21-year-old Vikings rookie J.J. McCarthy He’s still a young NFL player and a young person, but his offensive coordinator, Wes Phillipsdoesn’t seem the least bit worried about the young quarterback’s ability to handle whatever offense the Vikings and the league throw at him.
“He’s very much into the mental aspect of not just football, but life in general, and that translates to the game,” Phillips said after a light training-camp practice on Friday at the TCO Performance Center. “He meditates, he does all sorts of stuff. He’s a big Da Vinci fan, he even has the Vitruvian Man tattooed on his arm.”
“He’s an interesting guy for a 21-year-old. He’s interested in the same things as me.”
McCarthy, the Vikings’ highest draft pick in history, spent the first three days of training camp working out with the second unit. Phillips said McCarthy has had ups and downs, but has bounced back in a positive way each time and is on schedule practicing with the first team at a point in camp that Phillips didn’t want to disclose on Friday.
To an outsider, McCarthy doesn’t seem to have experienced much adversity. He has a 61-3 career record as a starting quarterback, including a 26-2 state title at Nazareth Academy in LaGrange Park, Ill., an 8-0 record at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., a 27-1 record at Michigan and a 15-0 record last season while winning the national championship.
But McCarthy said he turned to meditation during a difficult time during his senior year at IMG.
“During COVID, I was depressed,” he said. “I was in a really dark place. I grew up privileged. I didn’t really know what depression and anxiety was. I was going through it alone, isolated in boarding school, so there weren’t a lot of resources to help me mentally.”
“I started looking into things that would promote better mental health, and meditation was the first thing that came to mind. I started learning, studying and researching about meditation. It wasn’t until I actually started practicing it that I got any results. And once I started doing it for a period of time, I started to see the benefits. Now I go for a week without meditating and see how I feel without it, so I can’t go a day without meditating.”
McCarthy said he starts each day with meditation, then hops into the ShiftWave Chair, a neuro-training device that applies pulsed pressure waves to the body “to restore optimal function, balance the nervous system and reduce pain,” according to the company’s website.
“Then I end my day with meditation,” McCarthy said. “Meditation keeps me in the present moment. It helps me with self-awareness, so I can learn a lot about myself that my ego might be trying to protect. Meditation allows me to enter so many different worlds. I really identify with meditation.”
Get a break
Friday’s practice was the third day of camp, but how light was it? So light that 35-year-old safety Harrison Smith was given a “veterans day” rest, but still wore sunglasses and no helmet for an 11-on-11 period. The rest of the team did a slightly more advanced workout than a walk-through, wearing helmets.
The final practice before fans were allowed to attend ended 10 minutes early.
Phillips practiced with his coach. Kevin O’Connell Among the Vikings delegation that traveled to Maryland for the funeral of a Vikings rookie Kylie JacksonHe died in a car accident along with his high school teammates. Isaiah Hazel and Anthony Lytton Jr. July 6th.
The general manager also attended the funeral. Kwesi Adofo MensahDefensive Coordinator Brian FloresSpecial Teams Coordinator Matt DanielsDefensive Backs Coach Daronte Jones and players Dallas Turner, JaeSean Jones and Taki Taimani, They were Jackson and Hazel’s teammates in college.
Griffin and Shin Hye won’t practice
Cornerback Shaq GriffinHe went down during practice on Thursday with what was not believed to be a serious injury and did not practice on Friday. Louis Cine No reason was given, but he did not practice.
