Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Are the Vikings failing JJ McCarthy? (Part 1)

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

Matthew Coller talks about his article on where JJ McCarthy stands right now with the Vikings and whether Kevin O'Connell's quote about failing QBs still holds up. Plus an update on Kyler Murray and Dane Brugler released his top 100 prospects so we should draft sim. The Purple Insider podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. Also, check out our sponsor HIMS at https://hims.com/purpleinsider Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

everybody welcome to another episode of Purple Insider presented by Fandul, Matthew Collar here, and a little bit to discuss tonight. I wrote an article at Purple Insider. Football about J.J. McCarthy, where he stands, and I want to talk about that. Also, we have a Kyler-Murray update. We've got a Dane Bruegler Top 100, which to me says we should probably do a draft simulation, now a post Super Bowl draft simulation. And as you guys know who watch and listen regularly, plenty of room for your questions, comments, thoughts,

feelings, takes, and opinions about the Minnesota Vikings as the main part of the discussion right now, of course, is the quarterback situation. But I would like to throw it out there that I am also open to questions about the other 52 players on the Minnesota Vikings. I've been working today on an article

about what to do with safety. If Harrison Smith retires, what are the options? So we can get into a little bit of that as well throughout the show. So I got a lot for you. I guess my question for the chat is, would you like me to read to you or do you want me to take you through the article? I can do it either way. But here's the impetus of what I wrote about for where J.J. McCarthy stands with the

Minnesota Vikings because I don't think it's particularly hard to figure out. through all of the tea leaves when you start to go through the way that they've acted about his potential for starting next year, the radio rose stuff, and even just firing your general manager doesn't exactly scream. We are super thrilled about the decisions that were made here. And if you think about J.J. McCarthy's last, call it, call it a month, his last month. Here's the list. I'll run through the list for you.

you. I wrote it down of J.J. McCarthy's the list of things that he's kind of dealt with over the last month. Now, this doesn't even include an injury against the Giants and then leaving the game against the Packers and then being criticized for the way that he left the Week 18 game against the Packers. So here's my list. I wrote, how in the world is J.J. McCarthy supposed to feel after these last four weeks. His head coach failed to endorse him as the 2026 starter in two separate press conferences. His general manager said that the decision to keep him, keeps him up at night, to keep McCarthy.

The same GM was fired. His owner didn't utter his name in the press conference to talk about Quasi Adolph-Menz's firing. His teammates went on Radio Row and weren't shy about admitting that they wanted Sam Darnold back in 2025 and that he was essentially to blame for Justin Jefferson's downseason. More 2024 Vikings like Harrison Smith and Blake Cashman and Nick Mullins. talked in separate articles by Tyler Dunn and Kailen Kaler about Darnold wrongly taking the blame for 2024.

NFL insiders repeatedly mentioned different quarterbacks for options for the Vikings, including Kirk Cousins, maybe Mac Jones, Derek Carr, Malik Willis, and then during the Super Bowl broadcast, there were a bunch of references to the team that let Sam Darnold go. So J.J. McCarthy has had it pretty tough. And as far as I know, there isn't. anybody who has come out to toss J.J. McCarthy a lifeline, except for Justin Jefferson saying, I'll work with him. And that's really about it. And I know that in those radio row interviews, there were other somewhat complimentary statements, but the ones that really made their way around looked like Jefferson saying, yeah, I didn't have good quarterback play. So I'm still the best.

And Aaron Jones saying, uh, yeah, we wanted Sam Darnold. And I don't think that any of these comments are meant to go after J.J. McCarthy from his teammates. And I'm not saying that they do that Aaron Jones or Jefferson or Cashman or Harry or anybody in complimenting Sam Darnold meant to bring down J.J. McCarthy. But everywhere the guy looks, it's the quarterback that his own team got let go. And everyone's saying, how in the world could they turn over to that other guy, which of course would not have been the case. had J.J. McCarthy played very well.

And what this kind of led me to, Darnold winning the Super Bowl, these things is there has been a little bit of, I think people grasping at straws a bit by saying, hey, didn't Sam Darnold just win the Super Bowl after development? And you guys are going to be ready to get rid of J.J. McCarthy or put J.J. McCarthy on the bench when, you know, Darnold proved the world wrong. And yet, to me, that is a reach to conflate those two.

Two very different situations. Sam Darnold played for two of the worst franchises in the NFL at the time. He had no weapons, no line, coaches that immediately got fired, and also had to start more or less right away in his rookie season was not given any time to develop, where, while J.J. McCarthy did not get to start because of a meniscus. he did have plenty of time behind the scenes to learn about the offense, to do the virtual reality, all that sort of stuff. He had an entire season of watching Sam Darnold deal with the ups and downs and how he carried himself professionally.

And then McCarthy did not always carry himself like Sam Darnold and clearly struggled with knowing and running the entire offense, which he had been studying for a year before. And then you have also the issue of the mechanics. the throwing that while Sam Darnold certainly developed his decision making and I think his vision for the field and his understanding of offenses and how they work and where all the little outlets and tricks and trades are over the years and going to San Francisco, he also has been able to throw a football masterfully since probably he first picked it up. And that was one of the reasons that he was drafted so high.

that seems to be quite a bit different from J.J. McCarthy, we're talking about a third overall draft pick in a legendary draft versus the fifth player taken and the 10th. It's a different pedigree of prospect between the two. The comparisons to Sam Darnel when he was coming out were like Carson Palmer, which may have been a little too easy, but it was all like stars. And with McCarthy, it was more like, well, you know, Matt Hasselback. and I think he's got more physical tools than a lot of the comps that were made to him. But it's a different degree of prospect that we're talking about.

It's very different circumstances where I think we can pretty clearly say that Darnold was held back by being coached by a lot of people who never even got jobs again. His offensive coordinator in his first year, then they bring in Adam Gase. And I mean, he's just getting back into the league now or has been sort of bouncing around behind the scenes. For quite a while now, I saw a tweet for me in Rappaport about that. I mean, I think that those are two things you cannot really put in the same bucket because Sam Darnold did not come in with Justin Jefferson. He did not come in with the coach of the year from the previous season, did not come in with eventually he got, you know, Jordan Addison and a Pro Bowl tight end

and, you know, even an improved backfield, even if they didn't lean on it and so forth. So I don't think that you can just say that now every single quarterback who any team ever gives up on. I mean, if we look at the list of quarterbacks that teams have given up on, how many of them actually turned out to be Sam Darnold? So it wasn't, was Gino Smith the second round pick? Okay, Baker Mayfield, but he showed that he could be pretty good in Cleveland. That seemed to be more of a personality conflict between Baker and Kevin Stefansky and the Cleveland Browns. but it wasn't that he didn't show he could actually be good. He got to the playoffs.

He had an 11-win season. He won a playoff game. I find it hard to throw Baker in the same conversation as Sam Darnold. How many other Sam Darnolds are there actually? I mean, there are quarterbacks who definitely took a big step eventually, like an Alex Smith, or a Jared Gough was really a year-two thing. By year two, Jared Gough was already leading the top offense in the NFL once they got Sean McVey and Robert Woods and Sammy Watkins and Andrew Whitworth out there.

So that was pretty quick that he made an ascension there. It's hard to find that many other quarterbacks. Ryan Tannahill is one of them who their team gave up on them. And it ended up working out, especially if they were willing to give up quickly. If they were willing to give up fast like a Kenny Pickett after a couple, I mean, what was it? Two years he got, maybe two and a half years he got to start. I don't know, is Justin Fields giving up fast? Maybe not.

