Let’s talk about a quarterback who has an alter ego. A quarterback who, before the biggest game of his life, paints his face with war paint—not for Halloween, he’ll tell you, but for a fight. “I kind of make this switch when game day happens,” McCarthy said. “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… It’s war paint.”

J.J. McCarthy, in his NFL debut, went to war against the Chicago Bears on Monday Night at Soldier Field. For three quarters, it looked like a skirmish he might lose. But then, as the game hung in the balance, something clicked. The switch flipped. The war paint came alive.

The final numbers tell a story of a comeback for the ages. Trailing 17-6 with just over a minute left in the third quarter, the Minnesota Vikings had a win probability of 7.7%, according to Next Gen Stats. They outscored the Bears 21-7 the rest of the way, with McCarthy accounting for all three touchdowns—two passing, one rushing—all of them in the fourth quarter. It’s an NFL first. He is the first quarterback in league history to account for three touchdowns in the fourth quarter of his debut. The only other QB since 1950 to lead a 10-point, fourth-quarter comeback in his debut on the road was Steve Young in 1985. That’s special company. That’s historic.

But let’s back up and talk about the grimy details, the ones that reveal how a game like this is really won.

On the other side of the ball, Caleb Williams, the highly-touted rookie for the Bears, was running for his life. “Caleb Williams was under pressure all night,” was one of the biggest takeaways from the game. And it wasn’t just a result of a bad offensive line. The Vikings’ new-look defensive line, a key reason Brian Flores’ defense was so effective, was a revelation. New acquisitions Javon Hargrave and Jon Allen were human wrecking balls. Hargrave recorded seven pressures, tied for the most among all interior defensive linemen in the league. Allen wasn’t far behind with six, tied for second-most. For context, the Vikings’ two starting iDL from last season, Harrison Phillips and Jonathan Bullard, combined for a grand total of 21 pressures all season. Twenty-one. As one insider noted, Jalen Redmond showed why the team traded Harrison Phillips. The upgrade is staggering. The Vikings defense, under the maniacal direction of Brian Flores, bent but never broke. They suffocated Williams and the Bears when it mattered most, creating the space and time for their own young quarterback to find his rhythm.

The Vikings offense, however, was not without its own struggles. “J.J. McCarthy’s struggles are just as important as his successes,” a point made by many who watched the game. McCarthy looked shaky early, and his stats weren’t eye-popping: a 98.5 QB rating is good, but his total yardage was modest. He’s just 22 years old, coming off of two knee surgeries and hadn’t played competitive football in 21 months. The learning curve is steep, and there will be struggles. That’s a huge part of the story. The successes are important, of course, but the struggles—the pick-six, the slow start—are just as critical to understanding the kind of player McCarthy is. He learned on the fly, and he adapted.

Part of that adaptability came from the sheer belief in him from the team. Kevin O’Connell, the head coach who has staked his reputation on McCarthy, had a simple message at halftime: “You are going to bring us back to win this game.” McCarthy looked his coach in the eye and believed it. “The look in his eye was just fantastic,” O’Connell said. In the huddle, down 17-6 in the third quarter, McCarthy turned to his teammates and asked a simple question he’d never asked before: “Where would you rather be?” The veterans, from Justin Jefferson to Jordan Mason—a potential acquisition of the offseason who was a monster in the fourth quarter—were juiced up. Justin Jefferson, who has a famous knack for the dramatic, wasn’t surprised. “I already knew what J.J. was about,” Jefferson said after the game. “Coming from Michigan, being a national champion, we knew he had that dog in him.” The team had faith.

And then there’s the other side of the story—the offensive line that gave him the time to operate. Donovan Jackson, the rookie offensive lineman, had a debut for the ages. According to PFF, he allowed zero pressures and posted an 88.1 pass-blocking grade—the highest of any rookie offensive lineman after week one. His overall grade of 74.3 was second only to Armand Membou of the Jets among all rookies, ahead of fellow first-rounders Banks, Campbell, and Zabel. Even T.J. Hockenson was a monster in blocking, an often-overlooked aspect of his game.

McCarthy’s “Wanda Bear” play call, a read-option he’s been running since seventh grade, sealed the deal. “I was absolutely fired up,” he said. He ran it for a touchdown. It wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t a lucky break. It was a play he’d honed over a lifetime. That’s the essence of this win. It was ugly. It was messy. But it was about a quarterback who has been winning his whole life, from high school to college, and who has now extended his absurd regular-season winning streak to 2,144 days. The last time he lost a regular-season game as a starter, he was a teenager. Now, he’s a 1-0 NFL starting quarterback, with a wild alter ego and an unshakeable belief that he’s ready to die on the field for his team.