I am hoping for a competitive game on Sunday and to see JJ McCarthy look the part provided he has ample protection. That would definitely portend well for the future of the Vikings. I have to believe he is
going to thrive eventually just because I think KOC has a good eye for QBs. I am not giving up on the season even with a loss. This is the kind of game that a team can surprise especially when everyone is counting them out. The offense is going to need to sustain as long of drives as they can to keep Detroit’s offense off the field.
I realize that some folks still want to continue beating the Carson Wentz “story” so please, carry on.
Minnesota Vikings News and Links
Vikings’ Carson Wentz: Wanted to stay in TNF game despite pain
Carson Wentz took a dramatic step Wednesday to defuse the controversy over his painful final appearance as the Minnesota Vikings’ quarterback, saying he bears no ill will toward the franchise and making clear he did not want coach Kevin O’Connell to remove him from last Thursday’s game against the Los Angeles Chargers.
“This isn’t my first rodeo,” said Wentz, who was placed on injured reserve this week and soon will have season-ending surgery to repair his left shoulder. “I’m not an idiot. I know what I was signing up for going out there. Nobody was forcing me, pressuring me, any of those things.”
…
Wentz, the No. 2 pick of the 2016 draft, earlier this season set an NFL record by starting a game for a different team in six straight years. But he had not been a regular NFL starter since 2022, and Wentz said the prospect of playing in “meaningful” games drove him to stay in the Vikings’ lineup as long as possible.
“It’s fun,” he said. “I’m not going to lie. It’s fun. It’s what I grew up dreaming of doing. And when you lose it for a little bit, it’s hard to want to give it up. So even with pain, and all the things that I knew were going to come with it, [I wanted] to play. I want to be out there, and I want to be helping this team however I can.”
Though Wentz refused to ask out of the game, O’Connell has absorbed local and national criticism for not removing him before the final minutes. When asked if he thought O’Connell should have taken him out earlier, Wentz said: “Truthfully, no. I appreciate that everyone was checking on me and all this stuff — at the end of the day, coaches, trainers, no one really knows the level of pain or difficulty that I may be feeling. And I know TV copies can show stuff that people on sidelines don’t see, but I never once felt unsafe. I’ve said it a bunch, it’s just pain. It’s pain. It’s discomfort. I knew surgery was coming, I knew it needed to be fixed. So it was like, ‘I don’t want to come out of this game as uncomfortable as this is.'”
…
“The way we operate, where we believe we’re out of reach might be a little different than how folks watching the game might believe it to be,” O’Connell said. “And we’ve had some games where, thank goodness, we had that mindset. We found a way to win some of those, and that’s just the belief that the guys have, and when you’ve got a guy like that that’s committed to play through something, as long as the medical staff doesn’t give me any new information to that, that’s kind of how that took place.”
…
The nationally televised game featured multiple instances of Wentz either writhing in pain or holding his left arm tight to his chest. O’Connell said he was not privy to those images on the sideline. Asked what level of pain a player would have to be in to remove him over his objections, O’Connell did not answer directly.
“Yeah, I think there’s an absolute level there,” he said, “and I think you have to make that decision. And ultimately, that’s not a decision you make solely on your own. It comes from a lot more people with expertise. Then, ultimately, when you ask a player, ‘Can you still go? Can you go out there and play?’ And they said, ‘Absolutely, nothing’s changed. I can still go.’ You then have to make the decision as the head coach and that’s my responsibility.”
…
As he spoke Wednesday, Wentz glanced at his watch several times to see if his wife, Madison, had messaged to say she was in labor. The couple is expecting their fourth child this week, and then afterward Wentz will schedule the surgery.
“The public backlash and different things that I’m being told are out there I think is personally kind of crazy,” he said. “Nobody’s in this building. Nobody’s in these conversations. Nobody knows what’s truly going on and transpiring behind these walls. And I can just honestly say this place has been super supportive and super helpful this whole time, and I’m grateful for that.”
