Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - REPORT: O'Connell sees Murray as possible long-term QB (Part 1)

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

Matthew Coller talks about a Sports Illustrated article by Albert Breer in which he writes that Minnesota Vikings head coach Kevin O'Connell told Kyler Murray that he could see Murray becoming the long term quarterback of the Vikings. What do we think of this? Also, NFL free agency has slowed to a halt, what's next for the Vikings? Is it time for us to turn our eyes to the draft? 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.

Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, presented by Fanduil, Matthew Collar here. And, you know, it was another day today of looking at the social media, waiting to see if there would be any news breaking on the things that were waiting around for, waiting around for an answer on Harrison Smith, waiting around for what else are they going to do with this roster? Are there any other moves? Are there contract extensions to creating cap space? Did the Jonathan Grenard trade idea just go poof into the ether and we pretend like that never happened?

Or are those things still pending? But there wasn't any movement on those items today. But there was some incredibly interesting reporting that came from Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated regarding Kyler Murray's visit. So what Breer had in his piece was a behind the scenes of Kyler Murray's visit. If you were wondering, Kyler likes Parlor Burger just like you. He is really, I think, doing a good job of endearing himself pretty early to Vikings fans talking in his press conference about crying tears when Brett Farve threw the interception

in 2009. And Murray has apparently been a longtime Vikings fan. So now he gets to come here. That's two years in a row. The Vikings have acquired somebody else's top draft pick quarterback who was a Vikings fan. Who knew? But there are more things in this article than just where Kyler Murray decided to eat when he was in Minnesota, but also some very interesting details of the discussions between Murray and Kevin O'Connell and the team.

So let's get into that. I'm going to read you a couple of paragraphs and then we'll talk about what it means that O'Connell, would say these things. So we'll jump right in from Albert Breer, and I encourage everyone to go read the article. I've tweeted it out. You can find Albert Breer on Twitter pretty easily or just Google search. Read the whole thing. Don't just take my word for it here. But I'll give you a couple of paragraphs. Then we'll break down the most interesting stuff. So Breer wrote this. Well, Murray still has to win the job from J.J. McCarthy. What O'Connell said to Murray did stick with him that he was the one guy on the market that they could see as a potential longer range answer

rather than a one-year band-aid. The idea of growing with Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, Christian Derrissau, and O'Connell, and his staff was already wildly attractive to begin with. The chance to perhaps put down roots only made it more so. And another paragraph stuck out to me in which Breer wrote, Murray, Brzezinski and O'Connell and Burkhart, which is Eric Burkhart, the agent for Kyler Murray, and a few others had lunch in the draft room. The Vikings Brass broke off for a final meeting with the doctors.

Then O'Connell pulled Murray aside and told him he wanted him to come aboard. Murray responded, this is where I want to be. And from there, Brazinski and Burkart went to negotiate a relatively simple deal on the minimum. And he said a second year was briefly explored and a no tag provision was included. So a second year was briefly explored is also a very interesting sentence in this article by Elber Breer because obviously that would mean that they were thinking about is there any chance that they could have him for multiple seasons. And of course, you know, with Murray's situation, that wouldn't be anything that his side would want to agree to because Arizona is footing the bill for this year. But then he wants to get a long term contract after that. but the fact that they even broached the discussion the Vikings did of a second year is interesting in itself.

So I have really three takeaways from the sentences that we just read. The first one is, as it's regarding J.J. McCarthy, I saw a lot of people saying, okay, well, that's the end of that. Good night, J.J. McCarthy. See you later, pal. that could very well be. For sure. I mean, if you're going out and getting a starting quarterback who executives and coaches have consistently ranked in the top 15 in the NFL, your chances of your quarterback who did not

