Justin Jefferson defends J.J. McCarthy's controversial 'Nine' persona

Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy probably regrets the comments he made on November 5, coming off of a big upset win over the Lions. Cameras had captured his intense glare in the visitor's locker room at Ford Field, as Kevin O'Connell prepared to give him a game ball. Then, after practice the following Wednesday, McCarthy introduced the world to his alter ego who comes out on game days.

"There's definitely a level of a switch that gets flipped," he said. "For me, I call him 'Nine.'"

At the time, it seemed innocent enough. Dating back to his time at Michigan, McCarthy has been known for his intensity on game days, doing things like meditating before games and streaking his face with eye black, which he's called his "war paint." And when you're having success, you can get away with that. McCarthy did nothing but win at Michigan, and the victory in Detroit moved him to 2-1 in his first three NFL games.

But then things unraveled. McCarthy struggled quite a bit in consecutive losses to the Ravens, Bears, and Packers after that point. As a result, "Nine" became a meme and easy fodder for jokes. Every time another NFL quarterback played poorly, they were edited into the now-infamous shot of McCarthy in the locker room in Detroit.

Last week, coming off a win over the Commanders, KFAN's Paul Allen was having his weekly chat with O'Connell when he brought up McCarthy's alter ego and made his stance very clear. "The Nine bit sucks," Allen said. "I don't like it. It's not who he is."

O'Connell didn't exactly disagree in his response.

"All I've asked J.J. to do is just be authentically himself," O'Connell said. "I think at times, guys try to — and maybe it is the moment, and if it's authentic in the moment, fire away, have at it — but we don't need to exhaust any energy. Our jobs are hard enough already. Trying to be somebody else, or trying to play to some sort of persona, whatever it may be, let's just go back to work, man."

But not everyone is anti-Nine. This week, in an interview with Andrew Siciliano of Yahoo! Sports, Justin Jefferson was talking about young quarterbacks needing to not get too high or too low. Siciliano then said "it sounds like you're kind of over Nine."

"I'm not really over Nine," Jefferson said. "I like Nine. I think people took that and really ran with it, because I don't really think that he's saying that he's to that point where he's giving himself a name or he's giving himself an alter ego. Having that, it's the same as me calling myself Jets or Jettas. It's the same exact thing. He doesn't really have another nickname besides J.J., so him calling himself Nine is not really something of him getting too big-headed or him feeling that he's made it or anything.

"I feel like that's just his alter ego that everybody has when they step out on the field. Everybody has to have that confidence booster, everyone has to have that switch they have to turn on when they step out there on that field. I feel like him saying Nine, that represents that. I don't really feel like people are thinking of it the way he's taking it. That's something that I guess he's gonna learn from and really not bring into depth, but having that alter ego, having that confidence behind him is not something I blame him for."