Maybe they gave him more time than they needed to get to the bottom and get this rebuild going. But my point is that there aren't very many quarterbacks recently that you can really look at that if their team saw them every single day and they decided to give up on them, that it actually ended up working out. On the other side of that, you could say that J.J. McCarthy has had about as bad of luck as any quarterback that has come into the NFL over the last, I don't know, 10 years. And yes, he did come into a team that is very good and a team that had won 14 games the year before and so forth. But he suffered an injury that set him back. and no one actually ever knew how much it was going to set him back, probably including him, definitely including the team,

because they expected him to pick right up where he left off, and instead it more or less sent him back to square one. So he has that bad luck going for him. In a way, it's actually bad luck that his team won 14 games, because if the Vikings had won, say, seven games with Sam Darnold, and then he goes and wins the Super Bowl, everyone would be like, what? You never saw that coming in a million years.

Of course it made sense to get rid of Sam Darnold after he won seven, as opposed to 14. And it set the expectation for the ownership, for the coaches, for the general manager, everybody in that locker room sky high. And they treated it last off season as such. I was thinking about this today, the spending spree that went on and how many emergency podcasts we had last year because the Vikings said, we just won 14. It's time to go win. Let's spend like crazy.

And had they only won seven or eight with Sam Darnold in 2024, then a rocky year for J.J. McCarthy around a team that hadn't pushed all chips to the middle of the table would not have been viewed, I think is such a massive failure. And then we get to the point, too, where the week two things, the birth of his child, which Kevin O'Connell has brought up many times. I have not. I don't want to get into that. But then the injury.

So you have this total whirlwind where it begins with a comeback in the first week that is fantastic in the fourth quarter. And then this horrible game against the Atlanta Falcons, which is as bad as any Vikings quarterback has ever played in a game in the modern era. I'm sure there's a game in 1962 where someone played worse. but it's about as bad as it gets. And he hurts his ankle. He gets no chance to bounce back against the Cincinnati Bengals.

And I'm pretty sure, maybe it's a reach, pretty sure that he would have come back earlier had they not gone overseas. Because when they went overseas, long travel, that's when he had swelling, set a back, couldn't come back early enough. Had they just gone to Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and he had healed, then that ankle spray. wouldn't have set him back five weeks, which is an enormous setback. Then he comes back. And I think that it did take some adjusting for Kevin O'Connell, but I think that's overstated.

I mean, if you watch that Lions game, O'Connell did not make him throw 50 times. He wasn't having him stand back there in the shotgun looking like Matthew Stafford, just whipping it around. I think that he did try to protect J.J. McCarthy as much as he could in terms of running the ball using play action. I looked at this not too long ago that after, I forget what game it was because the Ravens game, they fumbled, the Ravens score, you're down by two scores, and now you've got to throw the whole rest of the game.

So that one, after that, the play action percentage for JJ McCarthy was in the top 10. They started using big personnel. They started dumping down the offense for him and everything else. And you could say that it worked, but it worked way too little, way too little. late, playing against bad teams, playing against backups, not making it through full games, did not have to play Seattle, by the way, which we talk about the numbers that happened. But so what about that one? I mean, now, like, justice for Max Brossmer, because that guy had to go play the best

defense in the NFL. J.J. McCarthy didn't. I can't imagine after the way it went against Green Bay that it was headed in a much better direction if he had been the quarterback. So the progress that's made at the end of the year, it's not enough. it's not enough to sell anyone that that is suddenly your franchise quarterback. So what you would be asking the Vikings to do, and what I mean is Kevin O'Connell, the Wilfs, Justin Jefferson,

Jonathan Grenard, Blake Cashman, all these players, Christian Derasaw, assuming he's good to go, Brian O'Neill, all these guys who have worked so hard to get to the point where they're in their careers in their peaks trying to win. And I remember Brian O'Neill last year saying, I don't care if we run it 50 times or pass it 50 times. I just need to win. I'll play. I have no opinions.

I'll play however they asked me to play. I just need to win. And I think what that quote shows you and Jonathan Grenard getting the t-shirts and everything else, more is required. And, you know, Granard's intensity during training camp was really something to see because, I mean, they were a wrecking ball. in that training kid, you could just see that they were trying to take this to a different level. And putting it all on McCarthy, putting all those chips on McCarthy, it just doesn't make any sense.

I mean, based on the performance, and I've got a number for you that really, I think, tells the story here when there's a lot of discussion about how much Kevin O'Connell is to blame. Let me give you this paragraph from my article. by NFL next-gen stats completion percentage over-expected, which weighs the openness of the targets versus completion percentage, McCarthy was the third worst in the NFL at 5.2% lower than expected. In 2024, Darnold's expected completion percentage was 63.5, and in 2025, McCarthy's was 62.8. So that's 0.6 separated.

That sure makes it look like it's about the quality of throws. The point is that the expected completion percentage for Darnold and McCarthy was the same. So where they were throwing versus the separation of their receivers was the same. Donald hit them. McCarthy didn't. And to be the third worst in the NFL, and number one is Brady Cook. I don't even know if that's a real person. I didn't see a single Brady Cook game for the New York Jets.

I mean, that was the worst team in the league. Some guy who's not even, I don't think he was drafted, just as Randos thrown at the end to make sure they get a higher draft pay. that guy was the worst. So there's one. Coincidentally, it actually was Caleb Williams was the second one. But there's, you know, McCarthy right there. And that kind of says to me, and Caleb Williams missed a ton of open throws, by the way. It's the biggest concern they should have.

But with McCarthy, he didn't make it up with the other stuff like Caleb Williams did. You know, the playmaking, the out of structure, the clutch plays, all that sort of stuff was, there was just way too much throwing inaccuracy from McCarthy. And then the vibes got kind of weird toward the end of the year. And I don't know if that's a product of McCarthy's connection with Kevin O'Connell or just everyone being frustrated by the results or, you know, O'Connell feeling like, oh, man, this, this kid's a lot more to deal with than I thought he was going to be, right? Or whatever it might be. There's a bunch of little things that sort of added up, the touchdown dance, not that he did it, but the fact that it was told to us.

The fact that O'Connell went on with the team radio and talked about how McCarthy was seeing things out there that they had never talked about before and coming back to the sideline and trying to give him feedback that didn't make sense to him and stuff like that. Like that connection was close with Kirk and close with Darnold. but if you don't have that, all going with J.J. McCarthy would be next year, if you only went with him, would just be a total blind roll of the dice with no real evidence to work with that it's going to work. But here is where I do feel for J.J. McCarthy, because the quote from Kevin O'Connell that organizations fail quarterbacks more often than quarterbacks fail organizations, The key to those sports is more often, it's not always. It's not every single time.

There are some guys that can't do it. And in every draft class, poor Josh Rosen, who's probably, I don't even know what, right? Just live in his best life somewhere with a lot of money that he earned for doing nothing in the NFL. Josh Rosen got in those little graphics when Darnold won and he was the first from the 2024 class to win a Super Bowl. and you're reminded, oh, right, Baker's pretty good. Lamar is legendary. Josh is legendary. And here's, you know, Josh Rosen was also drafted in this class as well.

And sometimes that's the one that you land on. But where I do feel for McCarthy is that you've had these injuries and you have a team that now has no patience whatsoever. And in theory, it makes a lot of sense for the Vikings to. to stick with him for three years and work through the tough times and try to be the best they can be for J.J. McCarthy and squeeze every ounce of blood out of the stone and see if they can get those mechanics together and see if he'll grow up from a perspective of learning the offense and understanding football and decision making and all those things. It would be great if they could do that. but the reality is and you know the last sentences of my article which you could read the whole thing at purple insider dot football are football isn't fair in in a sports world full of justice every kid with talent would get their shot but the NFL can't wait around and that's why

most quarterbacks who have had McCarthy start to their careers are out pretty quickly that's why O'Connell's quote was rooted in the right idea but he might not be able to follow through with it, that I think it's the right idea that patience and attention to detail with young players and supporting cast and all those things are a huge dictating factor. And Sam Darnold is absolutely proof of that. But you don't have time to find out because Sam Darnold, his peak season, he, I think he turned a corner in 2022. You could see that in the numbers.