play well as a second year player returning and becoming your franchise quarterback are already low to begin with. So it's not anything that we didn't know. And I always thought from the beginning that where they went with this decision would tell us a lot about where they stood with J.J. McCarthy. If they had gone out and gotten Joe Flacco or Marcus Marieto or something like that, then that would show a lot of belief in McCarthy. But instead, they went out and got the best quarterback that you could possibly get and someone who's not particularly old in his career. even Gino Smith would have still fallen under the category as real competition for J.J. McCarthy, and I would have seen that as, well, let's find out if McCarthy can beat him out and Gino's really old

and it's a one-year type of band-aid solution and let's see what happens. But already just bringing in Murray opened up the door, I think we knew, for the possibility of a longer-term option here. And it also made it very unlikely that McCarthy, would beat him out because there's other quarterbacks that have assorted histories in the NFL and maybe they've had some good times, maybe not, or maybe they're 40 years old like Joe Flacco and they've bounced around to a bunch of different teams. And if that's who they ended up landing with, then you could say, all right, well, that's, you know, that's a real competition and that's a very, very most, that's a one-year type of solution and whatever else. But with someone like

Kyler Murray, he's just too good. He's just above that bar to say, all right, well, this is going to be a very, you know, very much legitimate competition with those two guys and McCarthy's got an equal chance to beat him out or they really want to go with McCarthy. It doesn't look like that on its face. So this isn't anything that we couldn't have sort of surmised on our own. And we saw a lot of people, a lot of analysts. I know Lewis Riddick was sort of putting it out there that, hey, this means that they're

done with J.J. McCarthy, I don't think done is the right word because life is too unpredictable in itself. The NFL is even more unpredictable. And to say done doesn't make a whole lot of sense because it's March. If this was two-thirds of the way through the season and Kyla Murray was leading the NFL in PFF grade and the Vikings were undefeated, then yeah, you can say it's pretty clear that Kyla Murray is going to be their guy and they're going to move on from J.J. McCarthy. But there have been so many things through Vikings history at the quarterback position that we did not see coming over the years, including kind of this, that we didn't see coming or Sam Darnold's emergence or et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, what happened with Teddy Bridgewater?

How about Sam Bradford, the 2017 offseason? If I had asked any person during training camp with the Minnesota Vikings, hey, how do you feel about Sam Bradford? They would have said, we need to lock them up long term. has done so well as the quarterback in 16, but then looks like he's about to blow up. And then how about that week one game in 2017? And then Bradford never plays another game as a Minnesota Viking

and played one more year in the NFL where he started a couple games. Then he was done. And that was it. That was his whole career. So you never know where things are going to take you in the NFL. And I'm sure the 49ers could speak to this drafting Brock Purdy sort of just for the heck of it because they thought that, maybe, you know, he had good processing and there was some test that he did well on and he

understood their offense pretty well. So they just sort of grab him in the seventh round just to take a little swing. And maybe they hoped at the time he was going to be a backup quarterback. He ends up being their franchise guy and not Trey Lance. So you don't have the ability to predict where quarterbacks are going to go in the NFL. So it'd be silly to just say right now, oh yeah, they're totally done with J.J. McCarthy. There's no chance that. he ever starts another game for them because things happen and it's plausible that Kyler Murray could get hurt. It's plausible that J.J. McCarthy could be awesome in training camp and get some opportunities during the season to play and totally change the way the

organization feels about him right now and his chances of being a long term starting quarterback. That's all still potentially on the table. But the odds of it when your head coach is telling someone else, I could see you as a long-term option for us, the odds of that ever happening of J.J. McCarthy returning to be this team starting quarterback are not very high at the moment. So done is the wrong word, but they're not very high at the moment. And when you tell someone that, it kind of makes it sound like you want that to be the outcome, right? If you say to a lady or a gentleman that you're dating, if you say to them, you know, I could see myself marrying you. That's a, that's a pretty good compliment, right? You don't just say that to anybody.

