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Kevin Seifert, ESPN Staff Writer
EAGAN, Minn. — When he reported this week for his first NFL training camp, Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy leaned into the team’s mantra for the 2024 season: “The process is the progress.”
McCarthy, the No. 10 overall pick of the 2024 draft, has largely worked behind presumptive starter Sam Darnold during the first three practices of the summer. As the football world wonders when he will leap Darnold on the depth chart, McCarthy insists he has cast his gaze elsewhere.
“I feel like I’m not focused on the outcomes of each day,” he said Friday. “I’m just focused on learning to get better, and improve the weakness that I have with my game and learn my teammates’ strengths and try to amplify them every chance I get. We’re off to a great start so far.
“My ultimate goal is to get the most out of every single day. When the time comes [to start], it comes. I’m just training every single day so that when that time does come, I’m going to be ready.”
McCarthy remained in Minnesota during the players’ time off between the end of spring practices in June and the start of training camp, saying he did not want to “take my head away” from the mindset he developed during OTAs and minicamp. Among other things, he worked twice a week with former Vikings receiver Adam Thielen, who now plays for the Carolina Panthers, and the pair ran plays from the Vikings’ offense.
In part because of that work, McCarthy said he now feels like he has been with the Vikings “for a year” rather than three months. One tangible bit of progress, he said, is that he can now call plays in the huddle without stumbling through the verbiage.
“In OTAs it was very hard for me to get out a play call,” he said. “Everyone thinks they can play quarterback, but try getting out of the huddle. That was my biggest goal going into this training camp, being able to hear it one time and execute it and regurgitate it to the guys with confidence, and I’ve been doing that so far. We’ll see when we get down to third down and red zone, when they get really long, but they’re going pretty well so far.”
The Vikings have made it clear they will treat McCarthy’s development with patience above all else, and conventional wisdom around the team suggests that Darnold will open the season as the starter. McCarthy isn’t conceding that likelihood, but when asked how he would judge a successful summer, he said: “Helping this team get better, any way I can.
“Whether it’s going against the ones and giving them all I got,” he added, “and hitting some deep balls down the field on them to piss them off a little bit, and get that urgency up for the rest of practice. But at the end of the day, it’s all about the team. Making the team better, making them the most prepared they are until they get into September.”