FUNNY HOW J.J. MCCARTHY KEEPS WINNING, SOMEHOW, AND CALEB WILLIAMS LOSES
No one is sure how he woke up and led the Vikings to three fourth-quarter touchdowns, in his NFL debut, and no one is sure how Williams and new coach Ben Johnson blew a 17-6 lead in a wicked loss
He looks ugly. He knows it and loves it. The streaks of facial warpaint have smothered J.J. McCarthy’s cheeks for years, since he played high school ball in the Chicago suburbs. They worked at Nazareth Academy. They thrived at Michigan, where he won a national title. And Monday night, after a grotesque start in his NFL debut, the makeup finally willed him to two touchdown passes and a scoring run in a stadium he first saw at age 4.
How? Why? Explain his flirtation with fourth-quarter history, when he became the first player to account for three late touchdowns in his first game. What about a career when he has lost only three of 67 games as a starter, winning a state title as a teen and completing a perfect season for Jim Harbaugh’s otherwise dirty team? What possibly could he tell the Vikings’ veterans, some disgruntled, when he tried to elevate early spirits on the sldeline?
“We gotta believe. We gotta believe,” said McCarthy, when they did not. “That’s one thing that we can do is control the controllables and our belief in going out there and executing the play. It’s as simple as that.”
And what about standing in Soldier Field, life blurring, after a 27-24 win when he became the first debut quarterback since Steve Young — in 1985 — to ignite such a big comeback? “Getting the win. That’s what I’ll remember most,” he said. “Just being in my hometown, a dream come true, telling kids out there it’s all possible.”
On another sad night for the city — how many times did ESPN show the skyline and the lights and the lake, knowing the Bears are headed to Arlington Heights bleakness — a local kid somehow won after those streaks were smearing up. Caleb Williams was brilliant in his opening drive, just as Bill Belichick was. But he struggled on third downs in the second half — the network said many of his passes, 47 percent, were off-target after halftime — and left Soldier Field to more boos. He should have finished off a woeful McCarthy and utterly failed, keeping his name in the raging media firestorm.
Ben Johnson is 0-1 as a head coach in any walk of life. He already is a game behind the Packers and returns to Detroit to face the Lions, which means he could be 0-2. Williams showed sparks and completed his first 10 passes, but in a town that hasn’t won a playoff game since 2011 and celebrated a 1985 Super Bowl victory at halftime, the fans know he was drafted first overall almost 17 months ago. Is he a star? A bust? Why can’t he close? We still don’t know, which is becoming a piece of harsh reality in what continues to be America’s worst sports town.
“We felt like we were dominating the game,” Williams said. “We were in control, up two scores. That mentality is something that we have, something that we preach. We didn’t have that today. It’s a process. This is the start, definitely not the end. We’ll keep growing.”
Who has time? Four times in four seasons, the Bears have lost after entering the fourth quarter with a lead of 10 or more points. “It starts with getting in and out of the huddle, being able to just complete some easy passes, keep the drives going,” Williams said. “We did that in the beginning. A few balls got batted, we had penalties, and that slowed the momentum down. It’s not a play-call thing, not anything like that. It’s just being able go out there and execute plays that are called and be able to execute them at a high level. That’s something that we take pride in and today that didn’t happen. We’ve got to get better.”
Better, he said. Does it matter who’s coaching?
“Just inconsistent,” said Johnson, who said of Williams’ effective plays, “It certainly felt like they dried up a little bit.”
They might learn from McCarthy, who finds time for meditation before games and deals with a version of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Before the game, Williams painted a suicide prevention logo and colors on his right fingernails. On his left hand: “988,” the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Wednesday is World Suicide Prevention Day. He tries to be real, but every game, McCarthy has his own routine. He dabs his face. He brings the eye black.
“I kind of make this switch when game day happens,” he said. "That's when the war paint comes on. It's like I'm ready to die on that field, and I'm ready to do anything possible to get that win. It's not going to look pretty, and it's not going to look like someone just did my makeup for Halloween. It's war paint.”
At halftime, Minnesota coach Kevin O’Connell continued to believe in McCarthy months after dumping Sam Darnold, who competed a while for league MVP honors. “I told him, 'You are going to bring us back to win this game,’ and the look in his eye was fantastic,” he said. “We don’t win the game unless J.J. plays the way he did in the second half and most importantly kept the belief of his team behind him. This team’s made of the right stuff.”
Said McCarthy: “That guy is one of the best — if not the best — coaches, in my opinion, in the National Football League. Any kind of compliments or belief like that, it means the world. That just gave me the confidence to go out there and just execute the ball plays and have a fast arm and make quick, decisive decisions. And it worked out.”
Watching him work the sideline was a piece of artwork. The veterans brooded. J.J. kept talking to them. “Nothing happened. We kept our head up, we kept our composure, and we kept fighting at the end of the day,” Justin Jefferson said. “We know the guys we have in our room, the guys we have on that offense — and then it’s just all about competing every single play. Adversity is going to hit. Every game is not going to be perfect. That first half was a tough struggle. Us trying to figure out everything, having J.J. as our new quarterback. But that second half, we went in that locker room and told everybody, ‘Keep our heads up. We’re not down by a lot.’ ’’
Turns out Peyton Manning wrote a letter to the No. 1 football fan from Chicago. His name is Pope Leo XIV. Would he join the “ManningCast” with Peyton and Eli? “Kind of like I failed to recruit Randy Moss to Tennessee. I couldn’t close the Pope, but I made the effort,” Manning said. “These are handwritten letters, and if you’re watching, Your Holiness, this is an open invitation. Come on the show anytime. It’s you, it’s Tiger Woods, it’s Bradley Cooper, it’s President Bush, it’s Larry David, y’all are our most wanted on a list for the ‘ManningCast.’ ”
Better still, Caleb Williams must play a complete football game. The fingernails? “Part of it is just me being myself. And you know, I’m not going to apologize about it,” he said. “I’m gonna be me. It doesn’t bother me what people have to say about me because I know what I am. I know who I am and what I like to do.”
Win the game. Got it? The kid who wore a Brian Urlacher jersey, back in 2007, grew up and won his first game. That should be appropriate motivation.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.