Amid Chargers game controversy, Carson Wentz tells his side of the story
During the week since his extreme pain was broadcast to the nation in an ugly primetime loss to the Chargers, Vikings QB Carson Wentz and his injured left shoulder have been a hot topic of discussion.
Many people, including this writer, have argued that head coach Kevin O’Connell should’ve made the decision to take Wentz out of the game much earlier than he did, in order to protect the veteran quarterback from himself. That idea came into greater focus on Monday, when it was announced that Wentz is having season-ending surgery to fix his shoulder, which he injured two games earlier.
O’Connell has made his stance clear, from his postgame press conference in Los Angeles to a Tuesday interview with Paul Allen and again in his weekly presser on Wednesday.
He says that Wentz, after suffering the shoulder injury in London before the Vikings’ bye, was cleared to play by all medical personnel, who said that he wasn’t at risk of making the issue structurally worse. O’Connell says that Wentz wanted to play and that he felt he had to honor that desire to stay in the fight. He didn’t want to give up on the game until the very end, and he didn’t believe rookie backup Max Brosmer was prepared to be thrown into the Vikings’ specific situation last Thursday night.
Just before O’Connell spoke at TCO Performance Center on Wednesday, Wentz himself was made available to talk to the media. Players on injured reserve have no obligation to hold press conferences, but it seems that Wentz wanted to clear the air and have people hear his side of what went down in LA.
“It’s been an interesting couple weeks, but feeling good with the ultimate decision that we made, collectively,” he said. “It’s weird being done this early in the season. Been on IR a couple different times but never this early. It’s a bummer, all those things, but life’s a lot bigger than this. Any minute or day, I’m about to have my fourth little girl. Surgery’s on deck. All the things that are so much bigger than this are really occupying my mind and time.”
Many of the questions he received were about the Chargers game and the process that led to him staying in until the final two-minute warning despite being in visible pain on several occasions. Wentz made it clear that it was his decision to keep playing.
“The whole time, I felt I can still help this team,” he said. “At the end of the day, I knew what I was signing up for. It wasn’t like anyone was forcing me to go. I mean, this is my tenth year in the league. There’s a lot bigger things in my life to worry about, so I wasn’t gonna do anything that would be detrimental to my own health. So I knew what I was getting into. Knew there was a chance I would be playing with some pain, discomfort the other night. I thought it would be a little less than what it was, but at the end of the day, it’s pain and I felt like OK, the hit happened and then I could go on and I could still help the team.
“As a competitor, you never want to take yourself out. Like, no matter what you’re going through, it’s hard to remove yourself from the game. I’m maybe too optimistic, thinking we can still mount a comeback here, all the things. The NFL’s crazy. Teams can score fast. We have some dudes on this offense, so scoring in a hurry is a real expectation and an opportunity. I never once was like ‘Yeah, I need to be done.’ It’s like yeah, that hurt, but I’m optimistic I’m gonna get up and not get hit the next play and we’re gonna go score.”
…
“I think that game just obviously was kind of the icing on the cake for me to know — I think the frustration that you might’ve saw on the sideline was me knowing I’m probably not playing again this year,” Wentz said. “So there was a lot of emotions there, mixed with the pain and all the things. We knew what was coming, we just didn’t know when.”
“I was a backup for the last couple of years,” he said. “So just being back in the role of starting meaningful football games, it’s fun.
Asked point-blank if he thinks he should’ve been taken out of the game, Wentz said “truthfully, no.”
J.J. McCarthy on Returning to Vikings Huddle & Facing Lions in Week 9
“Just finished up a great practice,” McCarthy said Wednesday. “Felt like there was a lot that we did well and a lot that we’ve got to improve on this week. We’ve got a tremendous opportunity in front of us against a divisional opponent, a really tough opponent. They’ve done a lot of great things this year, and it’ll be great to see where we stack up against them. We’re just really focused on attacking every day and making sure we’re prepared as possible going into this one on Sunday.”
