You wouldn’t believe After the first preseason game, J.J. McCarthy was off the field for the majority of his rookie season.
He crashed a motorized cart into Head Coach Kevin O’Connell’s office doorframe eight months ago. The 2024 10th overall draft pick is now on track to lead Minnesota in 2025, over ten months after suffering a torn meniscus in his right knee that prevented him from competing to play as a rookie.
After the club’s second Organized Team Activity (OTA) practice on Wednesday afternoon, McCarthy humbly told Twin Cities media, “I honestly feel, physically, bigger, faster [and] stronger.”
After a 90-minute session, the first OTA this spring that was accessible to reporters, he had nothing to convince. In reality, McCarthy appeared better prepared for the professional game, as if he had picked up every move from his one preseason game, which logically raised fans’ expectations.
McCarthy remarked, “It feels amazing,” being able to rejoin his colleagues. “When you get it taken away from you, you take every chance you get to be back out here and really appreciate it, really [make] the most out of it.”
Slinging the rock and competing “with the boys,” he beamingly remarked, is the best feeling in the world.
“You kind of forget the fact that this is really his first runway since the injury happened, and I think it’s just a credit to the work he put in,” O’Connell said. “You guys have heard me say it throughout the offseason, but there’s been a lot of lonely hours where it’s him and the training staff and the strength staff, and just the work he’s put in to get his body where he’s at, his arm feeling the way it is, and then of course, coming off the injury, his lower body feeling as good as it does to move the way he’s doing.”
McCarthy showed a strong risk tolerance that will undoubtedly boost his confidence on anticipatory passes on Wednesday. He also needled throws into narrow windows, dropped them into receivers’ breadbaskets down the field, and changed his RPMs to sneak them through coverages at short and intermediate levels.
What gives him the ability to accomplish that? To learn from mistakes and get better at failing?
In the end, it comes down to his behavior since his junior year at Michigan and the unwavering faith in his own skills that his late mentor Greg Harden instilled in him.
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