Raiders 2024 NFL Draft Prospect Profile: Michigan QB J.J. McCarthy

Raiders QB prospect J.J. McCarthy Weaknesses

Above all else, McCarthy cannot throw the football accurately. Regardless of how open his receiver is, he will often make every catch more difficult than it needs to be or just throw an uncatchable ball. His ball placement is either not something he values or he can’t control it and either answer bodes poorly for his NFL future. 

Another glaring issue is his inability to navigate a pocket. His internal clock is startlingly fast and causes him to bail from completely clean pockets simply because he gets happy feet. Oftentimes, he misses receivers who are coming open due to this frenetic style or just runs himself into a sack. 

It is also fair to question McCarthy’s overall football intelligence as he doesn’t seem to be able to diagnose coverages consistently and routinely makes the wrong reads on some very simple passing concepts. Michigan loves to run split-field concepts to attack both man and zone coverage and most of the time McCarthy is just guessing. 

Perhaps the biggest indictment on McCarthy is that Michigan didn’t even trust him. With just 8 passing attempts in the win against Penn State and 18 in a National Championship game that was close for a substantial amount of time, the aforementioned processing and accuracy issues no doubt limited the Wolverine offense. They even took McCarthy off the field in certain situations to help their run game.