love said he benefited from his three-year gig behind Aaron Rodgers, tilling the soil for his blossoming last season as a first-time starter.
Proving the NFL will pay you if you can play QB well for part of a season, Love landed a huge contract from the Packers this summer.
O’Connell learned as a QB under Bill Belichick and Tom Brady and as an assistant coach under Sean McVay and Bill Callahan.
He has said he saw too many young QBs tossed into whitewater rapids before they should’ve been. Wisely, he insisted the past few months Darnold would be the starter to open the season regardless of McCarthy’s performance.
Darnold, 27, will get the best chance of his NFL career to succeed. Mullens, 28, knows the offense.
QB mysteries
It was unclear how McCarthy was injured, and it can be vexing to understand durability differences among QBs.
McCarthy started 28 games at Michigan, including all 15 last year as a true junior.
It was interesting that, last year, Michigan’s quarterbacks coach did mention a knee injury. Also, McCarthy limped during a pair of Big Ten games. It seemed coach Jim Harbaugh may have asked less of McCarthy as a passer in order to protect his health. Michigan still went 15-0. When asked to pass more as a sophomore, McCarthy had some impressive moments.
Two QBs — each ultra-durable, yet much different in size and style — came to mind when McCarthy’s season-ending injury was revealed last week.
One was Philip Rivers. He quoted Latin, too.
The 17 games McCarthy sits out this season is 17 more than Rivers missed in his 15 seasons after replacing Drew Brees as San Diego’s starter.
Nunc coepi was the Latin phrase Rivers popularized in the NFL. It means, “Now I begin, by golly.”
Vikings Hall of Fame QB Fran Tarkenton came to mind as well.
It’s remarkable he wasn’t squashed like a bug by NFL behemoths. He was listed at 6-foot and 190 pounds, but looked smaller.
Yet he poked bears. And lions.
Daring large, angry men to sack him, he invited them forward by drifting backward or to one side. Then he dodged, whirled, feinted, grabbed a hot dog from a vendor and ran the big guys into exhaustion.
Sixteen years into a career spent also with the Giants, how many games had Tarkenton missed on account of injury?
One.
Then, in his 17th season, a blown audible left Tarkenton in an awkward position, enabling a Bengals pass-rusher to clobber him and break his right fibula. His 239th game was finished, as was his 1977 season.
There’s no telling how J.J. McCarthy will hold up. But, year from now, I doubt he or Kevin O’Connell will view his rookie year as anything but helpful.
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