But his peak season is 2024. He's drafted in 2018. And he played the whole time. J.J. McCarthy has barely played. So how far behind are you from the six years it took for Sam Darnold to go from the Jets to where he is? And that's why I've noticed that a lot of Jets fans and Jets media have just been saying, hey, good for him. Like, you know, what?

I mean, what do you, you didn't, no one would have expected the Jets to sit around for six years to wait for Sam Darnold to get it. When they made the trade, everyone understood. They were going to draft Zach Wilson. They were going to move on. And okay, that's the right move at the time. With the Vikings, drafting McCarthy also felt like the right move at the time. But now in hindsight, I think you would say not just because he's pretty good,

Bo Nix and that his team has been pretty good, but also he was more ready to play quickly. And I don't think we have much evidence that J.J. McCarthy was ready to play quickly. So there is this, I think universal hope from Vikings fans when it comes to McCarthy that he just switches this all around, that he just takes the steering wheel in training camp or in OTAs or whatever it might be and just turns this car around. It's headed toward out of town. Turn it back to franchise quarterback. But I think that's a very hard road. I think it's a very hard turn to make because it's a sharp turn from where he performed this year to being an NFL starting quarterback.

I mean, when we think about the actual jump that has to be made, and you guys know that in the past, I've used this as a way to kind of put things in context. Like, if the Vikings want to be a Super Bowl contender, they have to change their plus minus for points scoring by about 100 next year. to be considered a real Super Bowl contender. So that means their defense can't be much better than it was last year. That means they need to score like 90 more points.

Can you get 90 more points out of J.J. McCarthy in one year? I mean, when we talk about also Sam Darnold, there's also a really, really stupid narrative that's out there that Sam Darnold is like a mid-quarterback whose team was just really great, which is so funny because the guy has nearly 100 quarterback ratings since 2022 and has won 78% of his games and is just kicked ass. And it's like if anybody else had come into the league and done this for their first couple of seasons, people would talk about them as the best.

But because the people never let go of their priors, they won't admit that now Darnold's been good for a really long time. But when we look at what Darnold did, again, this this mid-quarterback who was carried by a defense had the fifth most passing yards in the NFL this year. The guys ahead of him were Stafford, Gough, Prescott, May, and then him. And wait a minute. So, wait, hold on. The Vikings are supposed to, according to a lot of fans, they're supposed to switch to a run offense where they just run all the time, right?

And then every once in a while have J.J. McCarthy throw. That's the plan. That's what O'Connell is being criticized for a lot during the season. Who, what did I just read? Let's see. Passing yardage. Number one is Matthew Stafford, NFC Championship. Jared Goff and Dak Prescott were playing on pretty good teams that did not have good enough defenses and some issues.

Then fourth is Drake May. I mean, Prescott's playing for behind the whole season. So he's racking up those yards. Golf, they just had a great offense. Drake May was in the MVP conversation. Then Sam Darnold. When it came to passing yards, he won the Super Bowl. Trevor Lawrence is behind that.

He was in the playoffs. Caleb Williams is behind that. He was in the playoffs. Bo Nix with 39. hundred yards, a guy who's talked about as if he never throws the football, well, Justin Herbert in the playoffs with 3,700 yards, Baker Mayfield, just missed the postseason, then Josh Allen after that. That's most of the teams that are in the postseason that they were passing.

And while the Seahawks built their pass game off the run game, they were still passing to win most of the time. And even when the biggest moment came around against the Patriots and they needed a dagger touchdown, they got it from Sam Darnold. The idea that you can just get back to the playoffs by handing off all the time, running the occasional play action, and then what, Justin Jefferson's your best blocker? I mean, this stuff just doesn't add up.

It just from a logical perspective doesn't add up. So where do we get to what I mean from a logical perspective? It doesn't add up to like going back to this route of, hey, just run McCarthy back. and let it live or die. I think it's easy to say, it's easy to say from my seat, it's easy to say from your seat, hey, just let whatever happens happens, right?

If he goes out there and he fails, then great, we get a top draft pick. You know that's not how they think. You know, that's not how Alconnell's thinking. That's not how Jefferson's thinking. And that's not how the Wilson's are thinking. So it doesn't add up to something that they'll do. The question is, is it right?

And I think that based on the performance, and based on those 10 games and based on those injuries that, well, he has not had a full opportunity. It's just where is it that you can make the argument? I mean, 160 yards against Washington, a good game against Dallas. These defenses are horrific. And even then there's misthrows. I mean, I don't know.

Like, there's, you have to be able to grip on to something that, makes you really believe it. Flashes are not enough. I mean, Christian Ponder had games where he was okay. E.J. Manuel, who I've compared him to his head, games that were okay. There's not enough there to be able to say, yes, this is what we could point to as evidence that it'll take the next step, and this is what they do. So I'm not even sure in a theoretical world, if it makes sense either, based on the actual

performance to carry on down this road. So to the question of, are the Vikings failing J.J. McCarthy, I don't think that you can say yes. I think you can say that a lot of circumstances have gotten us here that are not necessarily the fault of J.J. McCarthy, most certainly the injuries. Those are not his fault. And you can never blame him for having a meniscus tear that set him back. But that's also life in football is that sometimes injuries set back. careers and you can't just say, well, you know, this running back is slower now because he had knee surgery, but we really like him. So let's just keep, you know, you can't do that with any other position. So you got setback and then get set back again. And now you're in a position where you need

to win. But a lot of teams are by the third year of a quarterback. So I have said before that while he had he gone to the Titans, he would have just had a year to play and nobody would be paying that much attention. Look how bad Cam Ward was statistically. And they're like, fine. We've got our quarterback, I guess for next year. But if Cam Ward doesn't play well, I mean, look at Will Levis. If Cam Ward doesn't play well next year, I mean, they're going to be talking about what else to do, aren't they? How many quarterbacks get all of year three after the first two years have yielded so little in terms of production? That makes it hard. to say that they're failing J.J. McCarthy, I think that a lot of people want them to be failing

J.J. McCarthy because that makes it seem like there's still a chance. And I don't want to say there's not. I don't want to say there's not. I think that over a long term, that the improvement can be there and that he can develop and he can get a lot better. But I have a very tough time saying the Vikings organization and Kevin O'Connell failed him by not letting him go out there, not letting him go out there next year with a team that could get back to the postseason and just have the entire thing be about his development again. It was, it became about that this year and not much progress was really made. I didn't think.

I didn't think he was playing that much differently by the end. I thought the opponents are far, far different from, you know, the Baltimore's and even Chicago and Green Bay when you're playing Washington and Dallas, especially. especially well, especially both. They're both horrific. But I didn't see, like, when you're talking about an offense, that's just sort of loading up with big personnel, running a lot, play actions,

get them on the move a little, throw to the outsides, not have a whole lot of motions. I mean, it wasn't, it was not really an NFL caliber offense that you can win with over 17 games. So if you don't feel like at the end of year two that you have a guy running your full offense, I just don't know how you can, do that, how you can guarantee anything.

The possibility exists for McCarthy to take a big step forward, and it's on his shoulders now to do it, and it's on his shoulders now to be Sam Darnold, to prove the Vikings wrong for thinking about other quarterbacks, to prove them wrong for whoever they bring in and beat that person out, or if he doesn't, then to go prove him wrong somewhere else, if he ends up doing that, or to be the best dang backup quarterback he can possibly be,

like Sam Darnold was for San Francisco and really learn and then make an argument later on at some point. Like maybe even next year if they brought in a one year stopgap to make that argument behind the scenes by working his butt off. I mean, there are lots of quarterbacks who it didn't work out for right away that eventually proved themselves, including Sam Darnold. So it's now kind of up to J.J. McCarthy. I think the verdict would be, how did I put it in the article? Let me find out. Let me see. I think I made a verdict in the article where I said, okay, here it is.

