Imagine Terry Bradshaw, the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback who won four Super Bowls, saying that he would not have found success had he played in 2026. That’s how the legend sees the competition in the league currently. He sympathises with J.J. McCarthy after the Minnesota Vikings could not honor the first-round pick of the 2024 NFL Draft.
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“Because of the short rope now, players come out and be a first pick in the draft or the first pick,” Bradshaw said on The Rich Roll podcast. “Now, in two years, look what happened to the quarterback in Minnesota from Michigan. First-round pick, eighth in the draft, I think, something like that. Now he’s third string. Now they’re talking about where can he revive his career. I came out the first pick in the draft and I struggled. Struggled. And it took me my first year horrific. Second year a little bit better.
“Third year, you know, getting more comfortable with running the offense. Fourth year definitely much better. Today I wouldn’t have made it. I would have been gone. I would have been gone because I had to grow up. I had to mature. I had to get used to being booed. I never was booed.”
Bradshaw spent his entire NFL career, 14 long years, with the Steelers after being the first overall pick in the 1970 NFL Draft. After he wrapped his NFL stint, he had a picture-perfect resume to boast: 4 Super Bowls, 2 Super Bowl MVPs, 3 Pro Bowls. But none of this success came immediately.
As Bradshaw admitted, his rookie season was a disaster. He threw for 1,410 yards and six touchdowns. Second year, things improved, as he racked up 2,259 yards and 13 touchdowns. Gradually, he kept finding his footing as his first Super Bowl success came in the 1974 season, four years after he got drafted. But the Steelers did not give up on him and gave Bradshaw enough time to grow and adjust.
Unfortunately, over the past few decades, things have shifted in the league. The players are put on a timer, no matter whether they came in as a top pick in the draft. Bradshaw has taken McCarthy’s example.
Coming out of Michigan, McCarthy had the spotlight on him. He went 27-1 as Michigan’s starter across two seasons, winning the 2023 national championship. His lone defeat came in the 2022 CFP semifinals against TCU, where he recorded three total touchdowns in a game in which the Wolverines scored 45 points. Vikings were in no way ready to pass on the Wolverines’ quarterback. They were in a sensitive spot after letting go of veteran Kirk Cousins, so they moved up one spot in the 2024 NFL draft to take McCarthy aboard.
But things never took off for him after that. He lost his rookie season to injury. McCarthy’s struggles continued in 2025, when he recorded 11 touchdown passes and 12 interceptions while completing only 57.6% of his attempts. This came with Kevin O’Connell, widely viewed as a quarterback whisperer, as his coach and Justin Jefferson, one of the league’s elite receivers, as a key target.
Minnesota started to lose faith in McCarthy but still decided to hold onto him for this season. The Vikings demoted him to a third-string quarterback behind veteran Kyler Murray and Carson Wentz. In 2026, he played three games and started one, racking up 495 yards and one touchdown. But soon his time ran out, as Minnesota traded him to the New York Giants in September, in exchange for a 2027 fifth-round draft pick.
Making his first appearance since Michigan’s national championship win over Washington in early 2024, McCarthy accounted for three touchdowns to help Minnesota rally past Chicago. The next game proved far more difficult, as he threw two interceptions in a loss to Atlanta before suffering a high ankle sprain that kept him sidelined for five games.
But unlike the support and the patience Bradshaw got from Pittsburgh and the NFL, Minnesota refused to carry McCarthy on its shoulders and got rid of him. That’s exactly what Bradshaw tried to show about how the NFL is now ruled by the only mindset: You win, you stay. You lose, you leave.