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The Minnesota Vikings are planning to "explore every opportunity" at quarterback while keeping former first-round pick J.J. McCarthy in the mix, executive vice president of football operations Rob Brzezinski, who is serving as de facto general manager, confirmed during the NFL Scouting Combine on Tuesday (February 24).
"What we do know is we need a level of baseline quarterback play for us to be effective," Brzezinski said. "A lot of this is, has been J.J. in an unfortunate [situation] with some of the injuries and things that he's dealt with. But we're going to explore every opportunity. We can't manufacture what's not there. So, No. 1, where are the options? Is it reciprocal? Is it financially doable? All of those things. There's just a lot of factors that go into it."
McCarthy was selected by former general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, who was fired in January, at No. 10 overall in the 2024 NFL Draft and missed his entire rookie season after suffering a knee injury during his first preseason game. The former University of Michigan standout started for the majority of the 2025 season, but dealt with a slew of injuries that limited him to 10 games and struggled when healthy, throwing for 1,632 yards, 11 touchdowns and 12 interceptions on 140 of 243 passing (57.6 completion percentage).
Vikings head coach Kevin O'Connell, who name McCarthy as the team's starting quarterback last August after losing Sam Darnold and Daniel Jones to free agency earlier in the offseason, indicated that he still had faith in the 23-year-old, but stressed that his developmental process needed to be quicker.
"It's just the timeline is in a different place for all of us than it was at that point," O'Connell said, ESPN's Kevin Seifert. "And I have a responsibility -- we have a responsibility collectively as we put together this team -- to make sure that we use the data that we have at this time and the experiences we have, the feelings that we've had at different times as an organization."