J.J. McCarthy Is Potential Energy

There’s an alternate universe where J.J. McCarthy dropped in under center shortly after the Minnesota Vikings’ bye week.

Sam Darnold’s magic looked like it had run out in Jacksonville. To be fair, Northeast Florida is hardly fertile ground for mysticism. Mickey wouldn’t have survived Fantasia if they had filmed it in the land of humidity and strange crime. Even the Angelus bell can’t drive away those demons.

It looked like Darnold’s midnight bell had tolled after Minnesota’s 12-7 victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars. He threw three picks and no touchdowns against a 2-8 team that finished with four wins. The evil spirits and restless souls had escaped Bald Mountain. Darnold was seeing ghosts again.

Week 11 would have been the perfect time to start McCarthy. Darnold had navigated the Vikings through the challenging early part of their schedule. However, he showed signs of inaccuracy in London before the bye week, and Minnesota lost their first two games after it.

Darnold’s Week 9 performance against the Indianapolis Colts wasn’t inspiring. His two-touchdown, 246-yard effort in a 23-13 win over the Tennessee Titans a week after the Jacksonville game was efficient but hardly reassuring.

McCarthy would have hung over him like a specter. The Vikings had taken him 10th overall after he went 15-0 and won a national championship at Michigan. McCarthy had shown promise in the preseason before suffering a meniscus tear and missing the entire season. What if he had dropped in during the middle of the season?

It’s hard not to think of that sliding-doors moment when McCarthy went on The Rich Eisen Show. McCarthy told Eisen he’s ahead of schedule in his recovery and that a year on the sidelines was an “invaluable experience.”

“I’m feeling fantastic,” McCarthy told Eisen. “Couldn’t be in a better spot mentally, physically, spiritually. We’re just continuing to stack days at this point. Around 67 days till OTAs. We’ve got a lot of time but not a lot of time to waste.”

McCarthy became the first first-round pick in the modern draft era (since 1967) to miss his entire rookie season. However, he made the most of his time on the sidelines. McCarthy studied tape and wrote scouting reports, preparing for Kevin O'Connell’s offensive system.

He also meditated, a practice he started late in high school, and focused on recovery. In doing so, McCarthy connected spiritually and with nature while building relationships with his teammates. He also built potential energy because of how central he’s become to Minnesota’s plans.

In physics, potential energy is energy held by an object because of its position relative to other objects, stresses within itself, or its electrical charge. Think of a ball at the edge of a table; it will immediately drop to the floor if it starts to roll. Or an archer using energy to draw a bow, transferring power to the bow and arrow once they release it.

Every decision the Vikings made before drafting McCarthy created the potential for his success because they cultivated a favorable situation. Every decision they make after will involve him because they traded up to draft him last year. Therefore, he looms over the organization like no other player this offseason.

Darnold recovered from his Jacksonville slide, orchestrating a comeback in Chicago after the Vikings nearly blew their Week 12 game. Two weeks later, he created a quarterback controversy after throwing for five touchdowns in Minnesota’s 42-21 win over the Atlanta Falcons.

However, Darnold’s dancing demons resurfaced in Detroit. The Los Angeles Rams saw the Vikings unspooling and tugged at their loose thread. In 14 days, Minnesota had lost to the Detroit Lions and Rams again and entered the offseason with more questions than answers.

The Vikings need someone to exorcize their playoff demons. Who better than a player who led Michigan to its first national championship since 1997?

They may stick with Darnold, given how well he played most of the season. They could use Daniel Jones to bridge McCarthy. We don’t know how good McCarthy can be, given his injury is unprecedented. Still, it feels like his time is coming.

Eventually, McCarthy will answer the bell and try to vanquish Minnesota’s demons.