Sorry if you are a little taken aback by the Vikings’ current QB dilemma. We still don’t know if J.J. McCarthy or Carson Wentz will start Sunday against the Eagles.
We do know that both QBs are healthy enough to practice this week and both are being made available to reporters Wednesday as the Vikings let the decision-making process play out.
I’m old enough to remember quarterback controversies being part of the Vikings’ yearly routine.
Growing up in North Dakota, the Vikings were the default team for almost everyone I knew and they were the team broadcast in our market.
I started watching them in earnest in roughly 1986 — the season in which I turned 10, the season Jerry Burns took over as head coach and, as it turns out with a little research, the beginning of the heyday of Vikings quarterback controversies — as I talked about on Wednesday’s Daily Delivery podcast.
Between 1986 and 1993, spanning Burns’ six seasons as the Vikings’ head coach and the first two years of Dennis Green, at least two different Vikings quarterbacks started at least three regular-season games every season.
It was Wade Wilson (32 starts) vs. Tommy Kramer (28 starts) for those first four years, with Tony Adams sprinkled in with three starts as a replacement player in 1987. Rich Gannon entered the mix in 1990, sharing the job with Wilson and later Sean Salisbury for three seasons. Then it was Jim McMahon and Salisbury in 1993 before Warren Moon arrived in 1994 to at least bring temporary stability (31 combined starts out of 32 games in 1994 and 1995).
Sometimes during those eight seasons the quarterback shuffling was injury-related. Sometimes it was performance-related or a matter of riding a hot hand. Sometimes quarterbacks were swapped interchangeably in the middle of games if the Vikings needed a spark. Never did it feel 100% settled.
