PANIC METER: Should we be concerned about JJ McCarthy?
From the JJ McCarthy to Brian Thomas, is it time to panic?
Welcome to a new series - the PANIC METER. We'll go over some of the more interesting situations around the NFL and decide if it's time to... well... panic.
JJ McCarthy, Minnesota Vikings
JJ McCarthy has had quite the NFL debut. He started his season against the Chicago Bears with fireworks ensuing.
Despite that comeback victory, McCarthy looked out of his depth for the first 45 minutes of the game. He was sailing throws, looked unable to get past his first read, and was making poor decisions consistently.
Somehow, someway, though, he pulled the Vikings out from a 17-6 deficit to help the team score 21 unanswered points in the fourth quarter. On those three touchdown drives, McCarthy had 101 total yards and three touchdowns - a far cry from the struggles of the first three quarters of the contest.
I really don’t want to discount the difficulty of this game for McCarthy. It’s his first career start, his first meaningful football since his college championship victory with Michigan, and he’s going up against a talented defense with an experienced coordinator in Dennis Allen.
But it’s still hard to forget just how poor things were looking in the first half - and those concerns were only accentuated with the Vikings week two loss to the Atlanta Falcons.
Here’s what I’ll say: JJ McCarthy’s biggest issue right now is his response to pressure.
As of right now, McCarthy has 23 drop backs under pressure. In those drop backs, he’s completed 6-12 passes and taken nine sacks. His EPA/play in pressure scenarios is -0.88 EPA/play.
That is… not good! The only worse QBs under pressure this season are Jake Browning, Joe Flacco, and Bo Nix.
There’s a few things this could point to, but the short of it is that McCarthy has to be better reading things out pre-snap. Yet I still don’t think it’s fair to set the panic meter too high on a guy that gets to play under Kevin O’Connell.
Panic Meter: 5/10
Brian Thomas Jr., Jacksonville Jaguars
Brian Thomas Jr. had one of the worst games I can remember for a receiver in quite some time this past weekend against the Bengals.
Maybe not necessarily from a “wow, he’s not an NFL player” way, but more so just to prompt the question: What happened?
To date, Brian Thomas Jr. only has five catches for 60 yards on the season. This past Sunday, he dropped two passes that would have put the game out of reach (the Bengals would eventually come back to win on their final possession). Thomas Jr. also failed to secure a live fumble (didn’t even try) and stopped running on a crosser in anticipation of a hit. Because of this, the ball was intercepted.
Brian Thomas Jr. is actually the second-worst in the league in terms of receiving EPA, at -14.2 EPA. That mark is only beaten by Xavier Legette.
Even in Week 1 against Carolina, Thomas Jr. only had a single catch for nine yards (though he did take a sweep for an untouched touchdown early in that game).
The struggles in Thomas Jr.’s game are that of a receiver desperately trying to avoid any sort of contact. He’s taking his eyes off the ball, bracing for hits that aren’t there, looking forward rather than at the ball he’s bringing in, leaving his feet to jump for balls that don’t require it. It’s all bad.
And these types of reps build bad habits - and it does not help that Liam Coen stated on Monday that Thomas Jr. had been dealing with a nagging wrist injury - something not present on the team’s injury reports prior to Sunday.
So for a guy who had arguably the best season of any rookie receiver last year (87 catches, 1282 yards, 10 TD), I am panicking quite a bit.
Panic Meter: 8/10
The Chicago Bears
The Chicago Bears have had a rough go to start their season. Unfortunately, they happen to be in the toughest division in the NFL, with the schedule gods buffing their first few weeks (Week 1 vs. Vikings, Week 2 at Lions).
And while the Bears have been crowned offseason champions before - the past few months saw arguably the biggest structural changes of the last half-decade - with Ben Johnson (former Lions offensive coordinator) being hired as the head coach.
And boy, did the first drive of the season look exciting for Chicago.
After this first drive script, though, the Bears never quite looked the same. They managed to score a late touchdown that made it a one-score game (this was after a 21-point run by the Vikings), but Caleb Williams looked… lackluster.
And in part, at least, I think that was by design.
By all reports in training camp, Johnson wanted Williams “drinking from a fire hose” in terms of learning a brand-new offense. So while the scripted drive looked phenomenal, I think it was built-in that the offense would be a work-in-progress.
And that work-in-progress mantra didn’t go away in a 52-21 loss to the Detroit Lions this past Sunday. But I just have to imagine this Bears team is only going to get better from here.
Panic Meter: 3/10
Xavier Legette, Carolina Panthers
Xavier Legette has had one of the worst starts to the season as almost any other player in the NFL - and certainly the most worrisome of the high profile second-year players.
After an up-and-down rookie campaign which saw Legette catch 49 passes for nearly 500 yards and 4 touchdowns, there hasn’t been many signs of life so far in the 2025 season.
Now, there’s a few things I want to make clear here, the first of which is that Xavier Legette is severely lacking a lot of fundamental skills of starting level receivers.
I’m going to show a sequence of plays - both of which are easy catches that every single NFL wide receiver needs to make. Legette failed to bring both of these balls in.
Play #1:
Play #2:
Both of these plays should be routine sideline grabs. And there have been issues with Legette’s effort level and hands, among other things. So I want to paint a picture as to his failings as a receiver so far this season. I do not want to exonerate him of these shortcomings.
But the second point that I want to make is that Xavier Legette is being fundamentally misused in Dave Canales’ offense.
Legette has been a downfield, straight-line player since his time at South Carolina - someone in the “DK Metcalf” mold that excels in downfield routes that typically break inwards (think go’s, posts, drags, and digs). Because of his natural rigidity as both a route runner and an athlete, there are natural limitations to what Legette can be in both of those areas.
But that “straight-line athlete” part of Legette’s game is, in my opinion, being underutilized in favor of shorter, more agility-based reps. That’s just not his game, in my opinion.
I’ll give three examples here.
#1 - #77 Nijman late to his assignment on this play, but still just not great movement from Legette
#2 - Young hits the wrong shoulder from Legette here, but still some rigidity in how he recovers.
#3 - Better than the previous two reps in terms of design, but still just not an agile guy.
My point here: Xavier Legette is built more like a freight train than a motorcycle. He’s straight-line fast, needs a runway to get started, and can take advantage of defenders in those situations. But Canales has been using him more like a shifty, agile slot receiver when those types of reps are consistently Legette’s worst.
So while Legette has been one of the worst receivers in the NFL by basically any metric this season, I still think there’s some room for him to be a capable NFL starter. But it is going to require more fundamentally sound work from him, as well as more creative usage from his play-caller.
Just one crosser, please Dave.
Here’s Legette at his best in 2024:
In-breakers, crossers, and post routes. That’s the bread and butter. And we just haven’t seen these types of routes designed for Legette so far this season.
So in terms of panicking? While I think there are areas that Legette needs to address in the short-term future for his NFL career, I still think there’s a lot of untapped talent.
Panic Meter: 5/10
