For the first time since helping Michigan win the College Football Playoff National Championship in 2024, Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy and Chicago Bears rookie tight end Colston Loveland will be on the same field together when their respective teams kick off the 2025 NFL season with a Monday night showdown in September.
Recently, Loveland revealed on the “Up & Adams Show with Kay Adams” that he and McCarthy have had some friendly trash talk about the Week 1 game already this offseason.
“I just FaceTimed him the other day actually. He came in, talking a bunch of trash.
…[He said] we’re coming for that butt.”
Former teammates, Minnesota Vikings QB J.J. McCarthy and Chicago Bears TE Colston Loveland, to make NFL debuts against each other
Despite McCarthy entering the NFL in 2024, a year before Loveland, both former Michigan teammates are currently scheduled to make their professional debuts in the same game during the upcoming season.
If healthy, the young Vikings quarterback could have potentially appeared in at least one game for Minnesota last year. But a preseason knee injury knocked McCarthy out for the entire 2024 campaign, so his regular-season debut had to be put on pause.
Now that he’s fully recovered from the knee injury he suffered last year, the former Michigan quarterback will get to make his NFL debut in front of a national audience on ESPN’s “Monday Night Football”.
If all goes well, McCarthy’s first meaningful matchup at the professional level will be against a Bears defense that is now led by former New Orleans Saints head coach Dennis Allen.
Minnesota faced Allen and the Saints twice after hiring Kevin O’Connell to be the team’s head coach in 2022, and the Vikings came out with a win in both matchups. In those contests, Minnesota’s offense averaged 27.5 points and 5.4 yards per play.
In September, O’Connell and the rest of the Vikings will be hoping that McCarthy can help continue the recent success against Allen’s defenses and lead Minnesota to a Week 1 victory over Chicago.