The Minnesota Vikings have made it pretty clear over the past few weeks that they are looking to come out of the 2024 NFL Draft with their quarterback of the future on the roster. In this year’s SB Nation NFL Mock Draft, yours truly did what it took to make sure that such a scenario happened.
Following a trade with the Arizona Cardinals, the Minnesota Vikings have selected Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy with the fourth overall pick in the 2024 SB Nation NFL Mock Draft.
I’ll be documenting the scenario that led to the trade up with the Cardinals in a separate post, but the terms of the deal were the Vikings sending picks 11 and 23 in this year’s draft and their 2025 first-rounder to Arizona in exchange for No. 4 overall. That probably sounds expensive on the surface, but it’s only too high a price to pay if the trade doesn’t work. If McCarthy becomes the Vikings’ first true long-term quarterback since Daunte Culpepper was in town, nobody’s going to care about what the price was.
McCarthy takes a lot of heat from the Really Smart Football People™ because he didn’t put up incredibly eye-popping numbers in Ann Arbor. Honestly, that has as much to do with the system he was in as it does anything else. Jim Harbaugh would run the ball 80 times a game if he could, and with the Michigan offensive line and running game he had the luxury to be able to do that. However, when McCarthy was asked to make plays, that’s exactly what he did. I know that wins aren’t a quarterback stat, but in his last two years with the Wolverines they did only lose one game and won the National Championship this past season, and he contributed significantly more positives to those teams than negatives.
At just 21 years old, younger than prospects like Jayden Daniels, Bo Nix, and Michael Penix, McCarthy still has plenty of room to grow. He’s already quite mechanically sound and has displayed significantly above average arm talent as well. He’s also a plus athlete and can be a threat to make plays on the move, whether it’s on designed runs or getting outside of the pocket in the passing game.
One of the criticisms of McCarthy is that he was surrounded by an incredible amount of talent at Michigan and that could potentially make him look better than he actually is. Sure, Michigan is an NFL talent factory at this point, but that shouldn’t take away from what McCarthy has done. And, if we want to go down that road, given the level of talent he’d be surrounded by in Minnesota. . .the league’s best wide receiver, a dynamic No. 2 wideout, one of the best tight ends in the NFL, a new leader in the run game, and a pair of outstanding bookend tackles. . .his talent could be maximized in relatively short order.
Taking McCarthy at this point in the draft does require a healthy dose of projection, and I’ll go ahead and admit that here. But that’s what this is all about for the Vikings. With the departure of Kirk Cousins, this team absolutely needs to come out of this draft with a quarterback of the future on the roster, and with the way the draft board fell in our scenario McCarthy represents their opportunity to do that.
Marvin Harrison Jr. currently has the best odds (-110) on DraftKings Sportsbook to be taken with the fourth overall pick, but McCarthy is right behind him with +175 odds.
That’s our pick in the 2024 SB Nation NFL Mock Draft, folks. Again, I’ll be detailing how I came about making the trade with Arizona in a separate post, but this lets you know who the pick was and the particulars of the trade that allowed us to get there.
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