MINNEAPOLIS — Carson Wentz is coming off his worst game of the season, having thrown two interceptions and misfired on numerous passes while playing with a harness on his left shoulder. Max Brosmer has thrown just four passes in an NFL game.

They will be the Vikings’ top two quarterbacks against the Los Angeles Chargers on Thursday night when they try to get back above .500 and avoid losing more ground in the NFC playoff standings after falling to a tie for 11th with Sunday’s loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.

Their precarious assignment Thursday is a familiar one: fly two time zones west on a short week for the second time in two years and the third time in eight. No team in the NFL has taken on that task as much in the past decade; the Vikings, for the second year in a row, will play in Los Angeles 18 days after they won in London.

J.J. McCarthy will again be inactive as the Vikings’ emergency third quarterback after a workout Tuesday that left the Vikings feeling their 2024 first-round pick is “not there yet” in his recovery from a high ankle sprain. If the Vikings were playing a Sunday game, coach Kevin O’Connell said, McCarthy might have been able to try to push through to play. A Thursday game, with time for neither a normal week of practice nor additional treatment on his ankle, led the Vikings to save the question of McCarthy’s return until the Nov. 2 game against the Detroit Lions.

“It’s been in some of the movements, the reactionary movements within the pocket, being able to use his athleticism to protect himself in the pocket, and then as he’s able to work through progressions,” O’Connell said. “I feel really good about the work we’ve done on his foundation of his fundamentals. That’s been pretty evident through the work that he’s done. And he’s really made a commitment to doing that. It’s really just about, ‘Hey, there’s maybe a guy that gets edged, and I don’t really know the movement I’m going to have to make.’ That’s where he still feels it. He doesn’t have the ability to do that pain-free.”

Amid the fulminations of Vikings fans anxious for McCarthy’s return, it’s worth revisiting O’Connell’s thinking in the context of his overall approach with the quarterback.

Since the Vikings started looking for a first-round QB last year, O’Connell has frequently said teams fail young quarterbacks as much as young quarterbacks fail teams. His experience in Washington six years ago, when O’Connell was the offensive coordinator for a team that rushed rookie Dwayne Haskins into action, certainly influenced the careful approach he had constructed for McCarthy after the Vikings took him 10th overall last year.

The Vikings planned to start Sam Darnold and give McCarthy the job only when he had proven ready to take it. McCarthy‘s torn right meniscus meant he missed his entire rookie season. His right high ankle sprain this year has so far cost him five games in his first year as a starter. But the Vikings again have kept the 22-year-old’s recovery on a deliberate pace, maintaining he would not play until he was completely healthy and had completed a full week of practice.

The quarterback’s two injuries have cost him valuable practice snaps and game time, making his long-term production still something of a mystery nearly one-third of the way through his rookie contract. But even with Wentz struggling and Brosmer unproven heading into a Thursday night game against McCarthy‘s former college coach Jim Harbaugh, the Vikings still seem to be making their QB decisions with McCarthy‘s future as their guiding principle.

“We obviously risk setting him back [if he plays too quickly], which would be very, very unfortunate with the time lost already,” O’Connell said. “Giving him the best chance to go out there and have success is ultimately what we’re what we’re looking for.”

Even after going 13-4 with Kirk Cousins in 2022 and winning the NFC North title in O’Connell‘s first season, the Vikings tempered their commitment to the veteran quarterback, choosing not to give him the guaranteed money through the 2025 season that he wanted in a long-term deal. Their decisions to not make financial commitments or playing time promises to Darnold or Daniel Jones also seemed rooted in their plans for McCarthy; they couldn‘t give either veteran the guarantees he wanted without compromising their vision for their 22-year-old QB.

Despite going 34-17 and making two playoff appearances in their first three years together, O’Connell and general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, of all people, have seemed the least impressed with their success. O’Connell replaced defensive coordinator Ed Donatell with Brian Flores after a 13-win season, in search of a more aggressive defensive approach. The Vikings let veteran players go after 2022 and 2024, rather than attempting to run it back in hopes they could turn first-round playoff exits into sustained postseason runs.

The GM and the coach got contract extensions this offseason, but both seem to know their tenures will be defined by whether they‘ve solved the quarterback position for the foreseeable future. The desire for a young passer influenced what they did with Cousins; their plans for McCarthy meant they held firm in talks with Darnold, Jones and Aaron Rodgers this offseason.

Even if the stakes of a decision about whether to play McCarthy on a partially recovered ankle might seem relatively minor in the near term, the Vikings don’t seem to see it that way. The possibility of McCarthy aggravating his ankle, or resorting to shoddy movement patterns as he compensates for a joint he doesn’t fully trust, could come with a risk to his development the team doesn’t yet view as worth taking.

O’Connell said Tuesday “it’s not going to need to be something where he’s 130 percent,” adding, “with this kind of injury, he’s got to work through some of that here late in the rehab stages.”

The next week and a half, then, seems about McCarthy gaining the stability and confidence in his ankle he needs to play with mobility, accuracy and poise. If a full week of practice before the Lions game reveals he has those things, he could return to the field at Detroit.

Until then, it’s Wentz, trying to steady himself after Sunday’s loss and help the Vikings win for the first time on a Thursday night on the West Coast.

Eight years ago, he was the second-year QB, putting himself in the MVP conversation and leading the Eagles to the top of the NFC standings before tearing his ACL and missing the team’s Super Bowl LII run. He has played for five teams since then, and his time as the Vikings starter could end when McCarthy is ready.

“I don’t have a lot of time and energy to think beyond this one, quite frankly,” Wentz said. “Let the future take care of itself.”

It puts him in a unique position to understand McCarthy’s path.

“It’s a crazy business. There’s a lot that goes into it,” Wentz said. “There’s a lot of things people don’t realize about, just personal life and how it’s affected by this career as well. He’s got a new baby. ... [McCarthy has] got a good head on his shoulders, and it’s been fun to kind of talk to him throughout this process and become a good friend with him. But yeah, life comes at you fast.”

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