Was it asking a lot of McCarthy to pick up where he left off in the previous year's training camp? Yes. Was it asking a lot of him to handle an NFL starting job on a win now team? Yes. Would you be convicted in football court of malpractice and ruination of a quarterback? That's a tough sell. So those are my thoughts on whether the Minnesota Vikings have failed.

J.J. McCarthy, and we'll get to your comments and questions shortly here. But I did want to remind everyone of the Fandul question of the day, which is the Vikings open up on Fandul as plus 5,500 to win the Super Bowl next year. The only teams they're ahead of in the NFC are the Giants, Carolina, New Orleans, and Arizona. Is that fair? Who else would you put them ahead of for Super Bowl odds as of right now? So deep breath, that's a lot. That's a lot.

But I would not, I would not convict Kevin O'Connell of hypocrisy for saying that franchises fail quarterbacks more than quarterbacks fail franchises. I would not. I think that it does not apply to every single person and also failing the team for McCarthy doesn't mean that he did something wrong or that it's his fault or that there was anything he could do about certain injuries, but those are realities. Those happened. And now, after only 243 passes last year, it's going to feel like you're starting from year one again. It feels like you have made no progress whatsoever because you're not even running the

full offense by the end of the season. That is impossible for the Vikings to not have a backup option. If not, a starting option. I mean, a backup option as in like another potential person who could be starting. If that makes sense. Okay. Let's, oh, there's one other thing I want to look at real quick. We have a Kyler-Murray update. And then I'll get to Dane Bruegler's top 100 and answer your questions and so

forth. We got time. We got time. Here's this from Josh Weinfuss, one of us, actually, Arizona reporter, originally from Minnesota, said, the Cardinals in theory have five weeks to decide what to do with Kyler Murray. he's due another roster bonus on the fifth day of the league year, which is March 16th. One thing I've heard is that Murray really likes living in Arizona.

He's established a routine here he really likes. However, I've been told that he's not sure how it will all play out. And remember, as I reported on January 26th, a source told me that they believe the Cardinals, if the Cardinals can trade Murray, they will. Lots to unfold in the next month. So there's, um, I've, I've been saying, that the Cardinals will probably release Kyla Murray because I have a tough time believing

that someone's going to do a trade for Murray. But it could be like this. Let's say the Cardinals eat 90% of that salary and the Vikings give them a third and a conditional fourth, fifth, something like that for Kyler Murray. It would not be a huge amount, since they're getting rid of him.

And it seems that they kind of really want to get rid of him. And Murray liking his routine and the morning sunshine in Arizona doesn't mean a thing. They bench this guy for the entire year. So it's great that he's got a little routine or whatever. But I mean, if I'm Kyler Murray, I want to play football, not for a franchise who benched me for Jacoby Brissette so they could get all the way to the bottom and draft high or whatever. I would not be too keen on sticking around with that. And also, who does that to their franchise quarterback?

If you believe in a guy, you're not doing that. So, yeah, I mean, I think that he is as good as gone from Arizona. A trade, though, if you were to give up, I don't know, a fourth that could become a third or something, and then they take most of his salary. Okay, that's doable. I talked with Nick Underhill today about Derek Carr, who would also have to be traded. The prices for players like this are not high. He went through the history of guys where the team is completely out.

It's not high most of the time. And I mean, if you're the Jets, like, what's the point in trading for Kyler Murray? Like, I don't know. You can't support him. What does that really even do? I guess they would be in on that. Who else? There wouldn't be that many teams outside of the Minnesota Vikings who are truly looking for that

quarterback. I mean, if you're a team that's down at the bottom, you're probably looking to draft fairly high next year and get your franchise quarterback. So are you giving away draft capital for a guy who could get you to eight wins? If you're the Jets or seven wins, what point would there be of that? Makes a lot more sense for the Vikings who are looking to get back to the playoffs. But your latest on Kyler Murray. Okay.

Deep breath. Deep breath. Let me bring up the chat here and start. Well, I actually, I got to scroll. scroll backwards to get your thoughts starting at the very beginning of the show and I'll try to catch up as quickly as I can. If McCarthy plays badly this season, we can get Arch Manning. See, that's, that's the trouble is that you can make this argument that, hey, why not just play J.J. McCarthy and then see what happens, which I think is fine. But if you had fired everybody and then stuck the next coach with him, all right, then that coach would be.

coming in and assessing McCarthy and making his own decision or whatever. But that's not what you're doing. I mean, you fired the GM, but you're sticking with the coach. And Jefferson still needs to get the ball. And you need to have someone who could throw with anticipation and is accurate enough to find Justin Jefferson because your offense is going nowhere if you don't. We saw that this year. How can you say just, hey, just stick with them.

And if we, and look, you know that that's my wheelhouse, what you're are saying is that's my wheelhouse, which is, you know, get to the bottom, get the quarterback, build around him. That's something I have advocated more than a few times over the years. And that's why I don't dislike it, what you're talking about. I just don't think it's realistic. And it the same sort of goes for the failing him or not failing him. Like, failing him in a way by not giving him any more than 240 passes, if that's how it goes, then yeah, it kind of is because he should get more time to develop as someone that was known

as a developmental quarterback. So yes, that's fair. But we live in reality here with the pressure that's on this group. And also, they know more behind the scenes than we know, which we also have to acknowledge as well. Bill, what's your thoughts on Stephen A. Smith going off on the Vikings and KOC? Well, I mean, nobody is taking. in more arrows than the Vikings over the last couple of weeks, including from this here show for Sam Darnold reaching and winning the Super Bowl.

But I do think that someone like Stephen A. Smith pointing the finger at O'Connell, I haven't heard too many people do that, which is interesting to me since I think anyone with a shred of common sense would say that Kevin O'Connell was heavily involved in the drafting of J.J. McCarthy and the decision to let Sam Darnold go. I'm not putting it on. You know, I put it on everybody. It's on Quasi. It's on O'Connell. It's on the Wilf's. It's on every person who was against keeping the guy who won the Super Bowl and going with J.J. McCarthy who had shown nothing because he was out for the entire year. It's on everyone. I don't put it on one person. But I noticed that the firing of Quasi really brought his name into that a lot more than it did the head.

coaches, which is not fair, because that's the quarterback whisper. That's the coach of the year. That's the guy who wielded a lot of power. So him mentioning Kevin O'Connell, I think shows you that what happened here is not going away in the national eye. Like, Darnold winning the Super Bowl, the Vikings letting him go. It's going to be a discussion next year. It's going to be a discussion this offseason, what they do beyond just here.

It's going to be, I think, everywhere. and the pressure is ramped up on Kevin O'Connell. I tend to argue that the pressure is ramped up on everyone, like everyone's on the hot seat. But I think when you have national media personalities coming out and calling him out like that, the temperature starts to go up. And it should because, you know,

not only did they fail to make the playoffs this year, but, you know, their quarterback just raised the Lombardi trophy and is now going to Disneyland and eating raising, Keynes or whatever other major sponsorship the NFL had that I saw Sam Darnold live in the life of a Super Bowl champion today. So that is certainly going to be something. Here's what it reminds me of. I was, uh, was I reading?

Must have been reading about the, the pass that was thrown that Malcolm Butler intercepted. The play call, Belichick and how he kind of figured it out. but then also about the guys who were involved, Marshawn being one of them, how it still resonates with them, how it still sits with them, and how it impacted future years of the Seattle Seahawks. So think about this,

and you know this, this came up all the time when the Seahawks were making the playoffs. Russell Wilson and him throwing that ball and not changing the play, how they felt about Pete Carroll. And once again, is that fair? No, but it costs us. of the Super Bowl.