You say that to someone that you really like and are really hoping is the person that's going to be with you for long term. If you were, you know, sort of dating someone else, you're not telling another person, hey, I hope we eventually get married. So that's one thing. The other. The other, thing is I started to think about what's the bar. So I think we all agree on this that there is a bar that Kyler Murray could reach where you would say, oh yes, yes, do that. And I got into this a little bit on the show yesterday and I want to go through it in a little more detail about how things have changed since Kirk because I know that because with Kirk and his contract that there is a very real fear of ever giving a quarterback any money.

But I think that things are different now than they were when Kirk signed his contract. And I also think that Kirk's contracts in particular made that really hard and where they were in their timeline made that really hard and so forth. But there is a bar, I think we would all say. If Kyler Murray is yay good, then yeah, it makes complete sense. Or how about put it this way? They're because that's hard to do with a stat line, you know, especially since stat lines can be a little funny sometimes. I mean, Jacoby Brissette had a very good stat line and his team went one and 11 with him starting.

And I respect the heck out of Jacobi Brissette. But I would not just look at that stat line and say, oh, yes, sign Jacoby Brissette to a five year contract because that's his stat line. We get fooled a lot by stats sometimes, right? They can look better or worse than the player actually is. So I think what I would do with that situation is maybe put boxes to check for Kyler Murray. Can you check all of these boxes and then we talk about a long-term type of contract? The first box that Kyler Murray has to check is staying healthy. His history is not maybe quite as bad as it looks if you go to Pro Football reference or something

and just look at how many starts he had because this year he should have been recovered enough to come back and play, but they just decided to roll it out with Jacoby Brissette. There was no reason to bring back Kyler Murray and have him win a couple games that they didn't really want to win. So, okay, well, let's, you know, kind of write a little bit of that off. But there was a foot injury that is mentioned in the Albert Breer piece that did keep him out, at least for some extent of time. He had the ACL, which cut into two seasons.

That's what I mean when you go to his number of starts. it looks like he got hurt twice. He didn't. It was the same injury and it cut into two seasons. And then you go back and there's some Nixon cuts early in his career. He's out for, I think, three games in 2000 or maybe he's two games, two or three games in 2021, which was his best overall season. But he has to stay healthy.

If they get eight games out of Kyler Murray and it's great, but he is injured and sometimes it's random or whatever else. but that's going to be hard to make an argument. Yes, sign this guy up to a five-year contract extension, make him QB1, you know, paying his picture on the side of U.S. Bank Stadium in a mural or so. Like, that's not going to happen if he only plays a handful of games. They need him to stay healthy for the majority of the season. So that's box number one.

Box number two is that he and Kevin O'Connell connect on a very good level. and I had Josh Winefuss on the show the other night, the reporter from ESPN, who's covered Murray's entire career. And he talked in depth about how close Jonathan Gannon and Kyler Murray got during Gannon's three-year stint there. So if people act like it's impossible for Murray to be close with his coach or get along with his coaches, just because of the way that it ended with Cliff Kingsbury, well, that's obviously incorrect.

But that doesn't necessarily guarantee. that he and Kevin O'Connell are going to be sharing Thanksgiving dinner together or whatever. So those two need to build a relationship on a few different levels. They need to see the game the same way schematically. Murray has to be able to execute the things that Kevin O'Connell wants him to do, which I think is a question. I push back a little bit on some of the stuff that gets said about that subject, but I think it is a question of do they see,

what Murray does well and what he can execute at his best and what O'Connell is going to want to push him a little bit more on. Do they see that in a similar light when they're watching tape and when they're going through their meetings? Because O'Connell, like many coaches do, has a sit-down meeting with the quarterback before each game and they go through stuff. And I remember reading in Bruce Ariens book that it was the third down plays that he would let his quarterback pick. So he would have a bunch of plays and it'd be Carson Palmer and he would say, all right, pick your 10 favorites for third down. These are going to be in the game plan because you want your quarterback to be very comfortable on third down. So he has those types of meetings. I believe

he calls him the red pen where the quarterback kind of go through and all right, I'm not comfortable with that kind of thing. So they have those meetings. How do those go? And are they seeing the same things because I'm sure there's a push and pull there of, the coach wants this to work and believes that schematically something is going to fit, but maybe the quarterback's not comfortable. Can they get on the same page there? I think if you're nominating all coaches with their chances to connect with a quarterback that maybe some people think doesn't always with his coaches,

