Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell said on Friday that taking the opportunity to talk to Aaron Rodgers in recent weeks was not a sign of doubt about J.J. McCarthy’s ability to handle the team’s quarterback job.
O’Connell said that “two things can be true at the same time” while speaking to reporters at the league meetings in Palm Beach. The team took McCarthy early in last year’s draft because they believe in his potential and think he’s done everything possible to maximize his growth while recovering from last year’s torn meniscus, but that the chance to speak to Rodgers was something the team wasn’t going to pass up.
“The second part that can be true is Aaron Rodgers is a four-time NFL MVP and somebody who, not just myself, but we’ve all had so much respect for competing against him,” O’Connell said, via Kevin Seifert of ESPN.com. “And he happened to be at a point in time in his career where he was free to have some real dialogue about what his future may look like. And we happened to be one of those teams that he reached out to. And I have had a personal relationship with him going back since my playing days.”
O’Connell said he feels “very strongly” that McCarthy is prepared to make a positive impact for the team this year and that the key for the team is now “to go to work and do it.”
The Vikings haven’t slammed the door on the possibility of adding Aaron Rodgers or any other quarterback to the roster before the start of the 2025 season, but the first choice in Minnesota is for 2024 first-round pick J.J. McCarthy to be the leader of the offense.
McCarthy hasn’t been dubbed the starter at this point, but he was selected early to fill that role and his recovery from last summer’s torn mensicus has progressed far enough for that to be a realistic scenario in Minnesota. Leaving the door open for another move may create some doubt that McCarthy is the right man for the job, but head coach Kevin O’Connell tried to douse it in an interview with Kevin Clark of ESPN this weekend.
O’Connell dismissed concerns about McCarthy playing in a run-heavy offense at Michigan by noting “his ability to throw the ball in windows over the middle of the field” and the way the Wolverines leaned on him on “weighty downs” on their way to a national title. O’Connell said they are looking for the same thing in their offense and that he believes McCarthy’s 2024 experience will help him master the scheme.
“He got to watch it,” O’Connell said. “He got to see what meetings were like. What’s it like when I install third-down plays, and we talk about the reads, and we talk about the detail of how we’re going to play against this opponent who plays like this this week. And I think he’s been around all that. Yeah, he’s not a rookie. He’s been able to have, you know, that pseudo redshirt year, albeit without the reps we have wanted, but I’m really confident, really excited to see him hit the ground running. He’s had a great offseason and can’t wait to get going with him.”
The prospect of Rodgers joining the club would disappear if he signs with the Steelers and that would all but officially make it full speed ahead for McCarthy with the Vikings, but things are pointing in that direction even as Rodgers lingers on the market and O’Connell’s confidence suggests that they’ll be rolling with the younger player.
The options have narrowed. The wait continues.
Six days after Aaron Rodgers spent six hours in Pittsburgh, he still hasn’t signed with any team. And he has said nothing about why he’s waiting.
There aren’t many options at this point. Sign with the Steelers. Wait for the Vikings, who haven’t slammed the door on the possibility of circling back to Rodgers later in the offseason. Retire. Or wait for a starter on another team to suffer a season-ending injury.
Plenty of Steelers fans still bristle at the notion of Rodgers becoming the team’s new quarterback. Some think he has lost his ability to play at a high level. (He hasn’t.) Others resent the idea that he hasn’t jumped at the chance to don black and yellow.
No, there’s no deadline looming. That doesn’t make people crave an answer. Something. Anything. Even if it’s Rodgers saying he won’t be making a decision soon. At least folks would know what’s happening.
Rodgers once seemed overly obsessed with how he was viewed by others. Starting four years ago, he seemed to stop caring. That’s his prerogative. But the silence isn’t helping him in this specific case.
Given that he takes a considerable chunk of time every Tuesday during the season to talk about whatever he wants to talk about on ESPN, saying nothing at this point seems odd. Either he’s oblivious to the fact that people would like to have some indication as to when we might know something, or he just likes being talked about. But he also wants to reserve the right to be annoyed that people are talking about him.
They’ll keep talking about him until he makes a decision. Or at least until he lets us know why he hasn’t made a decision, and when he might be making one.
Yes, it’s his right to take his time. It’s his right to say nothing about why he’s taking his time. But the reality is that people who are waiting for any indication as to what he’ll be doing are getting irritated by the absence of any statement, comment, or hint as to why he hasn’t made a decision.
During the 2024 season, running back Jordan Mason impressed as San Francisco’s lead back with Christian McCaffrey sidelined due to injury. He started the season with a 147-yard performance against the Jets before coming up with another 100 yards against the Vikings.
That game left an impression on Minnesota General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, who traded for Mason, who was a restricted free agent, earlier this month.
