NFL Vikings Player Props: Should We Trust J.J. McCarthy?
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Scott Kacsmar
- July 30, 2025
One of the hardest teams to handicap for the 2025 NFL season is the Minnesota Vikings. For starters, they’ve been unpredictable under coach Kevin O’Connell since he took the job in 2022.
It was in that 2022 season when the Vikings finished 13-4 despite getting outscored by 3 points on the season. That’s only possible when you tie the NFL record with 8 fourth-quarter comeback wins. But that also made them an easy pick to regress in 2023, and they finished 7-10 after Kirk Cousins tore his Achilles halfway through.
But the 2024 Vikings only had an over/under 6.5 wins as few thought they’d be good after losing Cousins and star pass rusher Danielle Hunter. Rookie quarterback J.J. McCarthy needed meniscus surgery after a single preseason game, putting everything on Sam Darnold’s shoulders.
In a twist few saw coming, Darnold had a breakout year in his 7th season and had the Vikings in position for the No. 1 seed. But he played poorly against the Lions in Week 18, then took sacks left and right against the Rams as the Vikings turned a 14-3 season into a one-and-done postseason. In fact, they were 14-0 when they weren’t playing the Lions and Rams.
But now Darnold is gone, and we’re left wondering how McCarthy will play after early reports from training camp are that he’s struggling. The NFC North is a tough division too, but O’Connell runs a quarterback-friendly offense, and they have an incredible wideout in Justin Jefferson.
McCarthy’s uncertainty makes the Vikings a true wild card in this 2025 season, but we’re putting our foot down and came up with our best props and NFL predictions for Minnesota this year.
With so much uncertainty surrounding McCarthy and Minnesota’s trajectory, top sportsbooks have varied odds on everything from win totals to touchdown props—making the Vikings one of the trickiest teams to bet on in 2025.
NFC North Division Winner Odds
J.J. McCarthy
- Over/Under 24.5 Passing Touchdowns
If we go back to the 2024 NFL Draft, it was always an interesting pick for the Vikings to take J.J. McCarthy, who played in a run-heavy offense at Michigan. We know O’Connell loves to throw the ball and put a lot of responsibility on his quarterbacks, whether it was Matthew Stafford when he was the Rams’ coordinator, or Kirk Cousins in Minnesota.
Even last year, Darnold averaged a career-high 254.1 passing yards per game to go along with his 35 touchdown passes. But Darnold has a lot of experience playing in different offenses. McCarthy didn’t get more than half of a preseason game last year, and while he looked good in that, you never know how things will translate to real NFL action.
There are signs in college that McCarthy was good early in games to build leads, then Michigan’s running game and defense could take over, shrinking his passing volume numbers. But he was also reportedly solid on 3rd downs, the money down in football.
Too Soon to Trust McCarthy?
O’Connell’s offense is certainly friendly to passers, and it helps when you have weapons like Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, and tight end T.J. Hockenson. But we’ve also seen Josh Dobbs and Nick Mullens in this Minnesota offense in 2023 throw not that many touchdowns and a high rate of interceptions.
Jefferson is great, but he had 5 touchdowns that season, and he’s never scored more than 10 in any year. In other words, he’s not exactly a Randy Moss type of stat inflator for his quarterbacks throwing touchdowns.
When you factor in McCarthy’s inexperience, lack of passing volume in his career, and Minnesota’s tough schedule, let’s go with him to finish under 24.5 passing touchdowns. Even in college, McCarthy never threw more than 22 touchdowns despite playing 14 or 15 games in those last 2 seasons.
Willing to make him prove he’s good before buying stock on him.
Justin Jefferson
- Over/Under 9.5 Receiving Touchdowns
Jefferson is awesome, but for the reasons we just highlighted in taking McCarthy to finish under 24.5 touchdowns, it’s hard to see him tying or exceeding his career high with 10 touchdown catches with what is such a green quarterback.
Jefferson is a big-play threat as 17 of his 40 touchdown catches have come outside of the red zone (20+ yards) in the NFL. That still leaves 23 touchdowns from inside the 20, but he’s not exactly someone you’re going to be lobbing 1-yard touchdown passes to as he’s not 6’4” or anything.
In fact, going with McCarthy finding his tight end (T.J. Hockenson) for over 3.5 touchdowns makes more sense as a security blanket and red zone weapon. That’s what we’ll go with for this Minnesota offense. Jefferson doesn’t match his career high in touchdowns, but Hockenson goes over 3.5 touchdowns again.
2025 Vikings Regular Season Wins – Over/Under 8.5 Wins
The 2025 Vikings have a win total of 8.5 wins at BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review) with the following odds:
- Over 8.5 wins (-165)
- Under 8.5 wins (+135)
The NFC North is unique in that all 4 teams have a total wins number of at least 8.5 this year, and only the Bears are not favored to finish with a winning record. But the Bears should certainly be a better team now that Ben Johnson is their head coach.
In fact, Week 1 could be the game that shows this is going to be a much different year in the NFC North for Minnesota. The Vikings are going to be in Chicago on Monday night, and they barely escaped there with a 30-27 win in overtime last season. How will things look this time with Johnson’s coaching debut and what should be the 1st NFL start for McCarthy? I’d take the Bears in that game.
September could be rough for Minnesota as the Vikings then host the Falcons and Bengals, a pair of teams expecting to do greater things in 2025 after just missing the playoffs last year. More teams who are a little further ahead in development with their offenses and quarterbacks.
Then it’s a trip to Ireland in Week 4 to take on the Steelers with Aaron Rodgers and a secondary with tons of veterans, not to mention T.J. Watt and Cam Heyward up front. The Steelers will have a strong Irish crowd presence there, so I’d count on a loss there, and the Vikings could be staring at a 1-3 start before a more winnable game in Cleveland before the early bye.
Vikings Could Be in Trouble
But then it’s a real murderer’s row right after the bye with the Eagles, Chargers, Lions, and Ravens. They’ll later have to play the Commanders, the team that nearly got to the Super Bowl with Jayden Daniels last year. They play the Cowboys in Dallas in December, and that could be a much better team this year. Then it’s the Lions and Packers at home to end the season.
Look, I like O’Connell as much as the average NFL fan. He’s the reigning NFL Coach of the Year. But he’s not infallible, he’s 0-2 in the playoffs, and his 2 winning seasons did rely on a lot of clutch game-winning drives from his veteran quarterbacks. Maybe McCarthy is a great one in the making and we see it right away this year.
But I’m skeptical, and I’m not convinced this team doesn’t regress to the mean defensively after another year of tape on what Brian Flores is doing with that unit. I’d pick the Vikings to finish under 8.5 wins and miss the playoffs.
*The line and/or odds on picks in this article might have moved since the content was commissioned. For updated line movements, visit BMR’s free betting odds product.