O'Connell would be nominated pretty high on the list as someone who is a football junkie, a quarterback junkie. and also very positive and enthusiastic in the way that he approaches the quarterback position. And the reviews from all the quarterbacks that he's worked with, especially the veteran ones, even Daniel Jones, have always been very high about working with him on a daily basis. So there's a good chance of that that he connects with O'Connell, but it's not 100% chance that two people that who have never worked together,

working together for the first time, can click. The other one is Justin Jefferson. This is another box that has to, it is just not debatable, has to work. You cannot have Justin Jefferson running for the love of the game out there and getting three catches. Well, Kyler Murray scrambles 15 times. Now, if you watch his recent tape, that's not really what happens. His number of carries per game.

Sometimes you would think that he was scrambling on every other play based on the way people talk about him. He averages like 35 yards rushing a game. It's hardly that this guy is scrambling and taking off every other play. That's not really what happens. But there are times where he passes up throws to his top receivers. There are times where he escapes the pocket earlier than he should. There are times where he, I don't think, either can see down the field or is unsure about something throwing down the field,

which may impact Justin Jefferson to some extent. Now, when we look at his top targets and not just top receivers, but top targets, and what Trey McBride was able to do in mostly a receiver role. And when you look at what DeAndre Hopkins was able to do, his accuracy, his timing, all of those things are very good and he's usually able to get the top receiver, the ball. But that goes along the same lines and category as like Kevin O'Connell. Like, this should work.

And on paper, this makes a lot of sense of why it would work. but it's not 100% because nothing is 100%. So if I were projecting a healthy Kyler Murray and a healthy Justin Jefferson over 17 games, I'd say he ends up with, you know, 96 catches for like 100 or 1,300 yards and, you know, five touchdowns or something. 10 touchdowns? I don't know. Jefferson's not a big touchdown guy because everyone covers him.

But the point just being like I would project a huge season for Justin, Jefferson, but it's not 100% chance. So there's the main boxes that you have to check. And I think that there's other things that you could throw in there of, well, the team has to have success. And that's, I think, a box that you have to check as well. Because if Jefferson gets a lot of yards and O'Connell really likes Kyler Murray and they're best friends and they're riding a double bike or whatever, you know, up and down

Nicolette. Okay, that's great, but you got to win games. And one of the things about Murray in recent years is there have been some situations where, and they haven't had a great defense. And I think Jonathan Gannon for the things that he did well, did not game manage well. In fact, he probably blew the Vikings game in 2024 by kicking the field goal of death to go up six and allowing Sam Darnel to go down the field and win the game. There's a lot of that actually in the game.

Arizona games when you watch them back for 24 and 25 where you're like, dude, if you go for one more first down here, you can win the game and then they would not do it and the other team would come back or whatever else. They settled for a lot of field goals and it was frustrating. But regardless, you have to win. If Murray leaves here after this year with eight wins, I mean, you can't, you just can't, like unless the defense completely fell apart and everybody got, But even then, if you won fewer games than you did with Brosmer and Wentz playing, and every season's its own thing, you have to be in, I think, the double digit wins to start talking about Murray as a long-term quarterback.

I mean, maybe if everything goes sideways and you lose every one-score game and you still get nine and make the playoffs, I could be convinced if he played really, really well. But mostly, that's where you do feel like you get into Kirkland. and I was just going back and looking through again to make sure I had it right of the NFL executives and where they had placed Kyler Murray with Mike Sandos stuff. And he was 12th, 13th, 13th, 17th, 15th over the last five years. So he's in that ballpark. But you know who else was often in that ballpark was Kirk Cousins?

