He escaped to the golf course. The NFL Draft would not begin for hours.
Friends and family members were gathering at a house in Ann Arbor, and Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy wanted to both disconnect and help pass the time. It did not matter that the winds were whipping. McCarthy contacted Kirk Campbell, the Wolverines’ offensive coordinator, and they met on the first tee of the opening par 5.
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Snaking their way around the course, McCarthy and Campbell reminisced about some of their best times together. A hug in the tunnel after beating Ohio State. A conversation on the headset before the two-minute drive to beat Alabama in the Rose Bowl. Talking about what they hoped would happen in Thursday night’s first round was unnecessary. McCarthy knew, and he knew that Campbell knew, too.
The Minnesota Vikings made too much sense for all sorts of reasons. Their schematic consistencies, their quarterback development infrastructure, their skill players, the organizational culture, the Midwestern locale, the state of hockey, the list goes on.
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“It was almost a dream scenario for him,” Campbell said.
Campbell, too, felt the fit was almost too good to be true. In 2022, when he arrived at Michigan as an offensive analyst, one of his roles required him to study the Vikings offense. Michigan staffers saw similarities between their approach and Kevin O’Connell’s, so Campbell pored through cut-ups, jotting down notes about O’Connell’s play-action passing concepts and third-down plan.
Then, Campbell sat with O’Connell, Vikings quarterbacks coach Josh McCown, assistant quarterbacks coach Grant Udinski and others during a throwing session at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. They peppered Campbell not just about McCarthy’s character but also about decisions he made in specific scenarios in certain games.
“Grant would ask: ‘What were you guys doing there? Where were the quarterback’s eyes? Why did he do this? What was his footwork?'” Campbell said. “It was just extremely thorough. In my opinion, and I say this not just because the Vikings drafted him, but they were the most thorough of any team.”
Udinski and McCown attended McCarthy’s pro day in Ann Arbor and followed up with more questions. O’Connell arrived for a private workout, and during breaks between O’Connell dissecting film clips with McCarthy, McCown stopped by Campbell’s office once more.
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None of these details needed rehashing as they moved from par 4 to par 3. McCarthy blasted tee shots. Campbell’s control suffered.
“It was my first time touching the clubs this year,” he said.
Disappointing in the moment, but forgettable hours later when McCarthy’s dream came true.
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Several months ago, a Chicago Bears scout called Biff Poggi, previously the associate head coach and right-hand man for Jim Harbaugh at Michigan and now the head coach at Charlotte.
“Who would you take at No. 1?” the scout asked.
The scout, Poggi said, had spent ample time watching Michigan over the last two seasons.
“If I owned the Bears,” Poggi responded, “that pick would be in already. You are out of your mind if you don’t take J.J. McCarthy.”
Poggi rehashed this story Friday morning and reiterated his stance.
It almost sounded too flowery, too positive, too over the top. So, I pressed.
Really? You are this confident about it? Are you sure you’d go this far? Poggi doubled down.
“I’ve known him since he was a high school kid,” Poggi said, “and I was with him at Michigan for two years. He’s just a very unique guy. A guy who wills football teams to win. And you can’t do that unless everybody in the organization trusts you. And they can’t trust you unless you are completely selfless. And that is what he is.”
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The stories are endless.
McCarthy’s high school coach, Tim Racki, allowed McCarthy, then just a seventh-grader, to work out with the varsity football team each Friday at 6 a.m. Racki thought McCarthy would come a couple of times. He did not miss a Friday morning workout for the rest of his time at Nazareth Academy in La Grange Park, Ill., about 20 miles from downtown Chicago.
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McCarthy’s private quarterbacks coach, Greg Holcomb, first evaluated McCarthy’s throwing motion when McCarthy was 13 years old. The ball flowed so cleanly from his arm that Holcomb essentially wondered: How can we improve this?
Iowa State first offered McCarthy when he was a sophomore — before McCarthy had started a high school game. Racki worried teammates would be jealous of McCarthy because of it, but his teammates embraced him. Holcomb noted the ease with which McCarthy convinced receivers to come with him for private workouts; others seemed unable to consistently find folks. Racki, a Michigan fan since he was a child, begged McCarthy, who was once an Ohio State fan, to visit Ann Arbor. He obliged and fell in love with Harbaugh and the idea of returning the program to prominence.