After a rehab process that included Minnesota starting Carson Wentz for five games, McCarthy said his ankle is “feeling amazing.”
“Ready to go. I feel like myself again, feel like I have those mobility things that I was concerned about going into last week and the prior week,” McCarthy said.
…
Vikings Head Coach Kevin O’Connell said he and McCarthy recently went back and watched Minnesota’s Week 1 win at Chicago and Week 2 home loss against Atlanta, “just looking at some of the principles of how he how he played.”
“We generated 170 yards in the final 17 minutes of the [Bears] game, and he had a ton to do with that just by simply being efficient with his feet and being accurate … reading progressions and putting the ball in play and throwing completions, and then we were able to run the ball as well,” O’Connell explained. “And it kind of married all together.”
“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 processes, going through the reads, making sure I’m taking the right footwork and staying kind of calm- minded and [having] a duck mentality in terms of just how I go about each play in each situation,” said McCarthy, with the last part being a reference to not letting one bad play affect the next play.
“It really just came down to the simple things, and making sure we master that,” McCarthy said.
Injuries are changing the way the Vikings blitz
“The blitzes have been really interesting this year compared to last. There are some exotic blitzes that he’s using, but a lot of the blitz numbers that are recorded are coming from sending five rushers, with all of them being edge rushers or defensive linemen.” Our Viking beat writer, Tyler Forness said. “The other reason why we haven’t seen as many exotic rushes is due to Andrew Van Ginkel missing five full games and playing just eight snaps of another, not to mention Blake Cashman missed four games with a hamstring injury. With just Dallas Turner to run those exotic pressures, it limits what Flores can do from that perspective. With Van Ginkel hopefully coming back, that will change with the ability to be more versatile.”
The Vikings invested heavily in their offensive and defensive lines during free agency and bypassed three veteran QB options
The Minnesota Vikings had high expectations heading into this season after coming up one win short of earning the NFC’s No. 1 playoff seed in 2024. The quarterback reins were handed over to 2024 10th overall pick J.J. McCarthy, who was lost for his rookie year after tearing the meniscus in his right knee during the preseason opener. A spending spree took place in free agency where upgrading the offensive line (offensive guard Will Fries and center Ryan Kelly) and interior of the defensive line (Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave) were the priorities.
Despite McCarthy’s lack of game experience, he only took 12 offensive snaps in the 2025 preseason. By contrast 2024’s 12th overall pick, Bo Nix, who was on the field for 98.73% of the Denver Broncos’ offensive plays in 2024, was under center for 40 preseason snaps.
The 2025 season has been disappointing for a variety of reasons. A big issue is the drop-off at quarterback from Sam Darnold, who earned Pro Bowl honors last season. Outside of producing three fourth-quarter touchdowns during a 27-24 comeback win over the Chicago Bears in the regular-season opener, McCarthy struggled in the two games he played before suffering a high right ankle sprain. In the other seven quarters McCarthy has played this season, he has completed 55% of his passes for 214 yards while committing four turnovers and taking nine sacks.
…
The commitment to McCarthy cost the Vikings other viable options at quarterback: Darnold, Daniel Jones and Aaron Rodgers. The Vikings are in last place in the NFC North with a 3-4 record. The four losses are more than the Vikings had last season going 14-3.
It’s conceivable that the Vikings would be 5-2 after seven games for the second straight season with better quarterback play. One-score games were lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers (24-21) and the Eagles (28-22).
The Darnold decision
Nonetheless, the Vikings explored re-signing Darnold. He ultimately went to the Seattle Seahawks in free agency. The Seahawks signed Darnold to a team-friendly three-year, $100.5 million contract, averaging $33.5 million per year, worth a maximum of $115.5 million through incentives.
