With Kyler Murray back as the Minnesota Vikings starter, Carson Wentz goes back to being the backup while J.J. McCarthy returns to being QB3 on the team’s depth chart ahead of Week 3.
Nonetheless, with starting QBs going down in Week 2, McCarthy’s name has been in trade speculation. Moreover, one team at the center of this conversation is the New York Giants, who lost Jaxson Dart for the season, and that is where the Vikings’ QB3 comes in.
In his Sept. 26 notebook, The Ringer’s Tom Pelissero shared whether McCarthy would be a potential trade option for the Giants if Jameis Winston performs as he did against the Los Angeles Rams.
“McCarthy is an intriguing option,” Pelissero wrote. “The Giants extensively scouted him and the rest of the 2024 quarterback class before deciding to wait and take Dart in 2025. While injuries derailed McCarthy’s time as QB1 in Minnesota, he was 6-4 as the starter last season. He has the athletic ability to run some of the QB movement concepts from Nagy’s playbook that figure to be largely dormant while Winston is in the lineup.
“McCarthy is still in the third year of his rookie deal, making him a relatively low-cost option, with total 2027 compensation of about $3.775 million guaranteed. He played for Jim Harbaugh at Michigan. And at age 23, he’s less than four months older than Dart.”
Vikings’ J.J. McCarthy Would Be Competition for Jaxson Dart
Furthermore, Pelissero notes that a potential trade for McCarthy would give Dart competition next season. This would let the Giants determine whether their young QB is their franchise signal-caller as he heads into Year 3 in 2027 or whether it’s time to turn the page, given his injury history.
“Trading for another young QB now also could be a way to get a jump start on finding potential competition for Dart in 2027,” Pelissero added in his notebook. “The Giants believe in Dart, and he was excellent in the season-opening win against Dallas. But his play style creates injury risk, and he will have missed 17 of 34 possible career games by season’s end.”
It will be interesting to see whether the Giants or another team view McCarthy as an intriguing trade option leading up to the deadline.
J.J. McCarthy Wouldn’t Have Success in New York
If the Vikings trade McCarthy to the Giants, one person believes the QB won’t succeed in New York. If the former Top 10 were to head to New York in a trade, Judd Zulgad of “Purple Daily” believes that McCarthy would be set up to fail.
“The Giants will not give up,” Zulgad said on the Sept. 24 edition of “Purple Daily.” “The Giants are convinced that they can still win. It sounds crazy, but they are. I also think, having seen enough of McCarthy, that if you thrust him in there, you are shoving him off a cliff. He’s not going to succeed. He’s young [and] that that’s a recipe for disaster.”
Last season, in what was technically his rookie season after missing all of the 2024 campaign, McCarthy had a passer rating of 72.6 with 1,632 yards, 11 touchdowns, and 12 interceptions in 10 games, per StatMuse.
Vikings’ J.J. McCarthy Gets Insider Update Amid Giants Trade Speculation