The Minnesota Vikings made the direction of the franchise clear this past April when they selected quarterback J.J. McCarthy with the 10th overall pick. The idea is McCarthy will take over as the starting quarterback when he’s ready with head coach Kevin O’Connell having benchmarks for him to hit.
When you draft a quarterback highly in the draft, you want your players to believe in him. That is exactly what the Vikings have and tight end T.J. Hockeoson is the latest to speak highly of McCarthy.
Hockenson was on the latest episode of the Bussin’ With the Boys podcast and raved about the rookie signal caller.
“He’s been incredible. He’s grinding in the film room, he’s grinding in the classroom. He’s a baller on the field, obviously. But to have a guy, especially a rookie, come into a facility and to the league, you usually need to shut your mouth and go to work and that’s exactly what he did. He’s earned the respect of a lot of guys in there.”
One of the most important aspects of a locker room for a quarterback is having the buy-in from your teammates. The Vikings have that with McCarthy as everyone that has talked about him in the locker room have had nothing but positive things to say.
Will McCarthy start sooner rather than later? It appears that he will have full confidence of his teammates when that happens.
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