Who Is JJ McCarthy? Inside the Vikings QB's Surprise Trade to the Giants
The trade itself is now confirmed fully complete (see the 30 September 2026 update below). What’s still open is the Giants’ actual QB2 usage: head coach John Harbaugh had not committed to Jake Haener or McCarthy as the active backup for the October 4, 2026 game against Arizona. Re-check after that game once the backup role and any in-game usage are settled; the historical Michigan/Vikings sections do not need revisiting.
Everything else on the page is unaffected; the figures below still say when they were read.
- 🔑 On Monday 28 September 2026, the Minnesota Vikings traded quarterback JJ McCarthy, their 2024 first-round pick, to the New York Giants for a 2027 fifth-round draft pick; the deal, first described by the team as pending a physical, is now confirmed fully complete — McCarthy has practiced with New York and been assigned uniform No. 18.
- McCarthy, 23, quarterbacked Michigan to the 2023-season national championship, going 27-1 as a starter, before Minnesota drafted him 10th overall in 2024; a knee injury in his first NFL preseason game cost him his entire rookie season on injured reserve.
- In his lone season as a starter, 2025, McCarthy went 6-4 in 10 games for the Vikings, completing 140 of 243 passes for 1,632 yards with 11 touchdowns and 12 interceptions, adding 181 rushing yards, before a high-ankle sprain cost him five more games.
- Minnesota signed Kyler Murray for 2026, pushing McCarthy down the depth chart before he got a real shot at a second full season as starter, and the Vikings ultimately moved him rather than keep him as a backup quarterback.
- The Giants need arm depth after starting quarterback Jaxson Dart suffered a season-ending knee injury in Week 2 of 2026; Jameis Winston is confirmed as starter for the rest of the season, and New York waived backup Jake Haener to the practice squad to open a roster spot for McCarthy, who arrives as developing insurance rather than an immediate starter.
- No betting odds, point spreads, moneylines, or win-probability projections appear anywhere in this piece; every performance figure here is a historical box-score fact, not a prediction of what McCarthy or the Giants will do next this season.
JJ McCarthy is the quarterback the Minnesota Vikings drafted 10th overall in 2024, and as of Monday 28 September 2026 he is a member of the New York Giants after Minnesota traded him away for a 2027 fifth-round draft pick. The move ends McCarthy’s short, injury-interrupted run in Minnesota and sends him to a Giants team that lost its own starting quarterback, Jaxson Dart, to a season-ending knee injury earlier this month. Here’s who McCarthy is, what he did at Michigan and Minnesota, and where he fits in New York.
Who is JJ McCarthy?
JJ McCarthy is a 23-year-old NFL quarterback, born January 20, 2003, who starred at the University of Michigan before the Vikings made him the 10th overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. At 6-foot-3 and 219 pounds, he was one of the most decorated college quarterbacks of his class, going 27-1 as a starter — the highest winning percentage in NCAA Division I FBS history — under head coach Jim Harbaugh, who has since moved on to coach the Los Angeles Chargers. Minnesota bet a top-10 pick on McCarthy’s ceiling, and that bet has now ended in a trade rather than a long-term second contract.
What did JJ McCarthy do at Michigan?
McCarthy quarterbacked Michigan to the 2023-season national championship, capping his college career with a 34-13 win over Washington in the College Football Playoff title game on January 8, 2024. He was named Big Ten Quarterback of the Year in 2023 and was the Rose Bowl’s Offensive MVP that same postseason, throwing for 221 yards and three touchdowns in Michigan’s playoff semifinal win. Across his time on Michigan’s roster, the program won three Big Ten titles and made three College Football Playoff appearances, and McCarthy finished his college career with a single loss as a starter.
Why did the Vikings draft him, and what happened to his rookie season?
The Vikings drafted McCarthy 10th overall in April 2024 to be their long-term answer at quarterback, but a knee injury wiped out his entire rookie year before it started. McCarthy was hurt in Minnesota’s first preseason game of 2024 and spent the whole season on injured reserve, never taking a regular-season snap as a rookie. That delay pushed his actual NFL debut back a full year, to the 2025 season.
How did JJ McCarthy actually perform in 2025?
In his first real NFL season, McCarthy went 6-4 as a starter across 10 games, throwing for 1,632 yards with 11 touchdowns and 12 interceptions. He completed 140 of 243 passes (57.6%) for a 72.6 passer rating and added 181 rushing yards and four rushing touchdowns on 37 carries, showing real mobility along with the inconsistency typical of a first-year starter. A high-ankle sprain suffered in Week 2 against Atlanta cost him five additional games, further limiting how much of a full season Minnesota actually got to evaluate him over.
| Stat | 2025 (MIN) |
|---|---|
| Record | 6-4 |
| Comp-Att | 140-243 |
| Yards | 1,632 |
| TD-INT | 11-12 |
| Rating | 72.6 |
| Rush yds | 181 |
Why did the Vikings trade JJ McCarthy to the Giants?
