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Last August, in the midst of NFL training camps, I visited the Minnesota Vikings and found myself camped out with a member of the team’s brain trust. Not far away, Sam Darnold and J.J. McCarthy were alternating in 11-on-11 drills when the conversation turned into an art versus science debate about when to turn a team over to a young quarterback.
“I’d love to pick [head coach] Andy Reid’s brain,” the Vikings official said. “I’d like to ask him how he kept that Ferrari in the garage so long.”
The “Ferrari” was Kansas City Chiefs rookie quarterback Patrick Mahomes, whom Reid impressively kept on the field for all but the final regular-season game of his rookie season — before eventually turning the starting job over to Mahomes the next season, following a trade that sent Alex Smith to Washington. In terms of redshirting a first-year quarterback and then hitting the ground running, it was a master stroke of sorts. The Chiefs went 11-4 in Smith’s 15 starts and Mahomes was victorious in the regular-season finale, then Kansas City went on to suffer a nail-biting 18-16 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the divisional round of the playoffs.
“I’m sure it helped that they had a good veteran quarterback and were winning games,” I said to the member of the Vikings’ brain trust. “Takes some pressure off to force it.”
He nodded.
“True.”
This wasn’t really a conversation about Mahomes and the Chiefs, of course. It was about the Vikings and McCarthy, who was selected with the 10th overall pick in the NFL Draft and was engaging in a camp battle with Darnold, who was entering his seventh season in the NFL after being the No. 3 overall draft pick in 2018. Darnold had yet to find solid footing in the league, but he’d had a resurrection of sorts as a backup in 2023 with the San Francisco 49ers. Not only had he beaten out Trey Lance for the No. 2 job behind Brock Purdy, he’d earned significant respect from 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan for…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/qb-room-vikings-keeping-sam-darnold-and-jj-mccarthy-together-in-2025-is-gaining-momentum-014515693.html
Author : Yahoo Sports
Publish date : 2024-12-27 01:45:00
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