The Vikings’ Schedule Contains 5 First-of-Many QB Matchups
The Vikings’ 2025 regular season schedule has been out for a couple of days now, and we’ve had an ample amount of time to take it in and digest the dang thing.
The main thing to notice about it is the plethora of primetime slots these Vikings were assigned. They have four stand-alone games in the first five weeks of the season, as well as two more primetime matchups against the Los Angeles Chargers and Dallas Cowboys later in the year.
Their Week 18 matchup against the Green Bay Packers, like everyone else’s, is “TBD” for a time, but if that slot is anything like last year for the Vikings, it could very easily be flexed to Sunday Night Football if there are playoff implications.
Another main thing to notice is that it is chock-full of young QB battles for J.J. McCarthy. That’s why today, we’re checking out the five main QB matchups to keep an eye on for McCarthy and his Minnesota Vikings.
The Vikings’ Division Rivals
Let’s get the obvious ones out of the way; barring injury or anything drastic happening, six of the Vikings’ 17 games will be played against a mixture of Caleb Williams and the Bears, Jordan Love and the Packers, and Jared Goff and the Lions.
McCarthy will be matching up against these gentlemen for a while, especially Williams, who was drafted the same year as our guy. Unfortunately for Williams, and reportedly against his and his father’s wishes, the Vikings weren’t going to facilitate an Eli Manning deal and get Williams from the Bears on draft night, thus settling for McCarthy, who fell into their lap.
Like with the other QBs coming up on this list, McCarthy vs. Williams will be a common matchup for what will likely be around the next two decades. This one will just be more common because, of course, they just-so-happen to be division rivals within the cold confines of the NFC North.
Michael Penix Jr. of the Atlanta Falcons
One of the three draft-classmates of McCarthy on this list, the Vikings will host the Atlanta Falcons during Week 2 on Sunday Night Football on NBC.
As we all know, during the 2024 NFL Draft, the Falcons set their succession plan for the post-Cousins era before poor Kirk even set foot on a practice field for the franchise. Atlanta shocked the world when they took Penix Jr. out of Washington 8th overall, since they had just given Kirk Cousins almost $200 million on a four-year agreement.
This set the Vikings up perfectly to select McCarthy a couple picks later after a trade one spot up with the New York Jets to 10th overall, whom of which was much younger than Penix, had way less of an injury history, and had defeated Penix just three months earlier in the 2024 National Championship Game.
This is going to be a common one, even though the Vikings and Falcons aren’t divisional rivals. The two teams play each other literally almost every year, given their similar finishes with each other year after year in their respective divisions.
Jayden Daniels of the Washington Commanders
These two teams don’t meet quite as often as the Vikings do with the Falcons, but you’ve been able to bet that at very least, these two teams will meet at least every other season. That trend has been going on for the better part of the last couple of decades.
This will be the first meeting between the two teams to not involve a purple or red-wearing Kirk Cousins since November 2nd, 2014, when Robert Griffin III traveled to the then-named TCF Bank Stadium in a 29-26 loss to Teddy Bridgewater and the Vikings.
This go-around, the new era will be in attendance. In what could be not only a commonly occurring regular season matchup, but also a commonly occurring playoffs matchup, Jayden Daniels and McCarthy will meet in Week 14 at noon at U.S. Bank Stadium this upcoming season.
