How Josh McCown became an ‘older brother’ to J.J. McCarthy and ‘an extension’ of Kevin O’Connell

Even if the New York Jets had offered their head coaching job to Vikings quarterbacks coach Josh McCown, among 17 candidates to talk with Jets ownership about the opening this offseason, something rooted him in Minnesota.

Or someone: Kevin O’Connell, and the chance to work with the reigning NFL Coach of the Year for a second season.

The same play caller for two full years? That’s not something McCown, the football lifer from a small town in East Texas, experienced during an 18-year playing career fostering relationships and collecting frequent flyer miles.

He played for 19 offensive coordinators on 12 NFL teams. He changed playbooks every other year since …

“I was a junior in high school,” said McCown, who played until he was 41 in 2020. “This is awesome, man. I don’t know what job could’ve got me out of here last year. I was trying to set a precedent for myself.”

McCown, now 46, already has as many NFL head coaching interviews – two – as he has years of NFL coaching experience. That underscores his reputation of a likeable leader with two decades’ worth of quarterbacking lessons and a unique way of applying them.

Those lessons worked for New England Patriots QB Drake Maye, one of McCown’s first pupils as a high school coach in Charlotte. They worked for Sam Darnold, who threw for a career-high 35 touchdowns for the Vikings last year.

“J.J.’s confidence is sky high because he’s got a guy like Josh in the room with him,” O’Connell said. “I feel like Josh is the perfect coach to be an extension of me in so many ways and allow me to play my role with that position.”

Coaches are preaching patience with McCarthy, who was the youngest of six first-round quarterbacks drafted in 2024 and did not have a rookie season because of injury.

McCown is also not rushing his own development as a coach. He declined to pursue offensive coordinator opportunities this offseason to stay in Minnesota with talented coaches, top players and a young quarterback.

“Absolutely love that guy,” McCarthy said of McCown. “Like an older brother to me. … I feel like our relationship continues to grow every moment we spend with each other. You can’t take for granted all the lessons he’s been through, all the situations he’s had to overcome, the resiliency he has, like, it’s something really special.”

McCown began coaching during his journeyman playing career.

“Basically wanted to know if he could start helping out,” said Scott Chadwick, then the head coach at Marvin Ridge High. “Just kind of being involved a little bit since he lived there. He and I sat down and found our philosophies on football, quarterback play and life were very, very similar.”

Their bond opened a door into coaching. But McCown, then 30, still wanted to play. No NFL teams were offering a job because he hadn’t started a game in three years. Teams told him he needed film, so he played that 2010 season for the Hartford Colonials of the United Football League, which dissolved less than a year later.

During the four-month NFL lockout in 2011, he went back to Marvin Ridge, coaching quarterback Tyler Chadwick, Scott’s son. Only a two-week stay at San Francisco 49ers training camp that summer interrupted McCown’s first season as an assistant coach: a 10-win campaign.

“We then get knocked out of the playoffs on a Friday night,” Chadwick said, “and Jay Cutler breaks his thumb on Sunday.”

The Chicago Bears and then-offensive coordinator Mike Martz, one of McCown’s many former coaches, came calling that November. He was starting for the Bears at Lambeau Field on Christmas Day.

By November, a familiar script unfolded.

“I’m not making this up,” Chadwick said. “We get knocked out of the playoffs and that Sunday Jay Cutler gets a concussion.”

A day later, McCown was back in Chicago again.

McCown revived his NFL career with the 2013 Bears and first-year head coach Marc Trestman.

He again replaced Cutler for five starts, including a four-game stretch that included three consecutive 300-yard games and a four-touchdown game.

”He could connect with everybody,” offense or defense, Trestman said.

Twelve years after their only NFL season together, Trestman watched a Vikings training camp practice this summer as McCown’s guest. He was asked how they formed such a lasting bond so fast.

“There’s a way of communicating, love of the game, family — all these little boxes you can check with a coach-player relationship,” Trestman said.

“All of a sudden,” he added, snapping his fingers. “It just hits right away. Where sometimes trust takes longer to build, sometimes it can happen very fast. With Josh, it happens very quickly. He just has a way about him.”

