Hard to say with a new QB. If he connects quickly with Jefferson and Addison, well that's formidable.
The thing that I keep going back to is that there are a lot of indicators that the club doesn't have as much confidence in him as they keep assuring everyone that they do.
Any time they came within 20 feet of a microphone, they'd rush over and shout at it how much they trust McCarthy, how confident they are that he's ready, and how comfortable they are going into the season. But at the same time, they were talking with almost every free agent QB in the league - Rodgers, of course, but also Daniel Jones, Jimmy Garoppolo, Mac Jones, and even Carson
Wentz, for Pete's sake. Plus they apparently gave strong consideration to another dance with Darnold.
That doesn't sound to me like a team that is "totally confident going into the season with JJ McCarthy". If they're that interested in other QBs, I think it's a strong indicator that they're not all that excited about the one that they already have.
Now there are a couple of possible explanations. First, it could be that they're just covering their *****, but they've had the guy in their system for a full year now, and that should be enough time to assess whether he's "getting it", and they should have already had plenty of time for their medical staff to satisfy themselves that hie injury is no longer a problem. So this could mean that behind the scenes, they're not satisfied with at least one of those situations.
Or it could also mean that they see the "arc" of their team similarly to what a couple of us have said here - that they've been going all in to build a team for a strong run in a short window (rather than a solid foundation for several years to come), and that if it takes 2 years for McCarthy to get up to full potential, they're going to be on the descent by the time he's truly ready.
Or it could be something else none of us have thought of; or it could even mean nothing at all. It's just that it seems like in the corporate world, and your boss keeps telling you what a great job you're doing, but every weekend you notice that they're running ads in the Sunday paper looking for an opening that sounds an awful lot like what
you're already doing.
Their organization is
not acting as though they are fully confident in McCarthy. I'm curious why not.
He's in a good situation, although I don't know anything about the queen's OL. It would be a big mistake to look past them.
They've got an excellent O line, damn them to hell.
They had a very good line last year, and they improved these past few months. Various websites project the 2025 Vikings as a Top 10 line, with a couple ranking them as high as #5. At the same time, Green Bay's O-line seems to consistently check in at #8-11 - seldom (if ever) much higher. The consensus among the (seemingly) more credible sources, like ESPN, SI, etc, pretty much stacks us up dead even.
All the quibbling about who's #7 and who's #8, or whatever, is all noise and no signal. Both of these teams are going into 2025 boasting a strong wall in front of their young, developing quarterback, and neither of them are significantly vulnerable relative to the other on that issue.
What I see this comparison coming down is mostly this - which of the two teams improved their running game the most. And if that's the lens through which we are looking, Minnesota would seem to show the most substantial improvement.
Except that Green Bay ended 2024 with the #6 running game in the NFL, and we improved too. It seems unlikely we will slide back from that #6 slot. Whereas Minnesota finished at #19, so they would have to have become exponentially better to surpass us.
And I didn't notice them doing that. They probably strengthened their ground game, maybe quite a bit, but we strengthened ours as well. We should be much stronger on the ground than Minnesota.
And I don't care so much about JJ or JA catching footballs, if 1st-year starter JJ McCarthy is the one throwing the footballs at JJ and AJ. If Jordan Love in his 3rd season as a starter is the QB most of us think he is (and all of us
hope he is), our passing game should be significantly better than theirs.
I don't make predictions about final standings in the middle of May. There are way, wayyy to many unknowns and unknowables. I'll just say that right now, I
feel that we have a better shot at winning the division than possibly any of the other three teams.
Trying to say The Packers are somehow are not good and using a historical anomoly to prove it are not being honest with themselves. 