With Kevin O'Connell and with all the people involved in this decision to have Darnold go win, that will not go away. That is not disappearing. You can't just go get Derek Carr, Kyler Murray, and win a couple games and have everyone be like, or even J.J. McCarthy. You can't just have J.J. McCarthy develop next year and be a 500 or whatever quarterback could be okay and then have everyone say, it's fine. what happened.

This is a thing that sticks with people. And I think it's really notable that the players, because, hey, we could say there's luck and he had a good team and whatever, whatever, whatever, try telling them they had no chance to win the Super Bowl.

Also, that logic is so bad. I don't even know where to start with that. I saw that 50 times. We weren't winning the Super Bowl anyway, even if we had Sam Darnel. Oh, okay. Okay.

All right. Noster Domus, Noster Football Damas. I guess you just know that, but let me offer you something. Do you want a lottery ticket that has a 10% chance to win or nothing? Oh, okay. I think if I, if this lottery ticket was worth a million dollars, and there's 10 of them and you might have the winner, do you want it? Or actually in the NFC, it would be seven of them.

Do you want it? Well, I don't have that great of a chance to win, so I'm going to light it on fire. No, you would say absolutely. Of course, you know, with a defensive performance that was dominant, saw that from the Vikings a couple times. I don't know. I don't know. That logic to me is just, I'm trying to find a way to not be the saddest. Is how that reads?

It doesn't, it's not rooted in any sort of logic. Like, oh, it's fine. It's fine that he left in one, because he wasn't going to win it with the Vikings. How do you know? The Patriots got there and they weren't even that good. The other team's quarterback got hurt in the AFC championship game. You don't know what would have happened. Anyhow, sorry, I've been letting the comments scroll by.

Apologies for that. Derek says, I think COC should be stuck with McCarthy one more year to see if he can fix him. 2026 should not be a year for KOC to save his job, but that's probably what will happen. Yeah, I mean, I don't think, see, that's the tough part. I don't think that that's fair either, but that's my point. None of this is fair. And so when you say, well, this teams fail quarterbacks, quarterbacks fail team, because it's not an even playing field. Everybody doesn't get an equal chance.

And unfortunately, that leaves some folks behind who don't get all the opportunities that others sometimes do. That's sports. Everybody doesn't start at the same place in the track like the Olympics and the speed skating or something. Or actually, they, it's not like that. They start them in different ways. so everyone gets the same amount of distance traveled, which is fair. That's not football. It's just not.

Some people start way ahead. Some people start way behind. Some people's meniscuses tear in their first preseason game. Like, it just, I don't know. And with O'Connell, should he get more than this for just, like, being a good coach overall? I don't think he's the best in the league. I don't think he's proven that. But I also think when you have seasons like they did before, that you could certainly

say good. I think that's fair. And, you know, what's the difference? Good and great. I don't know. Does your defense completely dominate a game and or do you not? I don't know. Did you build a good enough offensive line or didn't you?

I don't know. Like these are the differences. Did you have Sam Darnold play like a top 10 quarterback or not? That tends to be the difference, it seems. Darnold, who gets no credit at all, got O'Connell a coach of the year and Clint Kubiak a head coaching job and he's being compared to Trent Dillfer. Oh, sure. All right.

For those who just didn't want to admit that he was good all of last year or this year. But with the job security point, usually when you get a good coach who has potential to get better, as long as the guy doesn't go crazy, which, you know, can happen to anybody, as long as the guy doesn't start creating a toxic environment and doing nutty things, you usually don't want to just bail on that person. It's not a good idea because what'll happen is they'll go somewhere else and be a good coach for somebody else, right? So you want to be patient with that sort of stuff. But when you have had four years and you've lost two playoff games and the other years you've missed and you've made the wrong quarterback decision that it seems like since Cashman and Harry and Jefferson and Jones are willing to go on, you know, different interviews and radio and.

and so forth and talk about, you know, that decision and Sam Darnold that it's kind of stick. It is going to stick to Kevin O'Connell unless it's fixed. So how long do you want to give him to fix it? Now, your point is that the wills could, could say sink or swim, dude, you know, you pick JJ, so you make it work. But I don't think the wills think like that because if you do that and it blows up again. I mean, you might lose number 18. And you can't do that. If you're the owners of this team, you cannot lose just a Jefferson. He is your franchise player. And if he's unhappy because you've

allowed him to go a couple years with bad quarterback play, well, he had to sit and watch his quarterback win the Super Bowl. I just don't know how you come back from that unless you find another option that can get him the ball and win games. Jefferson is not a guy who's begging for the football. He also needs to win. So you need your coach to figure out how to do that. Mr. Mayor, are the Vikings failing McCarthy? Maybe, but I think he drastically failed them first. And that's the hard part about it is that you want to give quarterbacks time. You want to believe that there's something else there. But the numbers are what they are. And all of the arguments that I see in favor of it being KOC's fault, in favor of him getting more time.

The problem I keep coming back to is the numbers are what they are. You can't change the results. The way that he played was as bad as we've seen any quarterback in Vikings history play over this long of a run. That's just a fact. It's got the same quarterback rating as Christian Ponder through 10 games. It's just, it just is what it is when it comes to the actual performance. They needed a lot better and they would have been in the playoffs, even with a little bit better, they would have been in the playoffs.

And had there been other things that seemed to really click in, had there been buy-in from the coach, buying from the locker room, and I don't mean that the guys were mad at McCarthy for how he played. I think they all just viewed him as a rookie. But they all knew that the guy that they let go was succeeding and then now turns out. into a Super Bowl champion, it's just hard to come back from those results. And Darnold's success does matter in this, even though it shouldn't necessarily, but it does, because now everything with J.J. McCarthy, the bar is set at the guy they let go for you. He made the Super Bowl. There's a comparison here, which is a funny one, but I was watching this game recently,

so I might as well bring it up, which is when the Baltimore Ravens won the Super Bowl with Trent Dilfer, they changed quarterbacks the next year. They went to Elvis Gerbach the next year, which is, you know, funny to think about now. Like, wait, you won the Super Bowl with the quarterback and then you changed quarterbacks, really? That doesn't happen too often. But they did. And they made the playoffs with Gerbach.

And if you look at his numbers, they're not that bad. And they won a playoff game with Gerbach. And yet it was still remembered in Baltimore as well, one of the all-time gaffs and a huge mistake by Baltimore's front office because they lost the following week. Gerbach played terribly in the divisional round. And he was always compared to the other guy. Like, hey, Dilfer wasn't great, but he won us the Super Bowl.

So the next guy who had to come in always has to carry that, again, regardless of whether it's fair. And there's a lot that's unfair to J.J. McCarthy, but there's also a lot that's fair because he didn't run the offense. because and if and if you're Kevin O'Connell and I read you those stats about passing yards, if you think you're going to throw for 2,800 yards and make the Super Bowl, I wish you the best of luck because Darnold was fifth in the league in passing yards. And Matthew Stafford, the MVP, who's in the NFC championship and is one throw away

for maybe winning it, he's number one. And Drake May who's in the Super Bowl, he's number four. Like that, you're going to have to pass the ball if you're going to get there. You can't have 160 yard wins all this. the time and just hope and dream that you can be the Trent Dill for Ravens. It doesn't work. They're treating Darnold like that because no one wants to admit how freaking wrong they were for caping for Gino Smith for years.

And then Darnold comes to the same franchise and does better. But that's not what happened this year. Darnold was highly efficient. It was one of the top in the league in yards per pass attempt. You have to have that. So when there's the criticisms for, well, O'Connell just wants to pass too much. looks to me like that's how you still got to win. It actually looks to me like through all of history,

it's usually how you got to win. The Eagles pulled it off last year when they weren't a prolific passing team, but they're running back ran for 2,000 yards. I mean, okay, so that's another Trent Dillfer outlier. And, you know, Hertz won the MVP of the Super Bowl, so they did have to throw. But that's an outlier in terms of performance. Most of the time, it's top.