In his Wednesday press conference, Adofo-Mensah said the team is “Just really excited” to bring Mason in.
“We got to see him play against us, obviously, and that kind of impressed us,” Adofo-Mensah said. “And obviously, I’ve been in that building and know how they evaluate running backs and the tutelage he’ll get with a guy like [49ers RBs coach] Bobby Turner — who’s I think the best in the league, maybe one of the best the sport’s ever seen at that position. And so those things kind of start ideating in your head. And then your scouts come and tell you, ‘Hey, he’s an RFA,’ or different things like that, and we talk through the dynamics of how that could work.”
The Vikings also re-signed running back Aaron Jones, with the idea that he and Mason will create a strong one-two punch.
“We’re really excited about the tandem, the pairing, just the physical play style, [Mason is] really more of a four-minute back, when he gets to the second level he can do a lot of things with contact balance and different things like that. Aaron’s — actually for a smaller guy runs pretty physical himself — really good in the passing game. So we just like the pairing.
“Like I said, we want to be able to win any game and so if we’ve got to run it 40 times, we want to run in 40 times with those two guys, and so we’re just really excited about the pairing. And then with my experience with that front office, obviously, when it’s time to make a transaction, we can be really transparent and honest with each other and those deals happen that way.”
Mason appeared in 12 games with six starts in 2024 before suffering a high-ankle sprain that ended his season in the Week 13 loss to Buffalo. He rushed for 789 yards with three touchdowns — averaging 5.2 yards per carry — while also catching 11 passes for 91 yards.
Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell and G.M. Kwesi Adofo-Mensah were hired in the same cycle. With contracts of the same duration.
After the 2024 season ended, O’Connell received a new deal. Adofo-Mensah is still waiting for his.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Adofo-Mensah downplayed the fact that he has yet to get his new deal.
Via Kevin Seifert of ESPN.com, Adofo-Mensah said that “positive dialogue” has occurred between ownership and his agent. And he took some of the blame for the delay.
“It’s probably on me that it’s not going quicker because I wake up every morning focused on the things that I need to focus on to get this team to where they want to go,” Adofo-Mensah said.
He was asked whether he reads anything into O’Connell having his reward while Adofo-Mensah has yet to get the same. He said he doesn’t.
He shouldn’t. O’Connell’s contract became a priority in light of the reality that other teams were indeed (as Jay Glazer of Fox Sports reported on the final Sunday of the regular season) interested in trying to trade for O’Connell. The O’Connell wheel was squeaking, and it got greased. For Adofo-Mensah, there’s no external urgency forcing the issue.
It’s still not a great look for the team. Even if Adofo-Mensah knows the truth, the message is not ideal. If the Vikings plan to keep him, they should prioritize getting it done. The fact that O’Connell and Adofo-Mensah are operating on two different tracks feeds the perception (right or wrong) that there might be competing agendas. That folks aren’t on the same page. That, ultimately, it’s unclear who’s running the show.
So the sooner they get this deal done, the better for everyone. Especially since outsiders will be less inclined to wonder whether the guy without a long-term contract is inclined to maximize short-term performance and the guy with a five-year commitment is inclined to build for the future.
Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy recently said the team hasn’t told him he’s the starting quarterback. The team is nevertheless hoping that’s what he’ll be.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, G.M. Kwesi Adofo-Mensah said that McCarthy as the starter is “the outcome we want” and “the outcome we’re headed towards,”
“At every checkpoint, whether it’s been the draft process or practice until the injury and really the offseason now, he’s met the bar,” Adofo-Mensah said, via Kevin Seifert of ESPN.com. “He’s exceeded our expectations at every point. So I don’t have the ability to tell you what the future is, but I can tell you what I expect to be the outcome this offseason from the competition. But it’s also our job to set up a quarterback room that’s going to have to . . . provide insurance in case somebody needs to come in for a couple of games. And that’s our job as a personnel department to look at all the options out there and make sure we’re setting ourselves up for the best case we can.”
Adofo-Mensah’s comments came at the same time he acknowledged conversations between Aaron Rodgers and coach Kevin O’Connell — and at the same time the General Manager didn’t rule out further conversations with Rodgers.
For now, though, it’s McCarthy’s chance to show he’s the guy they expected him to be when they moved up from No. 11 to No. 10 to draft him a year ago. Things looked promising in his preseason debut against the Raiders, even if the optimism quickly gave way to news of a season-ending meniscus tear.
That doesn’t mean the Vikings won’t need a veteran. They will. But they seem to be focused for now on a veteran who’ll serve as a mentor and not as a competitor.
Did the Vikings speak to quarterback Aaron Rodgers? They did. Are they ruling out speaking to him again — and possibly signing him? They don’t.
