THREW IT ALL AWAY

BEARS 19

VIKINGS 17

Despite it being just week 11, Sunday was a must win game for the Vikings if there was to remain any hope of playing relevant football into December.

Sadly, in a season that continues to fly up the list of most frustrating seasons in Vikings history, the result did not go our way. And now we face two sad truths. 1. The 2025 Vikings season is effectively over, and 2. JJ McCarthy is a bust. 

Facing a pretty terrible Bears defense, JJ McCarthy (new nickname "Strychnine" since watching him play QB makes me want to drink some) delivered one of the most hideous performances in the history of this franchise for 3+ quarters. Once again, he made terrible, wildly off-target throws. Once again, he threw dreadful interceptions. In this game, he even failed at many of the kinds of ultra basic throws that should have been mastered in college (if JJ threw the ball in college). 

That the Vikings were in the game at all, let alone leading until the very last moment, is a testament to how mediocre the Bears were, too.

Much of the first half was a total suck-off (not the good kind) between a pair of clunky offenses. The Vikings scored 1st on a Will Reichard field goal. The Bears reached the endzone first. 

Strychnine's 1st awful pick came right after the Bears TD and handed them another 3 points. The 2nd one was a reckless throw up for grabs after the Vikings had reached the Bears 30 and could have at worst closed the gap before halftime. Gee, sure might have liked an extra 3 points later in the game.

In a tired rerun of a season-long trend, the offense's ineptitude and inability to sustain drives (their longest drive of the game wasn't even 5 minutes) led to the defense getting worn down. The Bears added on a couple of 3rd quarter field goals. 

The Vikings got some life in the 4th when Myles Price had a big punt return (with no flags!) and a couple plays later. Jordan Mason busted a TD run.

The Bears drove for a.field goal, but Cairo Santos missed it. The offense responded with a 3 and out, but the defense got them the ball back one more time. 

Here is the drive that the McCarthy fanboys will use to deflect from their idol's putrid game. At last, Strychnine managed to actually complete a few passes to open receivers. A couple of big connections with the fleet-footed TJ Hockenson and a sideline toss to Jalen Nailor got the Vikings into the redzone with under a minute left. 

I might have liked the Vikings to manage the clock better here, but I guess when your offense is so prone to disaster you gotta score when you can score, and McCarthy zipped a TD to Jordan Addison. The Vikings led 17-16.

But it was the proverbial "scored too quickly" situation, and when the coverage unit imploded and gave up a big kick return that immediately put the Bears into field goal range, the writing was on the wall. The Bears have been living a charmed life most of this season, and they escaped with another win when Santos banged home the game winner. 

An inept loss turned into a miraculous win turned into a gut punch loss. Another miserable chapter in a largely miserable Vikings season.

In the short term, this loss effectively destroys any chance the Vikings had to salvage any sort of playoff run. The one thing they still had in their favor was an unbeaten division record. That's gone now. They are 3 back of the Bears, and could finish the week 11th in the conference. They have to go to Green Bay and Seattle now, and would likely have to win both to crawl back into some form of contention. And there is simply no reason to believe they can do that. 

The more disheartening damage is the long-term. JJ McCarthy is a bust. That last drive doesn't in any way erase the awful play the first 95% of this game, or the largely awful play of his season. I don't want to hear the crap about how all young QBs have growing pains. These are not growing pains. He has had a year and a half of tutelage from the so-called quarterback whisperer, and was supposed to be so ready for primetime that the Vikings let Sam Darnold and Daniel Jones walk, made no real effort to get a backup QB in here, and spent gobs of free agent money to build up this roster to win THIS year. This was not supposed to be some throwaway year just watching a young QB take his lumps. KOC didn't even bother to give him many snaps in the preseason. 

Everything this franchise did told us THEY thought JJ McCarthy was ready to play and at a high level right now. It looks like that could be the most disastrous miscalculation this franchise has made since Mike Lynn thought Dallas would rather have the players than the picks in the Herschel Walker trade.

How long will this misery last? McCarthy will get the last 7 now meaningless games of this season, and he may even have an occasional moment like he did in the final drive today. But he's never going to be a franchise quarterback, and I hope they understand this and have some sort of plan B for 2026, cause if they throw away TWO entire season trying to develop Christian Ponder 2.0, we will be looking for a new coach and GM.