I think I looked at this, that it's almost always to reach the Super Bowl top 10 in passing EPA. Always has to be. But I'm told now O'Connell is throwing too much. Well, he wasn't throwing too much when you had, sometimes he was, when you had a really good quarterback. Sometimes he was. Sometimes you got to chill out with that.

When it's third and one, you don't have to throw a bomb all the time. It's not a surprise to the other team if you do it all the time. But there's critiques there on a. game-to-game basis. Not saying that I would defend every call and we come in here after games and criticize the heck out of the calls. But the overall idea that being an explosive passing offense is what gives you the best chance to win in the NFL is true. And it's still true. And even if you lean on the run game to set up the pass, it's still about the pass. At some point, you're in the NFC championship and you need Sam Darnold to lead you a game-winning drive on his arm. And he did,

or a game ending drive on his arm. So now we're looking at these numbers from McCarthy and his performances and going, the jump there to get into a real discussion would have to be crazy high. Can you do that? I mean, yeah, it's possible, but that would have, that's a, that's a big ask. That is a big, big ask. Let's see. The, uh, I'll just call you kit.

Uh, the important, uh, impatient. of the Wills proves that they aren't really committed to winning a Super Bowl. They're committed to staying relevant and not looking foolish, and it ends up working out the opposite way. So this is where we can bring in the team that won the Super Bowl, because Seattle's kind of been the same way. And I don't think it's impossible to win the way that they tried to win here. And I don't think that they were super impatient in, I mean, look, it's been. in four years you haven't won a playoff game. There's other franchises that have been way more impatient than that.

I think that there are times in the recent history that you could point to and say, here and here is where if you just took a step back, if you just went into a little bit more leaning into that rebuild, that maybe your future would have been different. There's a couple of spots. I've brought them up enough time. you know when they are 20, 20, 23. Those are two recent situations. And the best build that they did,

the best team build that they've done since, I don't know, since getting to the 09 team, the best team build was Zimmer and Rick coming off of what? What was that, a five-win, Les Frazier team? That was the best build they did is when they actually took a huge step back and won five games and then seven games and then built up to that.

It wasn't a tank. It wasn't the Jets losing every game, but it was a legitimate step back from a team that always expected to be in the playoffs. And they stacked draft capital and they brought in guys and there you go. You end up building a really strong roster. And asking them for the competitive rebuild. It's not impossible, but you have to, you have to commit sometimes to the rebuild part,

which they did to some extent in 2023, but they didn't go to the extra step. The extra step was moving on from Kirk in 2023, and they did not do that. And that pushed them back to not having the top draft picks to get, you know, Drake May or Jaden Daniels or Caleb Williams. But even then, the guy they didn't pick who was still on the board was in the playoffs this year and may have now after watching the Patriots may have won and gone to the Super Bowl against the Seahawks.

So I don't know. I mean, is that is that not committed and I don't know. They commit so much money and they commit so much into the facilities and paying the coaches. They just, they just brought back Brian Flores. I think that there was some missteps, but I don't like to go as far as to say, well, they don't really want to win the Super Bowl. They just want to be competitive. I think they do. I just think that they haven't had the stomach for things that they may have to in the future.

I don't know how you avoid it. After 2026, I mean, maybe you can, maybe you can squeeze it into 2027. If you get the right quarterback or if JJ takes a huge step, it's not going to be easy. It's not going to be easy. And I think the next time they get to that fork in the road, they have, they can't try to go straight. They have to go one way or the other. Or actually, really, it's not. It's really like they went, no, I kind of like that fork in the road.

Hey, we're going to stick around and try to win. seven or eight games or we're going to go down the road where we fully rebuild and they sort of went down the middle. Yeah, I kind of, I like that enough. It's not perfect. I like that enough. Mr. Mayor says, JJ came into the league talking about meditation and thoughtfulness and all that stuff when he starts playing. Oh, sorry, it disappeared on me. Yeah, I know where you're headed with that. McCarthy's his, how amped up he gets out there, I think has been costly for him. but what does that probably have mostly to do with is just experience. And that is really the issue that it comes down to for next season is he still doesn't have it.

Even after playing last year, you know, people will say, well, he went six and four. You know, like, okay, well, he didn't even finish numerous of those games without injury. He was injured in the Atlanta game. He did finish that one, but still got hurt. Didn't finish what? Did he come out of the Green Bay game or did he stay in the Green Bay game? Did, did Rosmer finish that one out? Either way, that was brutal.

But then came out of the last two games. Like, he didn't even get 10 games worth of passes, of plays. So how do you learn to not freak out when you go out there and you get a first down and you, you know, push someone to the ground and then act like you just won the Super Bowl, get in somebody's face and get a flag. This is not how people act. in that position who have been there before. But he hasn't been there before.

Act like you've been there. He hasn't. He just truly hasn't. Dumer chaos is Sam not affected by failure. Darnold, the first quarterback to win the Super Bowl with zero postseason turnovers. Yeah. It was really well managed in the Super Bowl by Sam Darnold, for sure.

Kit, other than Burrow, is there a truly any more likely path to a championship of the next three years than McCarthy starting? is a good question, Kit. That is a good question. So, I think, I think the answer is yes. I can't say for sure that the answer is yes, because the way the Vikings have done it, it's never really worked, but it's gotten them close. Randall Cunningham, Jeff George, Case Keenum, I mean, Sam Darnold, it's hard to say that, If you looked at McCarthy's performance from last year and then say, I'm going to say Kyler Murray here because that's who we had the update on today.

And that's the move that I advocate. So let's say Kyler Murray. What are the odds that Kyler Murray takes the Vikings deep into the playoffs versus J.J. McCarthy? Well, Kyler Murray is not even 30 years old yet. He's had multiple seasons where he's been a top 12 quarterback. and J.J. McCarthy has 10 starts where he would need to take enormous leaps and bounds for next year in order to have any chance to even reach average. It has to be a huge jump to reach

average. So it's very hard for me to say that there's a, there's like theoretical upside can be a scourge sometimes on analysis because any, you could, I mean, this was a, this is an old shout out and if you remember this, I'm impressed. It means you've been listening for a long time. But I remember going on a rant on the radio one time about Miguel Sano and the theoretical upside of Miguel Sano and how nobody struggles to let it go quite like Minnesotans when it comes to somebody with potential because Miguel Sineau was always the guy who was going to be their, their, their David Ortiz, right?

And as the years went on, it became pretty clear that he wasn't. And yet still, it would be every year like he would get on a hot streak and he's different now. He's a different player. He's a new. It just, it just never got there consistently enough. The flaws were too flawed. And because quarterbacks have a long career, I think that JJ McCarthy can shore up these flaws and can get more experience someday.

But if you're talking about the odds of next year, I mean, you show up for OTAs only a couple months after the end of the season. I mean, we're talking about some kind of jump that would be necessary. If you're talking about versus Kirk, yeah, I mean, yeah, I guess theoretical upside versus Kirk might be different. Theoretical upside versus Kyler Murray, that's tough to argue. That would be tough to argue that the upside of McCarthy is higher than what it is for a guy who was a number one overall pick who had taken.

the Cardinals at least once to the playoffs and then had a good 2024 season in a brutal division. I mean, uh, yes, I, I know that the Seahawks run game helps set up their past game. I mean, that goes for it goes for everyone. I mean, last year, last year they used even with a horrible run game, the Vikings were an excellent play action team. We can look this up. Let's, let's see. Let's see what the Vikings did last year.

year in terms of play action. I got my PFF here. Even without a great run game, you can run play action successfully. So this is 2024. Sam Darnold. Let's look up quarterback rating. Yeah. The only quarterback who had a higher rating for the Minnesota, or for the, in the NFL, then Sam Darnold in 2024 was Lamar Jackson. Oh, look, Derek Carr's there. Hmm. Hmm. interesting. But yeah, Lamar Jackson was the only guy who had a higher quarterback rating on play action than Sam Darnold for the Vikings.

