Second-year Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy will make his first regular-season start on Monday night, but it sounds like he's as locked in as a seasoned pro, especially if this ice-cold quote from a recent ESPN story is any indication.
"I kind of make this switch when game day happens," McCarthy said, in a piece from ESPN's Kevin Seifert published Monday. "That's when the war paint comes on. It's like I'm ready to die on that field, and I'm ready to do anything possible to get that win. It's not going to look pretty, and it's not going to look like someone just did my makeup for Halloween. It's war paint."
The "war paint" he's referring to is his signature eye black, and the subject of the piece is McCarthy's pregame rituals—how does this much-hyped prospect but little-tested NFL starter prepare to take the stage week in and week out?
In addition to the face paint, the former Michigan QB leans into an extended version of his morning meditation on game days, hoping to stay "as present as possible, grounded and centered," he said, per Seifert. He also frequently uses something called a Shiftwave chair, which is "designed to apply vibrations as part of a biofeedback loop that responds to the body's physical and mental state.”
Overall, the quarterback's mindset is influenced, he says, by a proverb attributed to 17th-century Japanese writer Miyamoto Musashi: "It is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war."
And this 22-year-old warrior will take to the garden that is Chicago's Soldier Field on Monday night, when he faces fellow 2024 draftee Caleb Williams and the Bears at 8:15 p.m. ET.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as J.J. McCarthy Dropped Ice-Cold Quote About His Intense Mentality on Game Days.