The New York Giants traded for JJ McCarthy on Monday: a 2027 fifth-round pick to Minnesota, pending a physical, after Jaxson Dart's knee injury knocked him out for the season. New York needed a quarterback. Nine is starting.
Good luck with Kyler Murray, Minnesota! 👋
Reported Monday, September 28 by NFL Network's Ian Rapoport and Mike Garafolo and ESPN's Adam Schefter. The Vikings drafted him 10th overall in 2024 and traded up to do it. Two-plus years later they had him third on the depth chart, behind Kyler Murray and Carson Wentz, per CBS Sports. New York looked at the same player and saw a QB1.
QB, #9. Former 10th overall pick. National champion. The guy this whole site was built for.
A fifth-round pick, a year from now. That's the return on a top-10 pick they traded up for.
Jaxson Dart's knee injury is expected to cost him the rest of the regular season (NBC News).
Deal is done on paper. Once he clears the physical, it's official. Nine is the starter.
With Jameis Winston under center, the Giants beat Tennessee 12-7 on field goals alone (CBS Sports). A defense that holds a team to 7 needs a quarterback who can finish drives, not one who's managing them. That's the job. That's Nine.
Nobody here wanted it to happen this way. Dart is the Giants' guy, and the whole building wants him back healthy. Nine's job is to hold the fort, win football games, and hand a playoff team back to a healthy franchise QB. We'll be rooting for both of them.
You're going to hear the hot takes on WFAN by lunch. Here's the stuff the callers will skip.
Starting record at Michigan, capped with a national championship. He wins. That's the whole résumé.
Healthy-game CPOE from this site's v10 model inputs. That's elite company.
Still a 23-year-old on the right side of the development curve. New York gets the best years.
Brian O'Neill: "He had the locker room more than anybody I'd seen ever" (Heavy). He's going to win that building fast.
Injuries (a torn meniscus, a concussion, a wrist fracture and an ankle sprain) limited him to 10 starts across two-plus seasons in Minnesota. In those Vikings snaps he completed 57.6% for 1,632 yards, 11 TDs and 12 INTs, plus 181 rushing yards and 4 rushing scores (CBS Sports). That's a 10-game sample, and it's why availability is the story in New York. When he's on the field, the case above is the case. Now he gets a real runway to prove it.
You picked the $1.3M rental over the 23-year-old you traded up for. Then you traded the 23-year-old for a fifth. Bold. Here's what you kept.
In seven seasons. Zero.
Over his last three seasons coming in, including 12 of 17 in 2025 with a foot injury.
What our v10 model gave Murray to finish the season healthy. Who's the backup now, by the way?
Want to be clear: those were Vikings-roster projections, built for a Nine-in-purple season that's never happening now. They're frozen in the v10 archive. We're not re-running a Giants model off one week of news. That comes after he's actually played some games in blue.
Spin six random NFL teams. Draft six pieces. Chase the perfect season. The rule survived the trade: there is exactly one way to do it, and his number is 9.
★ Play Build a 17-0 TeamEvery page from the Vikings era is archived exactly as it stood before the trade. Unedited. Receipts are receipts.
"When, not if." The 78% model, the wins projection, the Kyler problem, Develop or Die, the Hater Wall.
Camp reports, minicamp receipts, insider takes and the decision fallout. The full feed through Sept 27.
The original QB1 case: 87% any-point, 53% Week 1, before O'Connell named Murray.