And they could kind of only go so far with Cousins. Murray's playmaking gives you a potentially higher ceiling. but some of his limitations can possibly hold him back from taking a team to 11, 12, 13 wins. He's done it once with an 11-win season, but he has had top 10-ish offenses. He has not had top five type of offenses. Run games have been middling, supporting casts haven't been good. If you listen to Ian Harditz earlier on the show, he pointed out that the Cardinals, in his metrics for supporting cast,

had, I think, the ninth worst supporting cast since maybe 2020 or something like that when Kyler Murray was there. So, so there's all those things. There's all those things that you can add up and say, well, this will be better for him. This will be better for him. But if he doesn't come through and you don't win, then it would be very hard to say, here's a four year, $150 million contract. Off we go into the future. And then the last box that you'd have to check is, well, what is the price tag? Because if you look at Sam Darnold's, contract. Technically it was three years, 110, I believe, but it wasn't really three years 110. It was much more flexible than that. His salary cap hit for this year was not that bad at all.

And a lot of the contracts that are being signed by quarterbacks that are more in the middle are pretty reasonable. The Baker-Mayfield type of deal, there is now a middle class of quarterbacks, it sort of settled itself where not everyone is getting the Joe Burrow dollars, the Josh Allen dollars. And Murray was kind of and Trevor Lawrence were like the last guys to get that. And then it feels like the NFL went, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We can't do that. And teams are a little bit more willing to let their quarterbacks even go or franchise tag them as the Dallas

Cowboys did. Now, the Cowboys screw that situation up, but they were willing to franchise tag Dak Prescott, because I think they weren't totally sold and then he played really, really well, and, you know, they go from there. But the point just being that there has been a middle class that's sort of emerged. So if Kyler Murray wins 11 games and is the 12th best quarterback in the NFL this year, which is where he has sort of settled in the eyes of the NFL and in the eyes of PFF when he plays well, if they win 11 games, 12th best quarterback in the league, top 10 defense, they go into the playoffs, who knows what happens. I think maybe we learned our lesson, maybe not, about judging a quarterback on a single playoff game, but that might matter a little bit in terms of a negotiation.

If he's looking to be one of the highest paid quarterbacks in the NFL because he knows he's going out on the open market, that would be very difficult for the Vikings to build around in their current state. They are trying to get their salary cap situation right. They are trying to stack up draft capital, but they are not the Seattle Seahawks adding Sam Darnold, where Seattle just destroyed this last draft. I mean, Gray Zabel, Nickyman Warray, huge contributors for them. They made some incredible moves in free agency by getting DeMarcus Lawrence there,

a couple other role players, Rashid Shaheed, and a trade. Everything that they did turned to absolute gold around Sam Darnold, and they stayed healthy in order to win the Super Bowl. I mean, the Vikings after 2026 would have to be very confident in what they had in terms of a young core. And who knows exactly what's going to happen in the Jordan Addison situation? Like, is he going to have a healthy and good year off the field and end up getting a contract extension? Or does it look like that is coming to an end at some point here soon? So there's a lot to be decided around Kyler Murray.

but if he checks those other boxes, my point is, you can work out things with a contract these days, especially with the flexibility and there is the void year situation and so forth, that in the past when Kirk was first signing his contracts, teams were not doing very much of that. And the fact that Kirk always wanted it as guaranteed as possible made the money very difficult to move around. if you have a contract that says $120 million, but actually only 60 of it is guaranteed, well, you've got a little bit more flexibility there with that player. And we've seen just recently even Mahomes and Jackson, these guys having their contracts restructured and it does push money down the road, but at least it gives you flexibility

to make additions around that player. So the structure and how much he would want to get paid would matter as well. But here's what we know. And here is the bottom line of what Kevin O'Connell is saying is that it matches up with, I think, all of our common sense when they signed Kyler Murray, which is, hey, under the right set of circumstances, this guy could be their quarterback. But, you know, it's got to check those boxes. But I think we all knew that that under a certain situation that they would keep Kyler

Murray because you're so uncertain to be polite about what, J.J. McCarthy is going to be. And sometimes I don't really fully understand when people act like J.J. McCarthy is a total mystery. He's not. I mean, he's played 10 games in the NFL and they've gone about as poorly as you can play 10 games in the NFL. That's not a mystery. That's not, oh, man, they just, they need to find out. Well, they found out a lot. And they also found out that he struggles to stay healthy as well. So I think if you're the Vikings, yeah, you're thinking about what's our long-term option going to be.