Coaches rave about McCarthy’s relationships in the locker room and his tendency to deflect praise.
“All he wants is a chance to compete so the team can win,” Poggi said. “That is rare today. The ego makes you want to resign every day. It makes you want to go fishing every day. It’s just all about money and fame and celebrity and what’s in it for me.
“This kid is the exact opposite. He’s the exact opposite. He’s a rare, rare, rare guy, man.”
As for the critiques, of course, they exist. Many evaluators question his ability to apply touch on his passes. Some wonder why, if McCarthy was such a talented passer, Harbaugh and the Michigan offense would throw the ball so infrequently. Only Jayden Daniels threw fewer passes in 2023 than McCarthy among the six quarterbacks chosen in the first round, and McCarthy had by far the fewest attempts of the six over his collegiate career (713).
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Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah mentioned this Thursday night. He referenced a pre-draft Zoom call with McCarthy, who asked him directly: “Is there a reason you wouldn’t draft me?”
“Honestly, from a talent standpoint, no,” Adofo-Mensah said. “You are just a little bit of an unknown because you played in an offense that is pretty run-heavy and different things like that, so there’s some guesswork.”
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The Vikings, specifically, navigated the guesswork by thinking about the moments in games that matter the most: third downs and the two-minute drill. Interestingly, McCarthy threw more passes on third-and-6 or longer than Daniels, Caleb Williams and Bo Nix. His completion percentage on those throws (73.5 percent) was higher than that of the other top six QBs except for Nix. Additionally, when you whittle the data down to the first half alone, McCarthy only threw the ball two fewer times than Drake Maye, and his air yards per target (9.7) hovered a smidge beneath Maye (10.2) and above Wiliams and Daniels.
Throughout the evaluation process, Campbell invited Udinski to watch McCarthy’s practice tape to assess his throwing in more detail. Poggi, meanwhile, cannot stand the “he doesn’t throw it enough” criticism.
“I think people who say that are idiots,” he added. “They’re lucky he didn’t have to throw it every down. Because if he’d thrown it every down, we would’ve beaten people by 50.”
The moment Campbell will forever cherish took place in Pasadena, Calif., in the most tense moment of his career.
He fidgeted in the coach’s box. Michigan trailed Alabama 20-13. The Rose Bowl hung in the balance, and down on the sideline, his quarterback put on the headset to hear one final message.
“Hey, man,” Campbell told McCarthy, “you were born to do this. Let’s go freaking do it.”
“Coach,” McCarthy replied, pausing for effect, “I got ya.”
The quarterback returned to the field. He converted a quick pass to convert a fourth-and-2. He weaved his way for a first down on a quarterback run. He completed a play-action pass, and he beautifully sold a read-option, dumping off a pass for the game-tying touchdown. Michigan did what McCarthy intended to do: win.
Roman Wilson gets the TD for Michigan to make this a tied game! pic.twitter.com/RuQCZAcBVh
— TSN (@TSN_Sports) January 2, 2024
All of these memories returned to the forefront on the golf course. But then the round ended, and the NFL Draft began. McCarthy and Campbell met up at the watch party. Poggi, meanwhile, watched the uncertainty play out from his home in Charlotte.
He was not surprised to see Chicago take Williams, but the more the picks passed, and the longer McCarthy remained on the board, the more dumbfounded he became. After the Atlanta Falcons’ pick of Michael Penix Jr. at No. 8, he turned to his wife and said: “There have been four quarterbacks taken before J.J. What are these people doing? What are they doing?”
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He told this story Friday, and, again, I pressed: You really felt this was nuts?
“He’s big. He’s fast. He’s athletic. He’s strong. He can spin it. He’s smart. He can run. He wins,” Poggi said. “And he does it with complete class. This is a program’s dream. I mean, this kid. … Minnesota just got a franchise player.”
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(Top photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