So that means that Kevin O'Connell's play action was also working for Sam Darnold. And he knows how to do that and set it up through the run game, even if the run game wasn't working. Now, that doesn't mean it didn't matter. And that wasn't a difference. It was a difference. Having Ken Walker was a difference, having an offensive line that could run block was a difference in the Super Bowl for sure.

There's no question that it made a big difference. And I think if you're saying that there's no chance the Vikings couldn't have, here's a really ironic thing that you won't believe, but you can look it up and it's true, is the Vikings had better rushing EPA, expected points added than the Seahawks. The Seahawks were winning a lot. They were playing great defense. They were not an efficient running game. The Vikings were more average.

they were more like 20th Seattle. But in the Super Bowl, they ran the heck out of the ball with Ken Walker because they had the ball the entire game. And it looked great. And so their running game looked phenomenal. On a play-to-play basis in the regular season, it was just okay.

It, yes, it did help them. I'm not denying it, but passing efficiency is always going to be the biggest driver, driver of success. And they were able to do that. uh, Ron says nobody's saying run all the time. Just run more to set the passes up. Okay, that's fair.

That's fair. You have to be able to do it efficiently, which they did more this year. And it helped. I thought it helped toward the end of the season. I don't disagree with that. I mean, look, you're talking to the person who just loves this Kubiak system. I've talked about it for years. And I feel, I feel justified that all these coaches who were with the Vikings when

Gary was here and Clint, I thought it was the wrong. right offense for Kirk Cousins and Stefansky. I got that I love that offense. I love setting up the run with the pass. And I'm sorry, setting up the pass with the run. I love the bootlegs, the play actions, all that stuff. It's great. But Sam Darnold in 2024 was one of the more efficient pastors in the NFL.

It's not like it's impossible in this offense, especially with the wide receiver that you have. RJ says the Kyler thing is gaining more steam. Not wrong just early. is that the meme? You know why it's gaming steam because it makes so much freaking sense? It just does. It just does.

He's not going to come at a high expense. There's no way they can get rid of him at that contract. And he's had parts of his career that have been promising. And he's, if you're looking for the next Sam Darnold, he's the closest thing. A former top draft pick with a lot of skill who is imperfect and is left behind. by a bad franchise. A lot of that stuff matches up. I don't love the idea that, you know, of Kyler Murray and his leadership issues and

personality and all those things. I don't love that and think that that's perfect. I also don't think anyone who's perfect is available. That's why we're talking about Derek Carr and Kyler Murray because or even Malik Willis, who you have to judge on about 100 passes. Like, none of these options are perfect. none of these options are are oh yeah okay great you get matthew stafford in his prime like the rams you know now that's a great option to be able to trade for matthew stafford in his prime

but you know you don't have that you have which guys flaws have the best chance of being covered up by you and their strengths the best chance of being highlighted by you and that to me is that to me is kiler murray uh darnald is gone forget about it stop the BS and give JJ the shot he deserves. Man, it would be, it would be so nice if sports work that way, where it was like the men in black, boop and it's gone. Bill Buckner's ball didn't roll between his legs.

Like it or not, this is an all-time sports gaff. It is to have a quarterback win 14 games for you, let him go and have him win the Super Bowl. It's never happened before. And it's an all-time. time will be talked about forever in Super Bowl lore of this happening. The team that gave away a Super Bowl winning quarterback for nothing. Okay, I shouldn't say nothing.

A third round comp pick who could turn out to be a Hall of Fame quarterback. No, I'm just kidding. It's an all-timer. And if you think that this goes away, I might point you to all the other things that Vikings fans bring up every single day of their lives that have happened throughout their history. There's no way to rationalize it. There's no way to justify it.

There's no way to just say, oh, well, you wouldn't have won the Super Bowl with us and make yourself feel better. It's as bad as it gets, man. There's nothing I can do about that. That's like I said, I can't change the facts. I can only work with them. That's the facts. Mike says, what quarterback do you think we should try to trade for besides Borough?

Yeah, I'm going to continue until it doesn't happen, ride the Kyler Murray train. and I can show you why. It's really not so much based on his 2021, which was very good. It's really based on his 2024. And last year, they, they just benched him to try to tank. But just for example, right here, if you look at Kyler Murray, when running play action, so I pointed out the Sam Darnold and the fact that he had the second highest QB rating, seventh highest by PFF grade, Kyler Murray is not that far behind running play.

action. He had an 82 grade through for 1,400 play action yards with Drew Petzing, which is actually fifth. He threw for almost as many play action yards in 2024 as Sam Darnold. And this is what they want to do. They want to get under center. They want to run play action. They want to have just the Jefferson running crossing routes. And when we look at his time in the pocket, even a guy who is known as someone who breaks the structure all the time, If we look at the percentage of dropbacks that were two and a half seconds or less for Kyler Murray, he's right there in 2024 12th. And his success by PFF grade, he was the 14th highest graded when throwing underneath 2.5 seconds. If I scroll over, you can see this right there, less than 2.5 seconds.

And total yardage, he had the seventh most total yardage when throwing under 2.5 seconds. two and a half seconds, which was actually ahead of Jared Gough, who gets rid of the ball pretty quickly. So he played like a real quarterback in 2024. It was not, it was not like a gimmicky, like nonsense type of scramble around and throw the ball everywhere, which I kind of think 2021 was a little more of that for him. But the fact that he proved he could play like that, and they won eight games, he had a game where he beat the Rams 41 to 10, by the way. had six big time throws. I mean, that's, you know, Josh says,

KOC's not going to bet his career on JJ next year because of his immaturity. I don't think that that is unfair to say. And immaturity doesn't have to be like getting thrown out of a casino at 4 a.m. or arrested for going 140 miles an hour. Immaturity can just mean inexperience. It can just mean, and Jeremiah Searle has said it many times, that they had a saying inside their room, like freaking rookie,

it was more vulgar than that, but it was like, ah, rookies. Because young players, young quarterbacks, they don't all know as they get to the league. This is how I'm supposed to run a team. And I also thought that it was hard

at times for J.J. McCarthy when he knew that everybody was feeling it. Like he knew that the frustration was building. And no matter how many guys come over and patch you on the back, when you lose a game like they did to the Ravens, where you just play terribly, and the Ravens aren't even that good.

They have two drives that are even okay in that game and you lose. It's like everybody is looking at you going, we needed that one. That was a big game and you threw it away. And I think that really started to weigh on his shoulders as he went along in the season. I think it also hurt the ability to be, like they use this phrase like authentic self and stuff like that i think there was overcompensating

it was more like look look how okay i am look i'm celebrating i'm getting a flag like look how intense i am look how look how fine i am sort of like you know if you're i don't know your girlfriend breaks up with you and you start posting on instagram that you're at disneyland you look how fine i am that you broke up with me it was like some of that seemed like like it was trying too hard with the like look look look i still love football even though you guys are criticizing me it you know it just that that felt like it felt like a guy who hadn't been there before because he hadn't been there before and that's hard to go into next year with if they had five years to work with it would be it would be fine those odds are tough uh yeah

the fan dual question of the day do mer K-O, Viking Super Bowl odds are irrelevant. They will never win. Well, I guess if you're that person, you haven't been wrong yet. But, you know, if you've listened to the show a long time, I don't believe that. And part of it is because of how Seattle just won and how the Patriots got there. It's like a lot of things have to go right for you. How many turnovers did Sam Darnold have this year? This is sad. This is sad. He had zero in the playoffs for one. And also, uh, if you look at any Sam Darnold statistic, adjusted net yards per attempt, yards per attempt, quarterback rating, PFF, great, whatever, whatever stat you want from the regular season,

he was a really good quarterback. So yes, he did have turnovers, but he also had a lot of touchdowns and tons of yards and a lot of efficiency throwing the football. And then in the big moments came through. So you can overcome some turnovers if you are super efficient. And sometimes you have to be risky. to be efficient, right, to hit the, to hit the ones down the field, as we saw when Darnold won 14 games here.

