J.J. McCarthy's time with the Vikings has arrived. He'll face his favorite childhood team, the Bears

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EAGAN, Minn. (AP) — Nearly 18 years ago, as J.J. McCarthy strolled out of Soldier Field after attending his first Chicago Bears game, his father stopped to buy them a program for a keepsake to mark their time together that far outweighed the home team's loss to the Minnesota Vikings.

The next visit to the old stadium for the McCarthy family will warrant more than a few more souvenirs.

With dozens of relatives and friends in the seats, putting aside their allegiance to the Bears, McCarthy will play in his first NFL game on Monday night for the visitors who just so happened to be the opponent he saw on that first live look at professional football as a 4-year-old kid.

He's not just suiting up, either. The 10th overall pick in the 2024 draft, whose debut was delayed by surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his right knee, will start at quarterback for a team with a Super Bowl aspiration stacked with Pro Bowl players at nearly every other position after winning 14 games in his absence last season.

“I just try to be completely present,” said McCarthy, who grew up in La Grange Park, a suburb less than 20 miles west of Soldier Field. “There’s going to be anxiousness, excitement and a whole lot of adrenaline, but at the end of the day that’s completely normal. It’s accepting those emotions, able to let go of them a lot quicker rather than try to deflect them and avoid them.”

While Sam Darnold thrived under coach Kevin O'Connell and his system, playing his way into a rich new contract this year with the Seattle Seahawks, McCarthy could only watch and learn.

It was hardly a lost season, though. The Vikings were particularly intentional about immersing McCarthy into every aspect of playing quarterback for this team, whether it was sending him to defensive meetings for exposure to game plans on that side of the ball, sitting him down with the virtual reality video of Darnold's reps in practice or one-on-one time with the head coach and resident expert on the position. Quarterbacks coach Josh McCown served as another invaluable resource.

Whenever he wasn't in the training room rehabilitating his knee, McCarthy asked questions of anyone he could get an audience with, endearing himself to the players and staff and building the foundation for the leadership role he's now fully immersed in.

New center Ryan Kelly, who came from the Indianapolis Colts, compared McCarthy's composure and maturity to what he saw with veteran quarterbacks such as Andrew Luck, Philip Rivers and Matt Ryan. McCarthy was voted one of eight team captains this year, before taking his first snap.

“The whole organization holds him to a high standard, but it’s not nearly the standard he holds himself to," Kelly said. "You rally around that because you know that he’s doing everything he can to be successful."

The Vikings realize they'll have to be patient this year, a unique scenario for a team in win-now mode in a daunting division that sent three teams to the playoffs last season with the last-place Bears bringing plenty of potential to join them behind new coach Ben Johnson.

But the Vikings, from the front office to the coaching staff and everyone in between, have done just about everything they could to help make McCarthy's debut as smooth as possible. They're not simply winging it with a quarterback who's essentially still a rookie.

“The most prepared I've ever felt in my life,” said McCarthy, who was 27-1 as a starter in college at Michigan.

For the Bears, though there's familiarity with a division rival and O'Connell's offense to draw from, only a few film clips of McCarthy throwing passes in purple even exist from his brief appearances in exhibition games — one last year and one this year.

“We have to create that rookie mistake,” safety Kevin Byard said. “We try to mix and disguise coverages as much as possible. We don’t want to give him an easy test. You don’t want to just line up in coverages so the offensive coordinator and head coach can just tell him what to do: ‘Hey, this is what they’re playing.’ We want to try to confuse him as much as possible.”

After all McCarthy has endured to reach this point, any such confusion that might lead to an unsuccessful play on Monday night is unlikely to rattle him. While playing his final season of high school at IMG Academy in Florida, he struggled with depression prompted by the absence of family and friends, the pressure to perform in comparison with other elite athletes, and the isolation of social-distancing conditions during the pandemic.

He leaned into his mental health during that year, particularly his practice of meditation that became visible to the public throughout his career at Michigan when he'd sit cross-legged with his back against the goalpost, hands clasped in his lap and eyes closed about two hours before each game.

When he was asked this week to reflect on the magnitude of making his NFL debut against the team he grew up rooting for in the stadium where he first watched a game, McCarthy didn't hesitate to keep his focus away from the big picture. He sure sounded as if he's mastered the art of staying present to the moment.

“I feel like home is in Minnesota," he said, “so at the end of the day it’s just a business trip. I’m going to go down there and execute some football plays and see what happens.”

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