When Goofus Met Gallant
J.J. McCarthy looked like a Very Vikings Quarterback in his NFL debut. Caleb Williams looked better than last year ... but still not good enough.
Caleb Williams has become an almost bottomless source of compelling dramatic longform written content. He’s the enfant terrible, The Bad Seed, the boy king from a Masterpiece Theater epic who, depending on how you interpret the sources, was either locked in the tower or ordered his attendants to chop off their own heads.
J.J. McCarthy, on the other hand, is the straight-from-central-casting Great White Hope, the underdog (ignore his college championship) with that dawg in him, the guy who Finds a Way to Win™, a self-insert character for Midwestern boomer dads of all ages, geographic regions and genders.
McCarthy and Williams are Rocky and Apollo Creed for the era of TikTok videos about quitting when the boss asks you to work late and LinkedIn posts about the “grindset.” They’re the tortoise and the hare, the industrious ant and the carefree grasshopper, though real-life hares often heed their wakeup calls, while real-life ants sometimes get squashed.
Two designated saviors playing for a pair of divisional foes with historic bad luck/taste in young quarterbacks, neither of which has reached the Super Bowl in a long time. Williams and McCarthy were fated to be archrivals, even before Seth Wickersham’s book American Kings revealed that Williams wanted to play for the Vikings and tried holding his breath until he turned blue to make it happen.
McCarthy got injured last August and spent the 2024 season in a training montage. Williams and the Bears enacted a summer stock theater version of one of the later seasons of Game of Thrones. Kevin O’Connell slow-cooked the slowly-rehabbing McCarthy, aided by a typical Vikings out-of-left-field backup quarterback performance from Sam Darnold. Everyone within 50 feet of Williams got the Twilight Zone jack-in-the-box treatment before Ben Johnson flew onto the scene like Supernanny.
Monday Night finally allowed the Bears and Vikings to start answering questions they could not really address in 2024: do we really have young franchise quarterbacks? And if so, who has the better one?
Answers may not arrive for a few weeks/months/years. But the 27-24 comeback victory by McCarthy’s Vikings’ over Williams’ Bears was still revealing.
In the first quarter, Williams’ bad experience proved much more valuable than McCarthy’s inexperience. McCarthy took a pair of sacks to end series where the Vikings offense was operating in safe mode. Williams, on the other hand, scrambled to buy time, threw both daring downfield passes and (tellingly) dump-offs under duress, switched to a no-huddle attack a few times and thumped a defender at the left pylon on a 9-yard touchdown run. McCarthy’s first field goal drive, on the third Vikings possession, was fueled by a 42-yard pass interference penalty.
After starting the game 10-for-10, however, Williams suddenly cooled in the second quarter. A rushed incompletion on fourth-and-3. A batted pass. A three-and-out. McCarthy, still playing through the tutorial, took a delay-of-game penalty after a holding penalty to back the Vikings up to their own end zone.
Williams built a field goal drive out of runs and a pair of soft tosses to Olamide Zaccheaus, which is apparently the Greek form of Amon-Ra St. Brown. McCarthy’s first impressive downfield throw of the game, a 28-yarder to Jalen Nailor for 28 yards, set up a 59-yard field goal. The Bears led 10-6 at half.
Williams started the third quarter with three straight inaccurate passes on routine short tosses. But McCarthy answered with what can only be described as a rookie mistake: a pick-6, with Nahshon Wright undercutting a telegraphed sideline pass to Justin Jefferson. Williams now had a 17-6 lead to protect. And McCarthy took another sack and another delay-of-game penalty on the next Vikings series.
As the third quarter progressed, Williams once again looked better than McCarthy. The Bears also looked better than the Vikings. They looked 2023-24 Lions-like, in fact: tough in the trenches, balanced on offense, disciplined. But a long drive ended with the first appearance of the night of Goofus Williams: an intentional grounding penalty where he tried to flick the ball toward the sideline while going down at the end of a runaround scramble. Cairo Santos missed a 50-yard field goal.
Never let the Vikings lull you into a game decided by field goals.
McCarthy then discovered Darnold’s secret to leading the Vikings to victory: keep throwing it to Jefferson, who got open for 18 yards along the left sideline, then caught a touchdown pass in a crowd of Bears.
Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores also adjusted: Javon Hargrave sacked Williams a split second after the snap on the next series, then Andrew Van Ginkel almost performed his “intercept the screen pass” trick, the ball ricocheting off his left hand.