The deal was structured to give the Seahawks a small window to get out of the deal after this season if Darnold didn’t play well. Out of the $27.5 million Darnold is scheduled to make in 2026, the $17.5 million that’s guaranteed for injury becomes fully guaranteed five days after Super Bowl LX on Feb. 13. The Seahawks would have $25.6 million in dead money, a salary cap charge for a player no longer on a team’s roster, while Darnold will have gotten $37.5 million for one year by Seattle parting ways with him in 2026.
A quick exit isn’t a consideration for the Seahawks. Darnold is demonstrating that his 2024 Pro Bowl season wasn’t a fluke. He is completing 68.2% of his passes (131 of 192 attempts) for 1,754 yards with 12 touchdowns and four interceptions to post a 109.2 passer rating in seven games. Darnold’s 9.1 yards per pass attempt leads the NFL. He ranks seventh in the league in passer rating.
The Seahawks are sitting atop the NFC West along with the Rams at 5-2 after missing the playoffs last season. The only negative for Darnold is the Seahawks might be undefeated without his late-game turnovers in Week 1 and Week 5 losses to the San Francisco 49ers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, respectively.
Indiana Jones
An unwillingness to assure Jones that there would be an open competition at quarterback like he had with Anthony Richardson this preseason pushed him to the Indianapolis Colts. He signed a one-year, $14 million contract worth up to $17.7 million with incentives in free agency.
Jones is having a surprising career resurrection with the Colts. He is an MVP candidate. Jones has thrown for 2,062 yards with 13 touchdowns and two interceptions while connecting on 71.2% of his passes (173 of 243 attempts) for a 109.5 passer rating in eight games. He ranks third, fourth and fifth in the NFL, respectively, in completion percentage, passing yards and passer rating. The Colts are tops in scoring at 33.8 points per game and have the NFL’s best record at 7-1.
Not aligned with Aaron
The Vikings were Aaron Rodgers’ preferred destination to play a 21st NFL season. Unfortunately for Rodgers, coming to Minnesota was more appealing to him than the Vikings. He signed a one-year, $13.65 million contract worth a maximum of $19.5 million through incentives with the Steelers in June
Rodgers is demonstrating there’s still some gas left in the tank, although he turns 42 in December. He has passed for 1,489 yards with 16 touchdowns and five interceptions in seven games. Rodgers is completing 68.3% of his throws (142 of 208 pass attempts) and has a 104.4 passer rating. His 16 touchdown passes are tied for the NFL’s third most. Rodgers also has the league’s eighth best passer rating. The Steelers, who are leading the AFC North, reportedly would like Rodgers to return for 2026.
…
In the short term, the Vikings probably would have been better off with one of the three veteran quarterbacks on the roster this season. Signing Jones or Rodgers to a one-year deal would have made more sense financially and from a salary cap perspective than Darnold. The veterans continuing to play well without McCarthy consistently showing some of the potential that made him a top 10 pick over the rest of the season will bring more attention and scrutiny to Minnesota’s quarterback decisions.
Eagles trading WR John Metchie III to Jets for CB Michael Carter II
Philadelphia is trading fourth-year receiver John Metchie III and a 2027 sixth-round selection to New York for nickelback Michael Carter II and a 2027 seventh-round pick, NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport reported on Wednesday, per sources. The teams later confirmed the deal.
Carter, a reliable piece in the Jets’ secondary for five seasons, has played in five games this year, returning last week against Cincinnati after three games missed due to a concussion.
Again, we all know the rules, but in case someone is new:
- No discussion of politics or religion
- No feeding of the trolls
- Leave the gender hatred at the door
- Keep the bad language to a minimum (using the spoiler tags, if you must)
- Speaking of which, if discussing a newer show or movie, please use spoiler tags
- No pictures that could get someone fired or in serious trouble with their employer
- If you can’t disagree in a civil manner, feel free to go away
- While navigating the open thread, just assume it’s sarcasm