He had turnovers. He had picks. He had sacks. He overcame them by hitting throws downfield. That's why you do it. That's the trade-off. The trade-off for explosive plays is that you're going to have turnovers. So, Matt says Caleb Williams learned Ben Johnson's offense and managed to run it by the end of

the season. JJ has had two years to learn KOC's offense and still. couldn't do it. That's another part that's hard to move on from in terms of who failed who. I mean, that's another part right there. If you're Kevin O'Connell and you put every hour of every day and you know that he did into trying to get J.J. McCarthy up to speed the offense. And then eventually you had to get to a point where you're like, we can't even snap the ball. So we have to dumb this down. And I know Aaron Jones, I'm sure regrets saying that, but it was a sort of a moment of truth for him. It was just like, or a moment of honesty. Like, yeah, we're not dumbing it down for me

because I think the players were offended by that idea that they needed it dumb down. Like Hawkinson certainly was. And you could sense it with Aaron Jones. I mean, they didn't say it, but they said it. It was like, it's being dumbed down for the quarterback. It's being simplified for the quarterback. And everyone loved that it was being simplified, like, ah, that KOC, it was too complicated. And then the other players came out and they're like, no, it's not. So, I mean, I think it can be a hard offense on quarterbacks. And this is, none of this is to ever say that O'Connell's offense is perfect, by the way. I think it has the right idea, which is to hit explosive plays, which is what the Rams did,

which is what the Patriots did, which is what the Seahawks did. but I do think that you have to protect your quarterback better. You can't have your quarterback getting sacked all the time. And we also, after all the quarterbacks had the same problem, you can't say that it was just all the them. Because Kirk got sacked a lot with this offense in 2022. And then we saw even like Dobbs and Mullins take too many sacks. And then Darnold took too many sacks last year, even as great as he was.

And this year, JJ and Carson Wentz, two guys that, you know, probably needed to get rid of the ball. But still, like, that's an offensive flaw that has to change. And we can't keep blaming the offensive line over and over and over and over again. I mean, because the Seahawks offensive line, I think is good, but it didn't grade out by PFF as like this unbelievable juggernaut of a line. I think what Clint Kubiak did well was protect them. He moved Darnold. Darnold was top in the league at throwing on the move.

So he moved him out of the pocket a lot and got him away for pressure. Their right guard guys, this is, it was like, it was like this was a ready made to blow up all Vikings narratives. Their right guard was brutal. And yet in past protection, he's a good run blocker, I think. He's kind of got Ed Ingram like stats. And yet they were able to find a way to work around it. 27 sacks for Sam Darnold this year.

That's not many. It's not many. Let's see. Mr. Mayor says he's fine with the idea that contract for Murray and, uh, Dray-Dreski says, a terrible idea. Mr. Mayor, Murray is by far the best option in Malik is second place. Matt says they benched Kyler to avoid the injury guarantee and to tank for sure. to tank.

But yeah, I mean, that's part of it, which indicates that they would want to get rid of him. Either way. Mike says not giving up that much for Kyler Murray. He's talented. But is he a QB that KOC would want to coach? Is a QB that KOC may have to coach? He may have to figure out how to coach Kyler Murray. He may not have another option than to connect with him.

But, you know, I mean, both of the coaches that were there, Cliff Kingsbury and Drew Petzing. As much as everyone sort of whispered that Murray has these personality issues, I mean, I don't remember an exact comment. I certainly don't remember one from Drew Petzing. In fact, I thought that they were very happy with how things went with him and Petting in 2024. I'm not saying it's not real.

It's real. I think it's real. But is there anything that I've found that can really put a finger on, like, this is the specific problem with Kyler Murray that I have not been able to figure. Also, didn't Kirk cousins have? issues with Mike Zimmer and pushing Adam Thielen on the sideline or whatever, not pushing, but, you know, doing the whole thing at the end of 2018, didn't Zimmer think he wasn't a leader, all that stuff? And by the end of the time he was with O'Connell, he was.

So I don't know. I'm not saying he's a miracle worker, clearly not. But when it comes to a quarterback's personality, sometimes you're only as good as the situation you're in with your personality, but I mean, that, that's, it's a concern. It is definitely a concern. Jay, do you think we make the playoffs if we go get, oh, now he's my guy? I just think it's the best idea. We don't have to make him my guy.

Do I think they make the playoffs with Kyler Murray? I think if Kyler Murray played 17 games for the 2006 Minnesota Vikings, yes, they can make the playoffs. There's nothing about him that should have regressed or fallen off by the age of 28. If he was 36, I'd be like, probably not. But he's 28. And he still got burst. He still ran for 500 yards last year.

He still graded pretty well throwing the football. And last year is 2024, I mean. And this year, it just barely played. Mr. Maher says, Kyler throws for 4,000 yards and 30 touchdowns on this team. I mean, I'm just like when I look at what he did with DeAndre Hopkins, it's hard to disagree. He will get the ball at very,

least he will get the ball to just the Jefferson and he will probably have six games that you want to throw yourself in Lake Minnetonka. That, that's probably the reality is that he'll have six games that are so frustrating that you just don't want to watch anymore. And then he'll have a lot of other games that are exciting and at very least, at least is moving the offense and making plays and getting the ball to Jefferson. What are the Vikings Super Bowl odds? So right now on fan duel plus 5,500. That's the question of the day. It's like, who should they be better than?

Because they're only better than four teams in the NFC. How much does that number go up if they get Murray? At least some. There's a new call of duty dropping. That's, hey, look, here's my thing. I want everybody to make promise together, all right? If the Vikings get Kyler Murray, I promise you, I will never bring up video games or call duty.

One reason is, because I got a bunch of video games sitting right next to me and behind me. So I like playing video games. I work pretty hard, but you know, you got to take some time for games. But here's why, not because I like video games.

Because when they signed Sam Darnold, what did everyone say? They said, he sees ghosts because it was a little cute little thing that everybody remembered from when he was 21 years old against the New England Patriots. Well, I think, I mean, at least the, what year did it happen? Did it happen in 2019 or 18? I mean, you're still in the dynasty of the Patriots era.

And he's a young quarterback and he says that. And then people mock him for years. So do we really need to do that with Kyler Murray? Are you going to do the same thing with Kyler Murray if he comes here? Because if you're going to do that, I just like, I'm not going to pay any attention to it. So I think we all need to bow together that if they get Kyler Murray, we're just not going to talk about the video game problem. Leadership matters. Commitment matters.

Is he fully in? Does he view this as his big chance to turn around the narrative on Kyler Murray? Or does it seem like he's collecting a check? I don't know. I don't know Kyler Murray. I didn't cover him. But I'm not doing the, the little cute. Oh, he.

plays video games thing because that sounds too much like seeing ghost to me see you know some of the yeah the the the sack issue is on the quarterbacks as much as it is on the offensive line as much as it is on the coach it all goes together there's been too many sacks for it to be a coincidence but also we all watch the sacks and some of them were on the left tackle yes but a lot of them were on both quarterbacks holding on to the ball too long. If you throw out the fact that, see, to show you how much it can be on the system, I mean, look at, you know, Sam Darnold's improvement, but also look at certain quarterbacks who always get sacked no matter what for their entire careers.

A lot of it is on the quarterback as well. He's the one with the ball in his hands. He's the one that they cannot get sacked 27 times in, what, 240 or, well, I guess it would be how many ever dropbacks McCarthy had 280 total dropbacks, 240 passes. You can't get sacked that much. That's way beyond. It's the backup left tackles fault. No way.

That is you're holding out of the ball too much. You're trying to make way too many plays. That's, that's, really, it was just, it was like Justin Fields. Same sort of thing.