McCown said he “felt a shift” in how he thought of the game in 2013.

McCown parlayed his Bears success into a two-year, $10 million contract with the Buccaneers. But his time in Tampa Bay lasted just 11 starts because of a 1-10 record.

McCown’s next two stops as player had important roles in his future as a coach.

His struggles in Tampa led him in 2015 to Cleveland and O’Connell, who was in his first NFL job as Browns quarterbacks coach. McCown’s struggles in Cleveland led him to the Jets and Darnold.

McCown threw for a career-high 2,926 yards with the Jets in 2017, then became the NFL’s highest-paid backup and a mentor for Darnold, the No. 3 pick in 2018.

He also returned to coaching with Chadwick.

Chadwick and McCown kept coaching Maye that fall as the QB transferred to Myers Park High School, where Chadwick was the head football coach. Maye led the team to the state semifinals as a sophomore.

McCown, playing for the Jets, stuck around as long as he could before consulting from afar during the high school season. He dissected game film and offered feedback. He even gave in-game pointers while watching the livestream of the last playoff game.

“Josh was texting me stuff at halftime of the game: ‘Hey, look at this, do this, do that,’” Chadwick said. “I know Sam was sitting right there with him while they were watching.”

McCown thought that was his last NFL season. In 2019, he started working for ESPN. He announced his retirement. He went back to coaching high school kids.

That summer, Philadelphia Eagles quarterbacks kept getting injured. Chadwick and McCown joked about how maybe they’d come calling.

“We were going to be really good,” Chadwick said. “He didn’t want to leave.”

So McCown executed a rare feat of being an NFL quarterback while coaching high school football. During the 2019 season, McCown flew to Charlotte from wherever the Eagles played the previous day and attended every Monday practice for Myers Park.

McCown would then fly back to Philadelphia, spend the week with the Eagles, and go back to Charlotte by Friday night.

McCown was at every game while Maye threw 50 touchdown passes and established himself as a top college recruit. Another Myers Park QB, Denney Thompson, who did not play college football, said McCown “treated everybody the same. He gave me the same attention, the same reps in practice that he did Drake, and it was just really fun to experience.”

Maye, the No. 3 overall pick by New England in 2024, and McCown reunited last month during Vikings-Patriots joint practices. Maye called it a “full-circle scene.”

Quarterbacks laud the way McCown inspires and motivates them and quiets their minds. Players particularly rave about his pregame speeches that often get emotional and draw from football and life experiences.

But McCown likes to agitate them in practices. He physically pokes and prods quarterbacks during routine passing drills — like an older brother trying to annoy a younger sibling. The point is to avoid predictable and easy throws, because an NFL pocket is anything but predictable or easy.

Quarterback Brett Rypien, who was on his sixth NFL team with the Vikings last season, called McCown’s methods “the best individual drills I’ve been around.”

“He likes to mess with your brain a little bit,” said Rypien, who was released Aug. 24. “He’ll kind of tap you on the arms, grab your hands when you’re sliding up in the pocket. At the last second, he’ll change your target.”

McCarthy pointed to McCown’s detailed play-by-play breakdowns and his “unique” process of watching film

McCarthy got plenty of film room time while recovering from last year’s season-ending knee injury. He grew closer to McCown, which allowed them to hit the ground running this summer.

“If we got anything out of last year,” McCown said, “we got to know each other. You know what I mean? And to trust each other and to build that.”

Quarterbacks are coached “at the speed of trust,” which McCown said happened quickly with Darnold last season because they had known each other since 2018.

How is that process going with McCarthy?

“They’re just at different stages,” McCown said. “That’s what’s critical right now as we maintain a growth mindset with J.J. … That trust is going to build as far as what we’re talking about and how I transfer the information, but there’s still things – reps, reps and reps that he’s got to have over time, and it just takes time. That’s the only thing that we can’t give him.”

“All this chemistry to me is like a perfect storm for J.J.,” Trestman said. “It’s a perfect storm for growth on both sides, for Josh’s continuous growth as a coach.”

A head coaching job, he added, “is only a matter of time for Josh.”