Minnesota moved on from McCarthy after he lost the Vikings’ own starting job heading into 2026, signing veteran Kyler Murray and dropping McCarthy to third on the depth chart. With Murray installed as the starter and a veteran backup also ahead of him, McCarthy did not play a single snap through the opening weeks of the 2026 season, even after Murray was hurt in the season’s Week 1. Rather than keep an unhappy former first-round pick as a clipboard-holder, the Vikings dealt him to New York on Monday 28 September 2026 for a 2027 fifth-round pick. The Vikings’ general manager, Nolan Teasley, said in a statement that once the Giants’ interest came together, the team concluded a trade was “the best path forward” for both sides.
Is the JJ McCarthy trade to the Giants final?
Yes — the trade is now confirmed fully complete. The Vikings’ own initial statement on the deal flagged the physical-exam contingency that is standard for in-season trades, and by later Monday other reporting already treated the trade as finalized. Since then, McCarthy has joined Giants team meetings and practice and been assigned uniform No. 18 — the number opened up because backup Jake Haener, who wore it, was waived to make room for McCarthy on the 53-man roster. No outlet has reported any issue with the physical or any risk the deal doesn’t close; it has.
Where does JJ McCarthy fit on the Giants’ quarterback depth chart?
McCarthy joins New York as depth and insurance behind Jameis Winston, not as an immediate starter — and the actual backup job is still unsettled. Head coach John Harbaugh has confirmed Winston as the starter “for as long as I can see into the future,” including New York’s Week 4 game against the Cardinals on October 4, 2026. Behind him, the Giants waived Jake Haener — who had been the emergency backup since Dart’s injury — from the 53-man roster, intending to re-sign him to the practice squad, specifically to open the roster spot McCarthy now fills. Harbaugh said this week he hadn’t decided whether Haener (via a gameday practice-squad elevation) or McCarthy (still working through a crash course in New York’s playbook) would actually be the active QB2 against Arizona. Dart, out for the season after knee surgery, has been described as the Giants’ presumptive starter again once he’s healthy in 2027.
What’s next for JJ McCarthy?
For now, McCarthy’s job is to learn New York’s offense and be ready if Winston needs a break; how much he actually plays in 2026 will depend on how the Giants’ season unfolds behind Winston. We covered the Giants’ quarterback situation in detail right after Dart went down in our Titans vs. Giants Week 3 preview , which lays out exactly how thin New York’s depth chart had gotten before this trade. McCarthy is still only 23 — a fresh start on a new roster, away from the team that drafted him, is exactly what both sides are betting on now.
How we verified this
The trade terms — a 2027 fifth-round pick sent from the Giants to the Vikings for McCarthy — were checked against the team’s own reporting and multiple independent NFL-news aggregators, all describing identical compensation.
The trade’s exact status was still moving at write time. The team’s own initial statement described the move as agreed but pending McCarthy passing a physical exam; later reporting on the same date described the deal as already completed, and a major NFL stats database had already updated its roster listing to show McCarthy with New York. This piece originally treated the trade as agreed and reported as complete by multiple accounts while flagging the physical-exam contingency raised in the earliest team-sourced report.
Update, 30 September 2026: the trade is confirmed fully complete. McCarthy has attended Giants team meetings and practice this week and been assigned uniform No. 18 (available because backup Jake Haener, who previously wore it, was waived) — a roster move a team does not make around a trade that hasn’t cleared. This was checked against Giants.com, NFL.com, ESPN, and league-transaction tracker Pro Football Rumors, none of which report any problem with the physical or any risk the deal doesn’t close. The physical-exam hedge in the paragraph above is now resolved.
McCarthy’s 2025 season stat line (140-of-243 passing, 1,632 yards, 11 touchdowns, 12 interceptions, a 72.6 rating, plus 181 rushing yards on 37 carries) was cross-checked against the team’s own site and a league stats database, and the figures matched.
The Michigan national-championship detail — that McCarthy quarterbacked Michigan to a 34-13 win over Washington in the CFP National Championship on January 8, 2024 — was independently confirmed against a reference encyclopedia entry separate from the trade coverage.
The Giants’ quarterback situation (Jaxson Dart out for the season after a Week 2 knee injury, Jameis Winston starting in his place) was checked against multiple independent reports; McCarthy’s specific role behind Winston is reported consistently but is a newer, less-settled data point than the injury itself.
Update, 30 September 2026: the QB2 role behind Winston is still unsettled. Head coach John Harbaugh confirmed Winston as starter “for as long as I can see into the future,” including New York’s October 4 game against Arizona, but said he had not yet decided whether Haener (now on the practice squad, eligible for a gameday elevation) or McCarthy (still working through New York’s playbook) would actually be the active backup. Dart, out for the season after knee surgery, was described by team-adjacent reporting as the Giants’ presumptive starter again once healthy in 2027. Checked against Giants.com, NFL.com/ESPN reporting, and Giants beat coverage via SI’s Onsi network and NBC Sports.
No betting odds, point spreads, moneylines, or win-probability models appear anywhere on this page.