Protect McCarthy’s Future: The Case for Andy Dalton in Minnesota

Six and four. J.J. McCarthy won six of ten starts in 2025 while playing through an ankle injury, a hand injury, and a concussion on a team that finished 9-8 and missed the playoffs. Six and four. And the Vikings still don’t trust him.

At the NFL Combine Tuesday, Vikings executive vice president Rob Brzezinski said the team is “exploring all possibilities” at quarterback for 2026. Head coach Kevin O’Connell stopped short of naming McCarthy the starter. He talked about wanting “competition” and “baseline play.” That’s not an endorsement. That’s a team looking for an exit.

Here’s what they should do instead: sign Andy Dalton, hand McCarthy the runway he’s never had, and stop breaking their own quarterback.

Minnesota Has Already Tried the Other Way

Patrick Mahomes sat. Tom Brady sat. Joe Montana sat behind two Hall of Famers for two seasons before he ever took a meaningful snap. The pattern is not a coincidence. Quarterbacks develop better when the franchise isn’t riding them through October like a rescue horse.

McCarthy missed all of 2024 with a meniscus tear. He came back in 2025 to a Vikings team already fractured at quarterback, already losing games, already running out of patience. Seven of Minnesota’s seventeen games went to someone else. He played through three separate injuries. He won six games. And now the front office is standing at a podium talking about “competition.”

That’s not a verdict on McCarthy. That’s a verdict on the environment. The HeyTC Daily QB Rankings don’t evaluate quarterbacks in a vacuum, and they shouldn’t. Baker Mayfield looked finished in Cleveland. He became a top-ten quarterback in Tampa. The player didn’t change. The situation did. Minnesota keeps building a bad situation and blaming the player.

The Vikings are not flush. They cannot absorb a Kirk Cousins contract or trade draft capital for a proven starter. What they can afford is a low-cost veteran who removes the pressure valve from McCarthy’s chest without costing them the offensive line help or secondary depth they desperately need. Every dollar saved at backup quarterback is a dollar that goes to the roster around him.

Andy Dalton costs almost nothing. He is worth exactly that.

Dalton Has Done This Job Before

Dalton has played for eight NFL teams. He has been to the playoffs five times. He has never won a Super Bowl, and he is not going to win one in Minnesota. That is not the assignment. The assignment is to be the bridge.

He mentored Justin Fields in Chicago, which didn’t work out for either. He held the job in Dallas while Dak Prescott recovered. Dalton’s career is a clinic in knowing your role and executing it without ego. He is not going to demand a two-year starter commitment. He is not going to undermine the coaching staff. He is going to take snaps when McCarthy needs rest, win seven or eight games when called upon, and provide exactly the “baseline play” Brzezinski was begging for at the podium.

The comparison that matters here is not Dalton to some past bridge quarterback. It is McCarthy to Mahomes. Mahomes had Alex Smith. Smith took real snaps in real games in 2017 while Mahomes absorbed the system from the sideline. When Mahomes took over in 2018, he had a year of film study, a comfortable locker room, and a coaching staff that trusted him because they’d watched him grow. That’s the template. McCarthy has never had anything close to it.

The comparison breaks down here: Mahomes sat behind a Pro Bowler. Dalton is not Alex Smith. But the principle holds. A young quarterback develops better when the franchise is not white-knuckling every third-down conversion he throws incomplete.

The Culpepper Warning

Twenty-five years ago, the Vikings drafted Daunte Culpepper in the first round. He had an arm. He had mobility. He was talented enough to win an MVP. By year two, he was extraordinary. By year seven, he was gone. The Vikings never built a sustainable environment around him. They built him into the ground.

McCarthy is not Culpepper. The talent profiles are different, the era is different, the injuries are different. But the organizational pattern is identical: a high-drafted quarterback, surrounded by an incomplete roster, expected to produce immediately while the front office quietly shops for alternatives.

Run the Super Bowl Simulator with McCarthy as the Week 1 starter, no safety valve, no real backup plan, and a Vikings roster that still has significant cap constraints. The paths to January get thin fast.

The math is simple. The history is clear. The mistake is already in the filing cabinet under “Culpepper, D.”

What 6-4 Actually Means

McCarthy’s record in those ten starts is the most important number on his resume, and the Vikings are treating it like a footnote. Six and four. With injuries. On a fractured roster. Against real defenses.

That is not the record of a quarterback you replace. That is the record of a quarterback you protect.

Signing Dalton does not signal doubt in McCarthy. It signals the opposite. It says: we believe in this quarterback enough to stop destroying him. We are going to give him a real runway, a real backup plan, and a real chance to become what we drafted him to be.

The Vikings can repeat the Culpepper mistake. Push McCarthy too hard, too fast, watch him crack under the weight of a front office that never fully committed, and spend 2028 drafting his replacement.

Or they can sign a 38-year-old quarterback who has started for eight teams and never once confused himself for the future, hand J.J. McCarthy the development timeline Brady and Mahomes got, and find out what he actually is.

Brady, Montana, Mahomes. Three quarterbacks. Three rings apiece. Zero of them started meaningful games as rookies and zero of them carried a franchise before they were ready.

The Vikings already know how the other story ends.

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