If there’s anything head coach Kevin O’Connell has learned about being around young quarterback J.J. McCarthy after a game, it’s how to handle himself when the 22-year-old is still very clearly fired up and in the zone.
The intensity was on display in the visitor’s locker after the Vikings earned the 27-24 win over the Detroit Lions.
A video clip posted on social media provided a peek behind the curtain. O’Connell is shown giving a speech, while McCarthy looks like a rabid animal ready to pounce.
His head nodding up and down. His eyes peering straight ahead. His nostrils flaring with each breath.
“It never catches me off guard,” O’Connell said with a laugh. “I know to give him the football, deliver the message that I’d like to deliver, and then get the hell out of the way for my own personal safety.”
As his teammates erupted around him, McCarthy gathered everybody in a circle and delivered a message.
“We can’t let this (expletive) be an emotional letdown,” McCarthy said. “We’ve got to come back stronger and keep (expletive) getting better at every little detail, in every little phases.”
That anecdote perfectly encapsulated how McCarthy is able to go to different place in his mind for a few hours.
The war paint he wears on his face became synonymous with him amid his rise up the ranks. The mean mug he unleashes before, during, and after a game is becoming synonymous with him at the highest level.
It’s all part of McCarthy’s alter ego — he refers to that version of himself simply as “9” — that he’s able to channel when he puts on the pads and laces up the cleats. Though he’s always carried himself with a level of intensity, McCarthy’s alter ego was developed last year as a rookie while he was on injured reserve recovering from a torn meniscus.
“It started to show up this year,” McCarthy said. “You want to be out there so frickin bad. It was this built up anger that was kind of ready to explode. I chose to harness it instead of letting it go into a self destructive kind of way.”
It’s a little bit of a change compared to how McCarthy has gone about it in the past. He typically focused on being happy on the field when he was at Nazareth Academy in high school and the University of Michigan in college. He never let himself fully lean into being angry on the field.
“I kind of love feeding that wolf,” McCarthy said. “There’s a lot of power that comes from that built up anger that I can transmute into my performance.”
What do his teammates think of McCarthy’s alter ego?
“A dawg,” running back Aaron Jones said after the Vikings beat the Lions. “He’s somebody who wants it. He’s hungry for more. He’s out to prove a lot of people wrong.”
There’s an authenticity about McCarthy that has gotten his teammates to believe in him. They know it’s not an act when McCarthy’s alter ego comes out. They know it’s simply McCarthy being himself.
“The guys were excited,” O’Connell said of the scene in the visitor’s locker room. “It was a cool moment. We’ve had a couple of them so far. We hope to have more.”
Briefly
There were a number of players who did not participate in practice on Wednesday afternoon at TCO Performance Center, including Jones (shoulder/toe), tight end Josh Oliver (foot), cornerback Jeff Okudah (concussion), and safety Theo Jackson (concussion).
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