Stationed at a podium just outside the Vikings’ headquarters, coach Kevin O’Connell gestured out to the team’s practice fields, turning reporters’ attention behind them to where rookie quarterback J.J. McCarthy was running sprints at the end of his first Vikings practice.
The sprints, McCarthy admitted later, were the payoff for a bet he’d lost.
With 16 snaps of skeleton passing drills scheduled for the first day of the Vikings’ rookie camp practices on Friday, McCarthy challenged the team’s defenders he could get through the drills with three or fewer balls hitting the ground. If he did, they’d have to run gassers; if four or more passes missed their target, McCarthy would be the one running.
McCarthy and undrafted linebacker K.J. Cloyd, in particular, had been chiding one another in jest before practice. It was Cloyd who intercepted McCarthy in a Vikings uniform for the first time, stepping in front of a pass and pointing at McCarthy as he returned it for a touchdown in the middle of Friday’s practice.
”I’ve got to stop talking smack because it always turns out, they win in the end,” McCarthy said. “The splits were a little messed up; I obviously take full credit for the outcome of the play. But you know, just reading it outside in, I felt like I could fit in there and force it, but at this level, they’re a lot faster, a lot longer. It’s great to learn now, before the vets get here. Hopefully I won’t be in that situation anytime soon.”
The Vikings could take the error in stride on Friday, as the start of their rookie minicamp marked the next juncture in a deliberate process they plan to use for McCarthy’s development. McCarthy, the 10th pick in last month’s NFL draft, is one of just two quarterbacks in the Vikings’ rookie camp, with Eastern Kentucky QB Parker McKinney also in on a tryout. McCarthy spent enough time talking through the Vikings offense with the coaches before the draft that some of what he heard in prepractice meetings on Friday was familiar; his time between snaps was a stretch of consistent dialogue with offensive coordinator Wes Phillips, QB coach Josh McCown and O’Connell.
”This weekend is really about preparing him to step in with the full group next week, and then a week from there, we start our first [organized team activities] with the whole group,” O’Connell said. “He’s doing a great job of handling everything. I’m just enjoying seeing the process: rep-to-rep improvement, taking coaching points from Josh or Wes or myself and just continuing to build.
“We spent a lot of time together predraft, and one of the real benefits of that is, in a lot of ways, a lot of the things we’re talking about, he’s not hearing for the first time now. It’ll feel like a lot, at times, to him, and that’s OK. We just kind of want to continue to stress him above the neck, and then when we get out here on the grass, it’s techniques, fundamentals, rhythm, timing, all the things that go into playing quarterback in our offense.”
