John Harbaugh spent part of this week explaining why a quarterback the Giants gave up a fifth-round pick for is being used as a runner.
J.J. McCarthy played five snaps in New York’s 27-27 tie with Washington on Sunday. He had two carries for two yards. Two of his plays were wiped out by penalties. Harbaugh, speaking the following week, indicated there is more where that came from.
“What you saw is probably not all we have for him right now,” Harbaugh said. “The benefits of it? It’s a change of pace.”
Harbaugh Is Framing This as an Obligation
The most revealing line was about roster management rather than scheme.
“I think we’d be negligent if we didn’t try to do that,” Harbaugh said, on the idea that a team owes it to itself to use every active player. He added: “But we’ll see if it’s something that can help us.”
That is a coach keeping expectations low while leaving a door open. It is also a reasonable use of a 23-year-old who is not going to start.
Jameis Winston Is Not Losing the Job
Jameis Winston signed a two-year extension on September 7 and remains the starter. Harbaugh has been direct about it since the trade.
“He’s our starting quarterback and that’s why we’re rolling,” Harbaugh said in late September, adding that “Jameis will be the starter for as long as I can see into the future.”
At the time of the deal Harbaugh said the open question was who the backup would be, not who the starter was. Nothing about McCarthy’s five snaps changes that.
How He Got Here
Minnesota traded McCarthy to New York on September 28 for a 2027 fifth-round pick. That was the entire return, and it cleared roughly $4.5 million from the Vikings’ cap.
The Giants moved for him after Jaxson Dart’s Week 2 knee injury, which required surgery and ended his season. Jake Haener, who had been elevated for the Week 3 win over Tennessee, was waived the day the trade went through.
McCarthy was the 10th overall pick in 2024 and missed his entire rookie season on injured reserve after a preseason knee injury. In 2025, his only Vikings action, he made 10 starts and completed 57.6 percent of his passes for 1,632 yards with 11 touchdowns and 12 interceptions. He also carried 37 times for 181 yards and four touchdowns, and he won his last four starts to finish 6-4.
The accuracy was the recurring knock. The running was not. Four rushing touchdowns in 10 starts is a real part of his profile, and it is the part the Giants can use immediately without disrupting Winston.
The Michigan Connection Is Not Nothing
McCarthy went 27-1 as a starter at Michigan and won a national championship there under Jim Harbaugh, John’s brother. John Harbaugh, hired as Giants head coach in January, acknowledged the family pipeline in September.
“He always had good things to say about J.J.,” Harbaugh said of his brother.
That matters less than it sounds. Harbaugh’s coordinators are Matt Nagy, Dennard Wilson and Chris Horton, and the package McCarthy gets will be built by Nagy, not by nostalgia.
What to Watch Sunday
The Giants host the 1-4 Saints at 1 p.m. ET at MetLife Stadium. New York is 3-1-1 and sitting second in the NFC East after a tie it should have won.
If the McCarthy package grows beyond two carries, Sunday is when it shows up. A struggling Saints defense is the sort of opponent a team experiments against. If it stays at five snaps, Harbaugh’s “we’ll see” was the operative part of the sentence.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.