Rich’s Message to JJ McCarthy after Losing the Vikings’ QB Competition to Kyler Murray

The easy read on Minnesota naming Kyler Murray the starter is that J.J. McCarthy was so bad it became obvious, and that everything thrown into this young man's lap got handled poorly. Rich isn't buying it, and he said so while openly accounting for his own bias toward McCarthy.

He sees two reasons, neither of them a verdict on McCarthy's character. The first is logistics. Naming a starter now means the reps stop getting split and the team can actually get ready. The second is the one Rich called from this chair back when Murray signed.

"Unfortunately for J.J. McCarthy, that's the end of that," Rich said of that moment. Murray is a first overall pick who is insanely inexpensive, and the Vikings want to see what Kyler Murray 2.0 looks like. Whatever was going down in Arizona, and there was a lot, is over. Minnesota's pitch is essentially a runway and a dare: make it a very difficult decision on us at the end of the year, please.

For Murray, Rich framed it as a gift. The division is winnable, a deep run is on the table, and this could be the moment that revitalizes his career. Minnesota is not a bad place to do that. Just ask Sam Darnold.

Which is exactly where the sympathy for McCarthy starts.

They traded up for him. He got hurt. Darnold was there, then went somewhere else and won a Super Bowl. McCarthy's time arrived while that was happening, and he couldn't stay healthy, couldn't be consistent enough when he was healthy, and showed flashes when he was. Then he made the mistake of referring to himself as nine, and the memes never stopped. "It's vicious," Rich said.

Then a veteran walks in the building, there's the strange business of the two of them on separate sides of the classroom, and the thumb may well have been on the scale for a former first overall pick costing 1.3 million with real upside left.

None of that changes the number that matters most to Rich.

"J.J., you're 23," he said, "and you are in a spot where they are quarterback university. You are in a spot where so many other quarterbacks want to go."

It still has to be miserable to sit in that meeting room and hear it announced. Both things can be true.