Storylines in this league have a habit of changing fast.

Originally, a get-together of National Champion college quarterbacks wearing their respective No. 9 uniforms had a certain aura to it. The Vikings and J.J. McCarthy against the Bengals and Joe Burrow – are you kidding? That one sounded fun when the NFL schedule dropped and the 2025 regular season began.

Alas, it's not on the docket any longer as McCarthy will miss the Week 3 home game at minimum with an ankle injury he picked up on a second-and-20 scramble in the second half of Minnesota's loss to Atlanta on Sunday Night Football, and Burrow is out for potentially three months because of a toe injury that he suffered early in Cincinnati's win over Jacksonville. And so the attention pivots to – drumroll, please …

Jake Browning and Carson Wentz.

Suddenly, it's a contest between a former Vikings quarterback and a current one who grew up admiring previous ones. Yes, that's confusing. Before Browning became the vested option behind Burrow, he was an undrafted arm launching his career in Minnesota. And before Wentz agreed to a deal with the Vikings on Aug. 24, he was a journeyman accepting his arc from No. 2 overall draft pick and MVP candidate to backup.

The new plot is in motion, and so here's a primer no one expected.

In a timely article Tuesday (since a handful of starting quarterbacks across the league are banged up), Seth Walder of ESPN tried his hand at ranking the 12 best backups at football's most important position.

Browning and Wentz cracked the list – at Nos. 2 and 11.

Walder wrote the following about Browning, who is 4-3 as QB1 in his career, with all seven starts occurring in 2023, and has operated Cincinnati's offense with strangely comparable success to Burrow:

I had Browning third in this exercise a year ago thanks to his excellent play in place of Burrow in 2023. The sample was limited, but Browning had 283 dropbacks in seven starts and would have ranked 13th in QBR (60.8) and fifth in completion percentage over expectation (plus-3%) had he seen enough snaps to qualify. Of course, Browning is not without red flags. His performance in 2023 came with a low 6.1 air yards per attempt that would've ranked last among qualifying QBs. He also took sacks at a high 9% rate.

As Walder mentioned, it's a small sampling, but Browning has played a winning brand of football for the Bengals. He actually holds a narrow advantage over Burrow in win percentage as their starter (.571 vs. .570). Browning also has produced almost replicable points per game, total yards per game, pass yards per game and red-zone touchdown percentage to Burrow, whereas other Bengals to start games since the Zac Taylor era launched in 2019 – Andy Dalton, Ryan Finley and Brandon Allen – are 4-19 (.174) combined.

It's of course a comfort for Browning to be flanked by elite receivers Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins.

Wentz could be the beneficiary of a similar skill-player luxury, with Justin Jefferson at the top, obviously.

Also working in Wentz's favor is his recent history of playing for great offensive minds. After one-year stints as "the guy" for Indianapolis and Washington, Wentz spent the past two seasons soaking up info from Sean McVay with the Rams and Andy Reid with the Chiefs. His mastery of offenses continues with Kevin O'Connell.

Walder painted the backdrop of Wentz's peculiar football journey:

Wentz's peak came in 2017 (before tearing his ACL and missing Philadelphia's title run), but that season turned out to be an outlier driven by exceptional results on late downs (he ranked only 12th in QBR on early downs). From that point on, his numbers dipped — a 55.3 QBR, minus-2% completion percentage over expectation and only 5.8 yards per dropback. His one-game cameos the past two seasons have been dramatically different. He posted a 90.2 QBR for the Rams in a Week 18 win over the 49ers in 2023 but could muster only a 19.1 QBR for Kansas City in a shutout loss to the Broncos in last season's finale.

Overall, Wentz is 47-46-1 as an NFL starter and boasts a 153:67 touchdown-to-interception ratio. The 32-year-old former North Dakota State star has 12 fourth-quarter comebacks and 13 game-winning drives.

Check out the rest of Walder's article, here, to learn more about his hierarchy of backup quarterbacks.

Some bigger-picture thoughts

Two topics relevant to the Vikings were included in a Week 2 write-up Tuesday.

CBS Sports' Jared Dubin noted several takeaways following the second week of games. Firstly, he gathered that "Week 1 can be a liar but also sometimes prophetic." The next one is extra notable.

Joe Burrow takes too many hits

Burrow has succumbed to pressure at an alarming rate dating to college, so there's some inefficiency by him, but it's at least partially an indictment on the Bengals o-line, which must safeguard Browning now.

Dubin shared the following:

The Bengals have failed to adequately protect Burrow, supplying him with lines that ranked 27th, 25th, 30th, 22nd, 29th and now 24th, according to pass-blocking grades by Pro Football Focus. He "only" has the 13th-highest pressure rate out of 44 qualified quarterbacks during that stretch, according to Tru Media, but he has the fourth-fastest time to pressure at just 2.41 seconds. He's taken the second-most total sacks and lost the second-most sack yards despite missing nearly a full season's worth of games in the six-year span. (All of this is despite consistently ranking inside the top 10 in average time to throw.)

Browning, for what it's worth, has a slightly higher career sack percentage than Burrow (8.33 vs. 7.22).

All that seems encouraging for Minnesota's defense, which ranks third in the league in pressure rate (32.8 percent) and is tops in QB hurries per drop back (19.4 percent) according to Pro Football Reference.

Relevant to the other backfield, Dubin concluded "the second-year quarterbacks are works in progress."

First-rounders Caleb Williams (1^st overall), Jayden Daniels (2^nd), Drake Maye (3^rd), Michael Penix, Jr. (8^th), McCarthy (10^th) and Bo Nix (12^th) are struggling in certain areas – perhaps most notably, their accuracy.

Dubin elaborated:

They've been off target with a combined 13.4% of their throws, and none of them rank inside the top 20 in that stat despite there being only 34 qualified QBs. They've taken a ton of sacks (8.2% sack rate, with McCarthy's sky-high number mostly being canceled out by Nix's minuscule one) and have rarely created explosive plays (5.6% of drop-backs, again with none of them ranking in the top half of the league).

Despite the rough patches, "sophomore" NFL quarterbacks are .500 in 2025, except for Williams (0-2).

Read Dubin's entire story here.

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