McCarthy got great field position again. Then a roughing-the-passer penalty, his second of the night, on a backpedaling throwaway. A floater up the right sideline to Aaron Jones and a two-point conversion on a quick out to Adam Thielen, and somehow the Vikings lead 20-17.
Williams looked shook. So did the Bears. The quarterback scrambled out of bounds and threw ribcrackers beyond his receivers’ reach. Tory Taylor’s punt was partially blocked. McCarthy got good field position yet again, then a 20-yard Jordan Mason handoff. He completed a short pass to T.J. Hockenson, a rollout waggle to Jones, a screen to Jefferson. Then came his turn to run for a touchdown, bootlegging to the right and keeping it himself to give the Vikings a 10-point lead.
Williams really sprayed the ball around while trying to jumpstart a comeback. But he got help: a reaching one-handed Cole Kmet catch up the seam, an illegal contact penalty to convert third-and-10, roughing-the-passer on a doomed play. He scrambled to the one-yard line and connected with Rome Odunze in the back of the end zone, but the Bears had just one timeout, and the two-minute warning came just after the kickoff.
So, what to make of the debuts of McCarthy and New, Improved Williams?
Vikings football is Vikings football. A dozen opponent’s penalties, some field goal luck and a one-score victory? Been there, done that.
O’Connell loves balance and rollouts. Everyone loves Jefferson. Once McCarthy shook off the sacks, delay-of-game penalties and that awful interception, he did not look that different from Darnold, or even 2022 Kirk Cousins.
McCarthy is sure to get into more trouble if forced to press in the fourth quarter. O’Connell, Jefferson, Flores and the Norse God of Field Goals will do all in their power to make sure that does not happen often.
As for Williams, Ben Johnson did not insta-fix him: his decision making has improved, but now his accuracy is wonky, as if he’s trying to process too many things at once. The most worrisome issue for Bears fans was the fact that Williams appeared to come unglued (that final touchdown drive was mostly a penalty fest) just as McCarthy started to grow comfortable.
Williams’ rookie season has now been the subject of two feature-length investigative reports. Wickersham’s book makes Williams sound like a Gen-Z nightmare ripped straight from a corporate management seminar, which is remarkable because Wickersham’s version of events also sounds like it was dictated directly to him by Williams’ Pop Warner Machiavelli of a father.
Ty Dunne’s three-part House of Dysfunction, meanwhile, fills in all the negative space around Wickersham’s sketchy outline of the 2024 Bears. Williams comes across as entitled and arrogant, expecting the Bears to spoonfeed him a hyper-simplified offense while he barely cracked his playbook and became an unfamiliar face in the weightroom. Bears GM Ryan Poles, meanwhile, is cast as a besotted enabler, tasking coaches with appeasing the quarterback they weren’t certain they wanted and who wasn’t too thrilled about being there.
Call Dunne’s feature a hatchet job by angry ex-coaches if you like, but his version of Caleb is instantly recognizable in Wickersham’s depiction of an over-parented lad who didn’t think the NFL draft or collective bargaining agreement applied to him.
The most noteworthy longform epic to date on McCarthy was written by Matthew Coller at Purple Outsider. While Dunne’s Bears piece read like a celebrity tell-all, Coller’s The timeline: How we arrived at JJ McCarthy's first start is more like a procedural. It chronicles of McCarthy’s knee injury, O’Connell’s efforts to keep McCarthy mentally involved and developing while injured, the brief offseason Aaron Rodgers flirtation and all the other minor intrigues along the path to Monday night.
Coller’s feature is a treasure trove of precise details. It’s also – sorry Matthew – just a bit much. You need to have a giant Skol tattoo across your chest to care that much about a virtual rookie quarterback, and my mother owns Lives of the Catholic Saints books which are less hagiographic. But McCarthy has been the only Vikings story that mattered since Darnold wilted down the stretch in 2024, even though he hasn’t been much of a story at all.
McCarthy found a way to win™ on Monday night, so … ugh. But Vikings fans can surely get behind a young quarterback capable of learning game management on the job and eventually growing out of his Darnold phase and into something better.
As for Williams: he gets to meet Johnson’s old flame in Detroit next week. There are no easy outs in the NFC North. In fact, a 17-6 lead over a rival who was struggling to get the snap off may have been as easy at it gets.
A 6,000-Word, 294-GIF Breakdown of Cam Ward’s Rookie Debut
Unless a quarterback walks on water or pees down his leg in his NFL debut, there’s really not much to talk about.
