Sports

There had to be some concern about J.J. McCarthy after Sunday night. 

He had a remarkable fourth quarter in the season opener, and everything else was pretty bad. And he was struggling badly against the Chicago Bears and Atlanta Falcons, who aren't defensive powerhouses. 

And now McCarthy has a sprained ankle, which might make things pretty complicated. 

Vikings head coach Kevin O'Connell said in his Monday news conference that McCarthy has an injury and he anticipates that McCarthy won't play in Week 3 against the Cincinnati Bengals. O'Connell said the injury probably happened on a run on a second-and-20 late in the third quarter, and it felt worse on Monday than it did as McCarthy finished the game. O'Connell said he doesn't anticipate McCarthy going on short-term IR, so it's not a long-term injury but it might also might be more than a week. The injury is a high ankle sprain and could keep him out two to four weeks, according to ESPN. 

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The injury means Carson Wentz will probably start at least one game and maybe more. For a team with playoff hopes and a struggling young quarterback, you can see how this could get weird. 

J.J. McCarthy dealing with injury

There's no guarantee Wentz will step in and play well. Wentz is on his sixth team in six seasons. He was unsigned until Aug. 24. It has been a while since he was a high level quarterback. 

But Wentz has played well in the past, and he steps into a situation that was a career changer for Sam Darnold. It's not out of the question that Wentz plays well as long as McCarthy is out. Wentz has the benefit of facing the Bengals in his first start, which helps. 

And what if Wentz plays well? The Vikings didn't score a touchdown Sunday night at home against an Atlanta Falcons defense that wasn't expected to be in the top half of the league. The Chicago Bears made McCarthy look bad for three quarters in the season opener, and the Bears allowed 52 points in Week 2. There are a lot of troubling signs for McCarthy. 

The Vikings have a commitment to McCarthy, as the 10th pick of last year's draft. Practically speaking, they chose him over Darnold this offseason. They want him to succeed. 

But if Wentz plays well and leads Minnesota to a few wins as McCarthy heals, it might not be so easy to go back to the quarterback with two career starts who has played well in just one of his eight NFL quarters. 

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Kevin O'Connell doesn't blame McCarthy

O'Connell said the proclamation that Wentz is likely to start Sunday has nothing to do with McCarthy's poor play Sunday. 

"No, no. Not at all," O'Connell said, saying the news of McCarthy's injury was "crushing." 

O'Connell addressed McCarthy's struggles to start the season, and he mostly absolved him of wrongdoing. 

"He's in a long process, a long journey right now," O'Connell said. "There's going to be some ups and downs. As a team, I think our ability to play a little bit more consistent around him on the offensive side, these one-off critical errors that end up being totally out of J.J.'s control, we have to find a way to eliminate those." 

That's fine for a coach to say, but it's not like the operation has looked smooth and McCarthy has to take some blame for that. If, in the same setting, Wentz plays much better then it won't look great on McCarthy. And it will become a very interesting conversation in Minnesota when McCarthy is ready to return. 

It seems very unlikely that the Vikings would stick it out with Wentz, but he could make the decision much tougher by playing well. This could get interesting. 

Myles Garrett requested a trade from the Cleveland Browns right before last season's Super Bowl. Then the six-time All-Pro defensive end made his way down Radio Row, vocalizing how the Browns' trajectory didn't align with his immediate desire to play for a contender. 

A month later, Garrett reversed course and signed a four-year, $160 million deal with Cleveland. It was a deal that, at the time, made him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history, and it was an extension that Garrett claimed was about winning, not money. 

Two weeks into the 2025 season, Garrett's Browns haven't done any of that winning. The 2023 NFL Defensive Player of the Year didn't hold back his frustration after a 41-17 loss to the Baltimore Ravens Sunday.

"I mean, this s*** is embarrassing," Garrett said, via Cleveland.com. "And we've got to be better on defense, we've got to be better as a team.

"They slowly chipped away. We did a solid job holding it to three when we could. And then eventually the dam broke and then they just did whatever they wanted, and we have to continue to play a 60-minute game."

Cleveland limited Baltimore to a mere 10 points, 81 yards of offense and four first downs in the first half. The Browns froze a normally-overwhelming Ravens rushing attack. In fact, Baltimore's 45 rushing yards on the day were its fewest in a single game that Lamar Jackson's started at quarterback since he took over for Joe Flacco in 2018. Running back Derrick Henry mustered only 23 yards on 11 carries. 

The Ravens' lone first-half touchdown was set up by a blocked Browns punt. In the third quarter, a Garrett sack — one of his 3.5 quarterback takedowns so far this season — played a part in the Ravens having to settle for a chip-shot field goal despite them originally reaching the 1-yard line. Baltimore's only other points in the frame were ushered in by a 61-yard Nate Wiggins interception return that gifted Jackson and Co. with another short field.

It really wasn't until the fourth quarter that the Ravens pulled away. That's when they scored 21 straight points. The second of their three consecutive touchdowns saw linebacker Roquan Smith record a 63-yard scoop and score. 

Meanwhile, the Browns' offense struggled to find the end zone for the second week in a row. Flacco didn't return to his Super Bowl MVP form, or anything close to it, in his Baltimore homecoming. He was replaced by rookie Dillon Gabriel in the fourth quarter.

Cleveland has issues up front, highlighted by the fact that it's averaging 3.6 yards per rushing attempt through two games. And, most notably, it still has a quarterback problem — just like it did when Garrett inked his extension with the team this past spring.

But Garrett is still focusing on what he and his unit can control.

"At the end of the day, [if the Ravens] don't score, they don't win," he said. "We have to continue to hold them to three points or zero points whenever we can, no matter if it's backed up. Short field, red zone, we have to hold ourselves to that standard.

"We would love for [our offense] to put up six or seven every time they touch the ball. Realistically, that's just not going to be the case. That's not going to happen on any team. So we got to make up for that whenever we can. We got to take the ball away, which we didn't do."