How J.J. McCarthy’s parents nurtured his meteoric rise to the NFL

LA GRANGE PARK, Ill. — The father of the Minnesota Vikings’ quarterback of the future slides over, swipes at his phone and leans over to offer up a picture.

“How great is this?” Jim McCarthy asks.

The image shows a kid with shaggy blond hair wearing an oversized Iowa State football jersey. He might have been 85 pounds soaking wet. Frankly, J.J. looks like a pipsqueak.

“Wild, right?”

What’s actually wild is how normal this all feels. The family’s fluffy dogs, Hubert and Blue, are fenced off in the kitchen and barking. J.J.’s mother, Megan, a project manager for a staffing firm, is downstairs taking work calls on her laptop. It’s a mid-July morning about 15 miles from downtown Chicago. NFL training camps are approaching. And if it weren’t for Jim’s gray hoodie with tiny purple and gold print, you’d have no idea a member of this household played high school football, much less was the Vikings’ first-round pick.

There are no framed jerseys adorning the walls. No football photos lining the entryway. There is a kitchen table and a living room and this cluttered screened-in deck. And that’s where Jim, who is in sales for a waste management company, is slouching comfortably like he’s drinking beers with his buddies.

He’s replaying the night that led to the Iowa State picture when the phone buzzes with a Twitter notification:

I show Jim my phone.

“What’s this?” He asks, leaning in to take a look. “Oh! OK.”

“Did you know this was happening?”

“Not at all. Great!”

“You … didn’t … even … know?”

“Had zero idea!”

A few minutes later, Megan slides open the door to the screened-in deck and says she’s going to run some errands.

“Did you see J signed?” Jim asks.

“Huh?” Megan replies.

“J signed his contract,” Jim says.

“Seriously?” Megan asks. “He doesn’t give us a heads up on anything!”

Jim laughs, then shrugs and says: “That’s how we are.”

The family did not fly to Minnesota for J.J.’s introductory news conference. Jim has yet to meet Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell. When asked what he thinks about J.J. potentially sitting behind veteran Sam Darnold to start the season, the father talks like his son works in finance.

“If you want a promotion in life, do something to earn it,” Jim says. “It’s a career. At the end of the day, it’s a job where you have to perform in order to get promotions. So guess what? Go f—ing perform, or find another job.”

All of this might sound like the McCarthy parents are a tad removed from their son’s success. But it’s actually the opposite. As a family, they decided a long time ago that space and normalcy would allow their kid to be … well, a kid.

J.J. McCarthy’s first private quarterbacks coach stands up from his seat atop some metal bleachers to mimic a throw.

“So, he moves like this,” Greg Holcomb says, reenacting a rollout to the left.

He flips his hips and simulates a sidearm sling.

“And we were, like, ‘What?!’” Holcomb says incredulously. “That was right here. When he was still so young.”

“Right here” is a ho-hum turf field at Doerhoefer Park about 10 miles from the McCarthys’ home. This is where, after one of their first sessions, with the sun setting, and Megan waiting at the car, Holcomb told J.J.: “Dude, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a seventh-grader throw the football as smoothly and naturally and effortlessly as you.”

Time blurred from there. Jim took J.J. to a camp at North Central College in Naperville, Ill.; J.J. threw; Iowa State coaches approached J.J.; Jim texted Holcomb what was happening; Holcomb replied excitedly; the Iowa State coaches invited J.J. to a camp; Holcomb told Jim that they’d offer him; Cyclones head coach Matt Campbell watched J.J. throw the next week, then offered him; J.J. called Holcomb to tell him; and Holcomb responded: “You got an offer didn’t you; I f—ing knew it.” That’s when they took the picture that Jim still has.

The offer, and an ensuing growth spurt, pushed J.J.’s recruitment into hyperdrive. Holcomb’s business boomed because local parents knew he was J.J.’s coach. While Holcomb managed the influx of trainees, he wondered how J.J. was navigating the notoriety. One weekend, Urban Meyer was walking around Ohio Stadium with his arm around J.J. to sell him on Ohio State. The next, Joe Burrow was calling to pitch J.J. on LSU. Social media feeds were filled with support and hatred from so many different fan bases. Mailboxes filled with hand-written letters. A phone call from a coach here, a text to respond to there.

All at once, J.J. was trying to win games for Nazareth Academy on Friday nights, impress college coaches on Saturdays, do homework on Sundays and be a kid during the week. Jim, Megan, J.J.’s sisters, Caitlin and Morgan, and his now fiancée, Katya Kuropas, tried to help him manage it. Once new Ohio State coach Ryan Day shocked the family during an in-person meeting when he said the school did not have the offer that Meyer once promised, Megan urged J.J. to visit Michigan. Though J.J.’s appreciation for Iowa State’s initial belief remained — Jim even says, “We still love Matt Campbell” — there was something about Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh’s belief in the young quarterback that made J.J. fall in love.

