A fifth-round pick buys the Giants a former national champion with plenty to prove.
With the MLB playoffs underway, I come with an NFL piece. With the season getting underway 3 weeks ago, there’s been a ton of fun storylines to follow around the league. One of those storylines we now have the privilege of following involves the former national champion quarterback J.J. McCarthy, whom the Vikings traded to the Giants just days ago.
With typical starter Jaxson Dart going down with a season-ending knee injury in week 2, the Giants looked for help, eventually turning to another young signal-caller with an interesting resume. McCarthy, already a topic of conversation in Viking-land as a potential “bust” of a first-round pick, gets a fresh start in a big market and gets to play under a respected coach in John Harbaugh, brother of McCarthy’s college coach, Jim Harbaugh.
Trade Details:
The Giants acquired QB JJ McCarthy, sending the Vikings their 5th-round draft pick in the 2027 NFL Draft.
McCarthy joins a Giants’ QB room that features Jameis Winston, a 12-year NFL veteran and former #1 overall pick back in 2015 of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Winston has now made 2 appearances for the Giants this season (one start) to some iffy results.
After coming in to replace the injured Dart, Winston completed just 40.7% (11/27) of his passes against the Rams, which included throwing an interception. They won a gritty matchup with the Titans in their third game (Winston’s first start), but not in large part due to Winston’s play. They badly needed another body in the QB room.
Enter JJ McCarthy. “Nine,” as he infamously announced as his self-given-moniker. A former national champion at Michigan who, since being drafted in the first round (10th overall) of the 2024 NFL Draft just 2 years ago, has become somewhat of a meme across the NFL audience. Although that is his unfortunate reality in the present moment, he’s still so young (he turns 24 in January) and provides an opportunity for himself and for the Giants to capitalize on his current lack of value.
Reasons to be Bullish about the JJ McCarthy-Giants Marriage:
- McCarthy is young.
The first point I want to make is about McCarthy’s age. He’s still just 23 years old. He was drafted just 2 years ago and has made just 10 career NFL starts! This is because he missed his entire rookie season in 2024 after tearing the meniscus in his right knee in his first preseason game. All 10 of his starts came last season, in 2025. Granted, the results weren’t exactly there in 2025. But if you separate the beginning and the end of his season, there may be some positives to take away, which leads me to the next point.
- McCarthy finished 2025 relatively strong
Starting with the ugly, JJ’s first 6 starts of 2025 resulted in the following statline: 929 passing yards on 54.1% completion percentage, 6 passing TDs, 10 INTs, 2 rushing TDs, 20 sacks taken, 5 fumbles (1 lost).
It should be noted that this line includes his miraculous come-from-behind victory in his NFL debut against the Bears, where McCarthy scored 3 TDs in the 4th quarter, becoming the first to ever do so in his debut. Things got ugly in week 2, and he would then miss 5 games with a high ankle sprain. He’d make 4 more poor starts from weeks 9 to 12.
However, his final 4 starts of 2025 left something to be pleased with. His starts from weeks 14 to 18 would see him throw for 703 yards on 64.3% completion, notching 5 passing TDs and 2 rushing TDs to just 2 interceptions. He was sacked 7 times and fumbled once. Not superstar stuff, but a promising development to say the least. To some Vikings fans, it may have signaled that he was ready to take a step in 2026 as the starting QB. Unfortunately, it wasn’t, and the team signed veteran Kyler Murray and listed Carson Wentz as Murray’s backup.
There’s something to be said about McCarthy being demoted to QB3 with Minnesota, especially under a coach that’s had a lot of success with unremarkable quarterbacks. Kevin O’Connell had just taken Sam Darnold from a first-round “bust” himself to a 14-win premier QB. But when 40%-50% (if you include 2025 Week 1) of your professional starts have been decent, that shouldn’t be swept under the rug.
- He’s proven he can win, and he’s wanted in New York
I mentioned it briefly above, but McCarthy’s resume is nothing to sneeze at. A former 5-star recruit, McCarthy led the 2023 Michigan Wolverines to a national championship under head coach Jim Harbaugh. It can be reasonably inferred that Jim’s brother John Harbaugh can have a little more confidence than others might, assuming Jim praised his former guy.
The reality is that JJ will have a real role to play for the Giants this season, while he wouldn’t have had that same opportunity in Minnesota. Can we really say we know everything there is to know about a guy with 10 sporadic career starts riddled with injuries? My gut says no and that only more experience will tell us for sure. He’ll get that in New York.
Reasons to doubt:
- He lost Kevin O’Connell’s trust in Minnesota
NFL fans are plenty familiar with head coach KOC in Minnesota. His resume labels him as somewhat of a guru when it comes to putting QBs in a position to exceed their potential. The best example of this came during the 2024 season. Sam Darnold was expected to be the veteran to quickly give way to the young McCarthy. Darnold, a once-top pick of the Jets who had led a disappointing career as a QB to that point, earned the full-time starting gig after McCarthy’s preseason injury ended his season. Darnold would go on to lead the Vikings to a playoff berth as a wild card, winning 14 games as their starting QB, throwing for 4,319 yards, 35 TDs, and 12 interceptions, before signing a big contract with the Seahawks and subsequently winning the Super Bowl in dominant fashion. This season, O’Connell’s made Carson Wentz, another former top draft pick, look “better” than he’s historically been, and that was the hope with another former top pick, Kyler Murray before his injury in Week 1.
The point is that Kevin O’Connell knows quarterbacks. A former quarterback himself, he listed McCarthy as the third quarterback on the depth chart behind Murray and Wentz to begin the year. I simply cannot view that as a minor detail in the grand context of this coach’s career. It can be surmised that O’Connell had the least amount of confidence in McCarthy’s abilities among the three.
- He’s young with a small NFL sample size because he can’t stay healthy
I mentioned he’s only started 10 games in the NFL. While I have noted a small sample size could be a reason to believe his results aren’t representative of his true abilities, it’s also concerning that the sample is so small after 2 seasons of opportunities.
His rookie season ended before it began when he suffered a torn meniscus in his first preseason game. He returned for the 2025 season from that procedure, but suffered a high-ankle sprain in Week 2 (after turning the ball over three times), which caused him to miss 5 games and return in Week 9. He suffered a concussion in Week 12, causing him to miss a game. Finally, to top it off, he suffered a hairline fracture in his throwing hand in Week 16, which caused him to miss one game and pull himself out of the game in the season finale.
So, while the sample size could be viewed as a reason to believe, it could also be equally viewed as a signal to another issue.
- He has to learn this offense on the fly
Learning an NFL offense is like learning a foreign language. There are a lot of consistencies, but there are plenty of different quirks that are unique to each playbook.
For JJ McCarthy to have to come in midseason and scrap the language he’s been using in Minnesota for a new one is a tall ask. Jaxson Dart and Jameis Winston had the entire offseason to learn John Harbaugh’s system, and the latter is still trying to prove he’s got it down. It’s why we don’t see a ton of trades for QBs midseason.
So, when you look at it like he had 2 years under KOC’s QB-friendly system and still couldn’t find his footing, how confident can we be that he’ll be able to succeed under Harbaugh’s in mere weeks? That will be a decision point when it comes to McCarthy potentially replacing Winston if Winston continues to perform poorly.
What to keep tabs on:
As a spectator, these are the following things I’ll be keeping an eye on:
- Does McCarthy take Winston’s starting job at any point this season?
- If he does play, does he look comfortable and/or protect the football?
- If he does play, does he stay healthy?
- If he does play, how does his performance impact his and the Giants’ future?
