Vikings rookie QB J.J. McCarthy is becoming a master of meditation

At 21 years of age, Vikings rookie J.J. McCarthy is but a mere pup as an NFL player and human being. But his offensive coordinator, Wes Phillips, doesn’t seem the least bit concerned about the young quarterback’s ability to handle anything the Vikings and the league will throw at him.

“He’s very into the mental side of just life, not only in football, but it carries over to the games,” Phillips said after Friday’s light training camp practice at TCO Performance Center. “The meditation, the different things. He’s got the Vitruvian Man tattooed on his arm, so he’s a big da Vinci fan.

“He’s an interesting guy for a 21-year-old guy. He’s into some things that I’m into as well.”

McCarthy, the highest-drafted quarterback in Vikings history at 10th overall, has spent the first three days of training camp working with the second unit. He’s had some ups and some downs, but has bounced right back each time with something positive, according to Phillips, and is on schedule to get some first-team reps at a point in camp that Phillips wasn’t willing to share Friday.

To outsiders, it doesn’t appear McCarthy has experienced much adversity. His lifetime record as a starting quarterback is 61-3, going 26-2 with a state title at Nazareth Academy in La Grange Park, Ill., 8-0 at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., and 27-1 at Michigan, including a 15-0 mark while winning the national championship last season.

McCarthy, however, said he turned to meditation during an adverse period as a senior at IMG.

“It was during COVID, and I went through a period of depression,” he said. “I was just in a really dark spot. I had a blessed upbringing. I didn’t really know what depression and anxiety was all about. And going through that alone and being isolated at a boarding school, I didn’t have too many resources to help me out with mental health.

“I started looking up things to promote better mental health and meditation was the first thing that popped up. I started learning about it, studying it, researching it. I never really got anywhere until I started practicing it, and once I started doing it over a period of time I started experiencing the benefits. Now, I’ll have a period of one week when I don’t do it and I experience how I feel without it. So now I won’t go a day without it.”

McCarthy said he starts each day with meditation. Then he hops into a Shiftwave chair, a nervous system training device that applies pulsed pressure waves to the body, “restoring users to optimal readiness, rebalancing the nervous systems, and reducing pain,” according to the company’s website.

“And I finish my day with meditation,” McCarthy said. “It keeps me in the present moment. Helps me be self-aware so I can just learn so much about myself that my ego might be trying to defend. There’s so many different worlds you can get into with the practice of meditation. It’s one that I align with very heavily.”

How light was Friday’s practice, only the third day of camp? So light that 35-year-old safety Harrison Smith was given a “vet day” to rest and yet he still ended up stepping into the 11-on-11 period while wearing shades and no helmet. The other players wore helmets for what was slightly a notch above a walk-through.

The workout, the last one before fans are allowed to watch, ended 10 minutes early.

Phillips ran the practice with coach Kevin O’Connell among the Vikings contingent that traveled to Maryland for the funeral of Vikings rookie Khyree Jackson, who was killed in a car accident along with high school teammates Isaiah Hazel and Anthony Lytton Jr. on July 6.

Also attending the funeral were General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, defensive coordinator Brian Flores, special teams coordinator Matt Daniels, defensive backs coach Daronte Jones and players Dallas Turner, Jeshaun Jones and Taki Taimani, who were college teammates of Jackson or Hazel.

Cornerback Shaq Griffin, who went down in Thursday’s practice with an injury that didn’t appear to be serious, did not practice Friday. Lewis Cine also did not practice for undisclosed reasons.