Kevin O’Connell: J.J. McCarthy has ‘the traits and intangibles’ Vikings were looking for

J.J. McCarthy was always the guy for the Minnesota Vikings and head coach Kevin O’Connell. The head coach quickly identified that his squad would look for their next franchise quarterback.

After going through the process, McCarthy stood out among the rest. Eventually, the Vikings traded from No. 11 to 10 to select the former Michigan quarterback.

He was the fifth signal caller picked in the top 10 Thursday night.

“Yeah, I think for us, we went into this process, we really knew we wanted to have the ability to identify a quarterback in the future in this draft,” O’Connell said on The Pat McAfee Show. “We acquired pick 23 to give us kind of that flexibility to be able to really play out a lot of scenarios knowing that we weren’t the only ones that viewed this draft class as a very deep group, especially at the top like it ended up playing out. 

“But we went through a great process between the Combine interview and getting to see JJ throw the football there at the Combine. But then spent about a whole day in Ann Arbor on his home turf there in the classroom setting, out on the field and really got to know the player, got to know the person.” 

O’Connell said he and the Vikings brass gave McCarthy some of the Minnesota offense. They were excited how he adapted to the scheme considering the pro-style he ran in college.

“Really give him an idea via some installation of some of our offense that then we were able to go out on the field and work through and really see kind of a translation from some success at the highest level, winning a national championship,” O’Connell said. 

“(We got to see) a lot of the great things he was able to do, demonstrate his physical skills on his tape. But we were able to really get a great feel for where JJ is at, you know, high level intelligence and just kind of some of the traits and intangibles that I was really looking for as we attacked this process. Really happy (and) excited to say the least to have JJ on our team.”

It seems like a perfect fit, based on McCarthy saying Minnesota was a popular destination for draft eligible quarterbacks.“It’s funny, if I could choose, if this was the college recruiting process, that would be the guys that I would be going to,” McCarthy said of the Vikings. “But every QB in the class that I interacted with wanted to go to Minnesota. So it’s just an amazing honor to be able to be selected to this great organization and this great culture that I’m excited to be a part of.”