Minnesota QB J.J. McCarthy’s Debut Was Historic In Three Big Ways

If you watched or listened to the Minnesota Vikings' appearance on Monday Night Football to kick off the 2025 season, you probably spent the first 2/3 of the game doing one of two things.

You were either rationalizing the unspectacular (err, not good) start of Minnesota's offense, or you were bracing yourself for what you thought might be the first of a string of losses ahead, possibly even declaring J.J. McCarthy and this season a bust.

Minimal passing yards, a rough interception, and only a pair of field goals through three quarters of football all combined to create a bit of a sinking feeling for even more optimistic Vikings fans.

Then things changed.

J.J. McCarthy led three fourth-quarter scoring drives, throwing for a pair of touchdowns and running for a third to give the Vikings a late lead and ultimately a come-from-behind 27-24 victory.

While the entirety of the game wasn't pretty, the team's new quarterback gutted out a rough start to find a way to win a gritty game on the road in primetime - all in his first regular-season game in the NFL.

In doing that, he also hit some historic benchmarks rarely, if ever, seen before in the NFL, according to the stats experts with ESPN and Monday Night Football.

READ MORE: Two legendary Vikings quarterbacks to make appearance in Northern Minnesota

The first of those historic notes is one that hasn't been done since Steve Young did it. Yeah, that Steve Young. J.J. McCarthy became the first NFL quarterback in a league debut game to battle through a fourth-quarter deficit of 10 points or more to go on to win the game. Young did it in 1985, and 40 years later, McCarthy did it for the Vikings.

The second sees McCarthy complete something not done since Cam Newton. McCarthy's pair of passing touchdowns and rushing TD in his NFL debut marks the first time a quarterback in his first game in the league has done this since Newton did it in 2011.

The final might be the biggest one yet. ESPN's Scott Van Pelt on Monday night said J.J. McCarthy is the first-ever NFL quarterback responsible for three fourth-quarter touchdowns in his league debut. Apparently, nobody has ever done that before.

While those are all exciting historical footnotes, the deep-down "experienced" Vikings fan in me reminds myself (and you) that McCarthy still only threw for 143 yards in the game and had an ugly interception. And even after some exciting late-game heroics, this is still a one-game sample size.

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Despite that, he didn't give up, and he found some footing late in the game to play the role of leader on the way to a come-from-behind win. That, to me, felt like something Minnesota hasn't had under center in many years.

While there have been a handful of individual game performances, the last several quarterbacks the Vikings have had didn't seem to have that "get on my back, and let's go win this thing" mindset (or capability). At least consistently.

Again, this is a one-game sample size for a young quarterback with plenty more to learn, but I find myself cautiously optimistic. Onto Atlanta, coming to the Twin Cities for Sunday Night Football for Week 2.