Rich on JJ McCarthy’s Chances to Salvage His Career after His Trade to the Giants

J.J. McCarthy is a New York Giant, and Rich believes the trade gives the young quarterback exactly the thing his Minnesota tenure never did: a second chance with a team that wants him.

The Giants needed quarterback depth with Jaxson Dart out for the season and Jameis Winston on the roster. Instead of finding another veteran, they went and got a kid. McCarthy's path in Minnesota was a strange one. The Vikings traded up to get him, he blew out his knee, Sam Darnold balled out in his place, Darnold went elsewhere and won a Super Bowl, and the reins came back to McCarthy the next year. It did not work out.

Rich brought back something Kevin O'Connell told the show while Darnold was thriving with the Vikings. O'Connell was talking about Darnold's success after bouncing around the league, and his words are now being applied to McCarthy. "I believe that organizations fail young quarterbacks before young quarterbacks fail organizations," O'Connell said then. Every young quarterback, he explained, is on "a very difficult journey" that requires support, teammates and systems. He also noted that a guy who gets a chance to "wipe the slate clean and get a restart while still using your previous experiences" can only get better.

That exact quote was put to O'Connell on Monday. A reporter asked how he reconciles it with a 10th overall pick who ended up with only 10 starts. O'Connell said there was "a lot of context to that quote," that the team tried to do everything it could under the circumstances, and that there will always be reflection. "Sometimes things don't work out how you envisioned or how you planned or how you hoped," he said, "and that doesn't change the intent that doesn't change the work that got put into it by J.J. himself." He said he still believes in McCarthy.

Rich's read is that departures this early usually come from upheaval in the franchise that drafted you. Minnesota had the opposite. O'Connell won coach of the year during that tenure, just with a different quarterback. Rich said he has no idea what happened behind the scenes, but if the Vikings no longer believed in McCarthy, they did the right thing by getting something for him and sending him "to a spot that wants him."

Nobody knows McCarthy's game better than the Harbaugh family. John Harbaugh, whose brother won a national championship with McCarthy, said the Giants had been talking about adding a quarterback since Dart got hurt. "Really glad, really happy, very excited to add JJ McCarthy," Harbaugh said, calling him "a strong young quarterback" and adding, "he's going to make us a stronger football team."

Rich does not know when McCarthy will start. Winston is the named starter and will get the start this week at home against Arizona. Rich called Dart's injury "the damn shame about all this," because Dart worked all summer in the new offensive system and looked like he had it. The schedule after Arizona includes a trip to Washington, a home date with New Orleans and a visit to Houston. Rich wondered whether the Giants ride Winston to the bye and then send McCarthy into Philadelphia on a short week, and he would rather get McCarthy's feet wet before that.

But it will happen. "He's going to be the quarterback of the New York football Giants at some point this season," Rich said, with talented players at his disposal and "a massive opportunity for him to revitalize a career that did seem, you know, dead in the water." Darnold is the perfect example of using an experience elsewhere to crush it in a new spot.

Rich also called the move gutsy. The Giants got a player who carried a first-round grade for many, two and a half years into his career, for a fifth-round pick. If he starts winning games, beating teams like the Eagles, the Giants have him on an affordable first contract alongside Dart. Rich called that "a champagne problem" Harbaugh and the front office would love to have.

There is history here, too. Before the draft, in Detroit, McCarthy told the show the team he spent the most time with in the pre-draft process was the Giants. Brian Daboll is gone, Joe Schoen is still there, and McCarthy finally has the opportunity. "I can't wait for him to seize it," Rich said. "It'll be fun to watch."