Now that J.J. McCarthy is a member of the New York Giants, the question of when, or if, McCarthy will take over for Jameis Winston as the team’s starting quarterback has moved front and center.
Head coach John Harbaugh wasn’t willing to play the speculation game when he spoke to reporters via Zoom on Monday afternoon.
“Our design is to win the next game. Our design is to be 1-0 next week,” Harbaugh said. “In any other conversation, you could ask me who’s going to be the starting quarterback next year
or five years from now. I don’t know. What I do know is that we’re going to be playing the Cardinals in six days, and that’s how it works.
“So all the other conversation isn’t going to help us beat the Cardinals. So it’s irrelevant. What we’re going to be doing is he’ll [McCarthy] be either the number two quarterback or the number three quarterback Sunday. Jameis will be the starter.”
What about whenever McCarthy is up to speed on the Giants’ offense?
“Jameis will be the starter for as long as I can see into the future, but I don’t know. Nobody knows,” Harbaugh said. “What I do know is that we’re going to be playing this game against the Cardinals on Sunday, and Jameis will be our starter for sure.
And he’s going to play a winning football game. I know that. I have complete confidence that Jameis is going to play a great football game on Sunday and that our guys are going to play great around him.“
Harbaugh said the Giants were “turning over every stone” to find the best quarterback they could to add to the roster once Jaxson Dart suffered his season-ending injury.
“I think he’s [McCarthy] a strong young quarterback, has some experience in the National Football League,” Harbaugh said. “Obviously was a very high draft pick, very talented player and is going to make us a stronger football team. So excited about it, think it makes us better.”
The Giants, of course, spent a lot of time scouting McCarthy before passing on him in the 2024 NFL Draft. Harbaugh said it was the front office that raised the possibility of trying to acquire McCarthy from the Vikings.
“They were the ones that brought him to the table, so to speak,” Harbaugh said. “Our high-level scouts, Joe [Schoen], and then the guys working in that group there all the way down had a lot of recommendations,” Harbaugh said. “We talked about a lot of quarterbacks, and J.J. was right near or at the top of the list in their evaluations. So they felt very strongly that he was going to be a good option, and that was interesting to me.”
McCarthy was selected No. 10 overall by the Vikings in 2024. He missed his rookie season with a knee injury, started 10 games in 2025, and was serving as Minnesota’s No. 3 quarterback this year behind Kyler Murray and Carson Wentz.
“He’s a talented guy. I mean, there’s just no doubt about it. He’s talente,” Harbaugh said. “He was a top 10 pick for a reason. There’s plenty of good tape even in the NFL out there.
So I know he didn’t hold onto that job in Minnesota, and that’s why he’s available. If he had, we wouldn’t be talking, having this conversation right now. It would be somebody else.
“He can throw it. He can run it. He can make plays. There’s a lot of things he could do better from what he did, obviously. And we’re going to see where it goes from here. I mean, that’s really what it boils down to. But just from a talent standpoint, I don’t think anybody would deny that J.J. McCarthy is a very talented young quarterback.”