It was there, during J.J.’s freshman season in Ann Arbor, that J.J. decided he needed his parents not in a management role but as support.

“I just want you guys,” he told his parents then, “to be Mom and Dad.”

Jim McCarthy is still on the screened-in deck in the backyard and he’s showing different pictures.

He finds a photo of what J.J. calls his “GOAT book,” a journal where J.J. jots down inspirational messages.

“Look at this: Brady, the mindset of a champion … Michael Jordan’s 10 rules of success … Kobe Bryant … This was all in high school. This is how he thinks … Muhammad Ali.”

He scrolls again through the photos on his phone.

“Here’s something a lot of people don’t know about him …”

When J.J. was still just a junior in high school, Megan installed a massive whiteboard in his room. Each week, he filled it with dry-erase marker ink, breaking down his opponents. He jotted down the defense’s primary coverages. He singled out defenders he could attack.

Jim showed the image of J.J.’s whiteboard ahead of the 2019 state championship game against Mount Carmel. Notes were scribbled all over the board: On trips, that corner takes the receiver vertical … Easily their worst cover corner … Call McDaniels.

“That was (a reminder) for him to call Ben McDaniels (the former quarterbacks coach at Michigan), who recruited him,” Jim says.

“So what happened in that game? We lost,” Jim says. “It was hailing sideways. All right, so he comes home and obviously, he’s pissed. The next morning, he wakes up and goes, ‘I’ve got to go for a run.’ It’s 6 a.m. He leaves. I go into his room. The whole whiteboard has changed.”

Jim swipes the phone and shows an image straight out of “A Beautiful Mind.” An NFL logo is drawn beautifully in the middle of the whiteboard. At the top, in bold, is the score of the game: 37-13. There are phrases and quotes everywhere.

This s— is not easy … What are you willing to do? … Dreams would not be dreams if they were easy … Overrated … Don’t bounce around in the pocket … Two hands on the ball … How bad do you want it?

The next photo in Jim’s phone is another telling image. Written in scraggly handwriting on a sheet of loose-leaf paper is the message: One goal: Be the greatest f—ing quarterback to ever come through here. 

J.J. taped that on the wall of his freshman dorm room in Ann Arbor. As for Tom Brady?

“We always talked, like, if your friends aren’t laughing at your goals, you never set them high enough,” Jim says.

J.J. went on to become one of the most accomplished Michigan quarterbacks ever. He beat Day’s Ohio State team three times, putting away his usual eye black so Day could see him directly. As Michigan tore its way toward a national championship, Jim and Megan mostly kept out of the spotlight. The only responsibility Jim assumed — at J.J.’s directive — was dropping off checks at local children’s hospitals in the city of each team Michigan played.

This all sounds so advanced, so beyond his years — almost a professional mindset at such an early age. How do parents instill in a child that type of big-picture view? What parenting strategies inspire this type of awareness? What is it like to see a child so committed to achieving his goals?

In a roundabout way, I asked this of Jim.

“His life has been on fast-forward,” Jim says, “and he’s managed it well. But he’s still a young kid. I want him to make mistakes. There’s still so much for him to learn. He’s still a 21-year-old kid.”

Years ago, before the fame came, Holcomb asked J.J. to babysit his son Sam.

J.J. jumped at the opportunity. He showed up with Katya, and together they shouldered the responsibility. J.J.’s best work? Whipping up some grilled cheese sandwiches.

“Sam thought they were the best he’d ever had,” Holcomb says, “just because J.J. made them.”

Years later, Sam is now in seventh grade. And, funnily enough, not only does he play quarterback, but he is considered the best in the country at his age.

Michigan became the first school to offer him about a month ago. Jim informed J.J. of the news, and J.J. immediately sent Sam a direct message.

Holcomb has a screenshot of it.

“Congrats, fam,” Holcomb says, reading J.J.’s words aloud. “Well deserved because of all the work that you already put in. But I’m here to tell you that you’re not even getting started yet and haven’t even scratched the surface of your potential. I’ll love you for life, but please, if you can promise me one thing, continue to work your balls off until you hang the cleats up. Let me know if you ever need anything.

“Just the beginning.”

Buried in that last phrase is a message for Holcomb, too. It’s the beginning of a well-trodden parenting arc.

Jim is one of the few who can relate to Holcomb’s situation, so Holcomb has begun to ask for advice. The overall theme in Jim’s responses? Be a dad, not an overbearing manager or coach. And if the kid loves this — like, really loves it — there’s no telling what he might be able to accomplish.

(Top photo: Nick Wosika / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)