Cam Ward’s debut in the 20-12 Titans loss to the Broncos was unremarkably bad in an ordinary way. I feel sorry for anyone compelled to write a detailed tape piece about it. I’m sure those people love their work. But anyone who found deep insights within Ward’s 12-of-28, 112-yard effort could probably also find a pattern in television static.
An inexperienced quarterback with a feeble supporting cast faced a strong defense. The lad hit a few throws but stared down his first reads and held the ball too long. The offense scored 12 points. There’s a lot of football left to be played. The end.
Oh, you want more?
One of Ward’s best throws was bobbled out-of-bounds by rookie tight end Gunnar Helm on the opening series. Another impressive throw, later in the game, was ruled incomplete when rookie Elic Ayomanor fell out-of-bounds after a leaping catch. Ayomanor might have landed inbounds with his elbow, but Brian Callahan chose not to challenge because he was unclear about what constitutes a catch (#Relatable).
Three rookies, counting Ward, were mentioned in that last paragraph. That should give you a sense of the overall quality and readiness of the Titans offense. Ward responded to the lack of experience and firepower surrounding him by trying to follow in the footsteps of Will Levis by force-feeding targets to Calvin Ridley. Ridley followed in his own footsteps by being about as reliable as an old car battery in Alaska. At least three catchable passes skittered off Ridley’s hands in the course of the game.
Callahan’s handling of Ward was peculiar. The Titans got the ball at their own 8-yard line with 47 seconds left, and Callahan trusted Ward to let ‘er rip. Ward faded back into his end zone on first down and had to throw the ball away before Nik Bonitto could vivisect him. A second-down RPO pass into the right flat failed when all three receivers to that side of the field squared to block, leaving Ward no one to throw to. Did I mention how many rookies have significant roles on the Titans offense? Ward dropped back again on third down, and he managed to step up and out of the end zone just before Jonathon Cooper sacked him.
Callahan’s aggressiveness before halftime ended up hurting the Titans. The Broncos got the ball at the Titans’ 38-yard line and scored a quick touchdown. But fine: Coach was showing confidence in his rookie.
But then Xavier Woods ran an interception back to the Broncos’ 28-yard line to start the third quarter. Tony Pollard gained seven yards on first down. This is the time to let Ward take a shot, right? Nope. Two more inside runs by Pollard and Julius Chestnut (a real person, apparently) failed to pick up a first down, so the Titans settled for a field goal.
If I were nurturing a rookie quarterback in his first start, I would hand off near the goal line before halftime (the Titans would have ended up punting with about 5 seconds left) and then schemed up some play-action layups on second/third-and-short near the red zone. But I am not the son of a genius who didn’t bother to change his signals when facing his former boss in the Super Bowl like Callahan is.
The Titans got another gift-wrapped scoring opportunity after a muffed punt early in the fourth quarter. This time, Callahan trusted Ward. Unfortunately, the Broncos knew the Titans only had one receiving threat, were down to backup Oli Udoh at right tackle and were relying on rookies to handle important tasks like blitz pickup. Jonah Elliss beat Udoh to sack Ward, who made the classic rookie mistake of trying to Michael Vick his way out of the back of the pocket. The Broncos sent six rushers on the next snap, forcing Helm to block, which led to another Ward spin-to-nowhere scramble and a sack out of field goal range.
So Ward makes rookie mistakes, as do his teammates. He likes to throw short passes and screens side-armed, just as he did in college. If you don’t like that, you are gonna HATE Arch Manning. Callahan’s offense doesn’t seem all that friendly: there weren’t many rollouts or zone reads, plus all the weird situational strategies we just discussed. Easier tests than the Broncos defense are coming, eventually, but the Titans face the Rams and Texans defenses in the next month, and the Colts’ issues are mostly on offense.
Two final notes here. One is that the Broncos taunted the crowd with Ward’s “Zombieland” celebration whenever they made a big play. Opponents already seem to dislike Ward, who has a combative personality. A good sign? Well, it’s better than having your own coaches dislike you.
Second, Ward’s father made an appearance in the crowd during Sunday’s game telecast. When Ridley dropped the umpteenth pass from Ward late in the fourth quarter, Calvin Ward stood and assumed the posture I normally take when I realize the second brisket sandwich with a mac ‘n’ cheese side was a huge mistake: the this isn’t a heart attack but it’s damn close position.
Calvin Ward works in the nuclear industry. He’s not some quasi-agent and self-promoter like Carl Williams. We’ll see more of the elder Ward staving off the big one in the weeks to come. And that’s fine. Quarterback fathers are best seen but never heard.
