Vikes McCarthy plays winning football in return

MINNEAPOLIS — J.J. McCarthy‘s first season as an NFL quarterback has gone so poorly that, on Sunday, the Minnesota Vikings wanted nothing more than for him to remember what it’s like for good things to happen.

So, in front of a subdued home crowd at U.S. Bank Stadium, coach Kevin O’Connell dialed up an approach that combined a series of small wins for McCarthy into one of the biggest victories in team history.

The Vikings’ 31-0 win over the Washington Commanders was the franchise’s biggest margin of victory in a shutout since 1980. It made the Vikings the first NFL team to secure a shutout after being shut out themselves in their previous game, and it represented a reawakening for an offense that hadn’t scored a touchdown in 22 possessions entering the game.

But more than anything, O’Connell said afterward, it featured McCarthy “out there hopefully absorbing the feeling of what winning football can be for our team when our quarterback plays winning football.”

At 5-8, the Vikings’ chances to make the playoffs are slim and their top remaining priority is to get McCarthy straightened out. He missed the Vikings’ 26-0 loss in Week 13 in Seattle because of a concussion, but he entered Sunday’s game with the NFL’s third-lowest QBR (24.1) among the 50 quarterbacks who had made at least one start over that span.

O’Connell elected to receive after the Vikings won the opening coin toss, the opposite of his normal approach, because he wanted to “kind of lift the building in a lot of ways where we avoid any sort of feeling of … here we go again.”

With the Commanders largely playing back in coverage, and using a standard four-man rush, McCarthy led the Vikings on touchdown drives in each of their first two possessions. He threw accurately, completing eight of his first nine throws. And while O’Connell called nearly as many running plays (28) as dropbacks (29) over the course of the game, not including kneel downs, McCarthy still made some key throws. He finished the game with five completions on seven third or fourth-down throws.

Overall, McCarthy finished with career highs in completion percentage (69.6) and touchdown passes (3). Perhaps most importantly, it was his first NFL game without a turnover after entering the game with the highest average number of turnovers per game (1.83) in the league.

“It’s definitely reassuring,” McCarthy said. “I always knew I had that and I always knew the potential is there. But I’m looking at it right now, and there’s so many ways I could get better. I’m so far from where I want to be, so it’s just great to get the win and grow in this game.”