On Wednesday, G.M. Kwesi Adofo-Mensah confirmed that Rodgers and coach Kevin O’Connell “had a lot of conversations,” which prompted an organizational dialogue about Rodgers.
“It’s a new thing to talk about a player at that caliber,” Adofo-Mensah said regarding Rodgers, via Kevin Seifert of ESPN.com. “And I’m always somebody who wants to learn and grow myself and so just being involved in those dialogue[s] was really special.”
Adofo-Mensah did not rule out eventually circling back to Rodgers.
“For me to sit here and say that anything’s 100 percent forever, that’s just not the job,” Adofo-Mensah said. “We’re responding to scenarios and different information as it comes. So obviously things can change, but right now we’re really happy with our [quarterback] room and we’re going to look to upgrade it in different ways.”
So what will they do about upgrading a group that currently consists of only J.J. McCarthy and Brett Rypien? Seifert writes that Adofo-Mensah implied the Vikings would wait until the April 29 deadline for the counting of free-agent signings toward the compensatory draft pick formula.
Options, in our view, continue to include Joe Flacco, Carson Wentz, and Ryan Tannehill — who has been a free agent for more than a year and whose signing right now would not impact the formula.
Rodgers would not count against the formula, either. He was cut by the Jets; he didn’t become an unrestricted free agent through the expiration of his contract.
J.J. McCarthy revealed on Tuesday that the Vikings have not told him that he’s going to be their starting quarterback in 2025.
But after being sidelined for his rookie year due to a knee injury, he’s on track to be able to earn the role during the offseason.
In his Tuesday interview on Up & Adams, McCarthy said his knee is “fantastic.”
“I mean, I would say I’m 100 percent,” McCarthy said. “But, just staying consistent with the rehab process, not wavering from that, staying disciplined with all the outside stuff, and making sure I’m not chopping too much wood and all that fun stuff.”
McCarthy suffered a meniscus tear in his right knee during Minnesota’s first preseason game, undergoing surgery to repair it, which kept him out for the rest of 2024.
Still, McCarthy found a silver lining in not being able to play.
“It was the ultimate blessing because it’s just a time of stillness where you really get to reflect, and introspect, and find a routine — especially early on in this career and this profession,” McCarthy said. “It’s huge for young guys to find that habitual routine that they can rely on and stay consistent with. So, I would say that was the biggest thing for me.”
The Vikings currently have McCarthy and Brett Rypien on their roster at QB, which would make McCarthy the clear first man up. But Minnesota is likely to add at least one more signal-caller before offseason programs get into full swing to help evenly distribute the reps.
One of the top remaining free agents has a new home.
Per multiple reports, receiver Stefon Diggs has agreed to terms with the Patriots. It’s a three-year, $69 million deal. Via Adam Schefter of ESPN.com, $26 million is guaranteed.
The structure of the contract will reveal much about the extent of the commitment. The key will be the full guarantee at signing.
With Diggs recovering from a torn ACL suffered during the 2024 season, the deal also could include significant per-game roster bonuses tied to Diggs’s ability to play.
In eight games last year with the Texans, Diggs caught 47 passes for 496 yards and three touchdowns.
The Patriots will become Diggs’s fourth team. He has previously played for the Vikings and Bills before being traded last year to Houston.
Former Dolphins coach Brian Flores sued the NFL and multiple teams (Dolphins, Giants, Broncos, and later the Texans) in February 2022. More than three years later, a federal appeals court has officially taken up the question of whether certain claims will be sent to arbitration controlled by the league or will unfold in traditional, open-court litigation.
An oral argument occurred today. The entire session lasted more than 80 minutes, with many questions from the three-judge panel to which the case was assigned.
We’re currently listening to the entire argument, which has been posted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
The losing party will have the right to seek relief before the U.S. Supreme Court. And if the NFL loses, it undoubtedly will. Which will serve only to continue to drag out the case even longer.
Regardless of whether the NFL prevails on its effort to force arbitration, the fact that the NFL can make the straight-faced effort to force all claims made against the league and its teams into arbitration controlled by Commissioner Roger Goodell necessarily slams the brakes on the entire process.
For years.
That’s why, at some point, a broad, comprehensive, and final challenge to this practice is needed. Either it’s fine and dandy for a company to let the CEO be the judge and jury for all disputes involving the company and its workforce, or it’s not.
That’s the question that needs to be resolved, once and for all and for good. By truly neutral and impartial judges, untainted by politics or money or anything other than a fundamental sense of what’s right, and what’s wrong.
Is it right for the CEO of a company to serve as the judge for claims made against the company? Or is there a better and more fair (and/or less unfair) way to do this?