How are we going to go forward when, especially if you win a fair number of games, even if the 2027 draft does have four quarterbacks in the first round, are you going to get one of them? Because the last time this happened was 2024. That was historic with the number of first round quarterbacks. And by number 10, five of them were off the board. So it's not easy to get a top quarterback and even someone like Fernando Mendoza, who I really like, but I mean, is he a number one overall pick kind of traditionally of what we think of someone in their skill set of being a number one overall pick?

Probably not, but teams have to do it. The Raiders in their position, they have to do it. But that's, and then there's nobody else in the first round. Like it kind of tells you how hard that is to draft a quarterback if you are not. in that top 15 or even top 10 because teams are going to take them if they're worth it. So you have to be thinking about the potential for Kyler Murray. So I'm very curious about that. In fact, we could make that our Fanduel question of the day.

If you got a stat line or if you have your box to check, what is it? Right now the Vikings are plus 600 to win the NFC North. Still, it didn't really move much with Kyler Murray signing with the Vikings. but if he wins the division, is that good enough for you? Like, where's your bar for Kyler Murray to be the Vikings longer-term quarterback? But my point is with the way contracts are structured is that it doesn't necessarily have to be a five-year, $250 million, a fully guaranteed type of contract. The NFL world has corrected.

And not to mention that the salary cap has exploded every single. single year going up and up and up. So if you signed Murray to a $40 million a year, three year contract next year. And the first year cap hit is, I don't know, 20 million or something like that. Once you get into adding restructures, an extension at some point, kicking money down the road, which I know people don't like, but is a much more viable strategy than it used to be. I mean, it used to be something that we looked at and went, oh, my, they're going to end up with a a zillion dollars of dead cap.

But now, even if you do end up with some dead cap versus a $300 million salary cap as as opposed to, gosh, what was it when Kirk signed? Was it like 170? I mean, it's a, it's a really crazy change in the NFL. Thanks to, I guess, Amazon and playing every single holiday. And I don't know. I don't know how the finances work. So it's gotten a little bit more feasible than it was before.

I want to run over a couple of quick notes and then get to your thoughts in just a second about this. Shoot back over here. Christian Kirk. I had him on my list yesterday somebody that might be interesting for the Minnesota Vikings. And he signed with the 49ers today on a one year, $6 million contract for Christian Kirk. So there are still a few connected Kyler Murray wide receivers out there. there. And I think if anything, the wide receiver market is still okay, like Debo Samuel and Brandon Cooks and some guys that you know, uh, whose names are out there. And I am curious if

D'Andre Hopkins would, uh, entertain the idea. He was tweeting today about, you know, being a good teammate and, you know, so forth, uh, with Baltimore because he was commenting on some highlight that someone posted. Last year, he was okay as a veteran receiver for the Baltimore Ravens average 15 yards a catch. If he was interested in coming and playing with Kyler Murray, I'd be curious about that. I'm also starting to think. And the minute I say this, they'll make some signing and just prove me completely wrong. But it feels like there's not going to be a whole lot of movement for the Vikings until after June 1st.

I believe that Jonathan Allen's designation for his contract was a June 1st cut. So are you going to do it then? But also, I mean, I don't know. Like maybe that's the late summer signings are probably more on the table or it might also be until they get something resolved with Brian O'Neill or something resolved with Blake Cashman to create a little bit more cap space for right now. And then they would consider making some additions. I mean, they have to sign some people. It's just a matter of when. And the wide receiver three position, I kind of thought Christian Kirk would make a lot of sense because as you could see, the price would be right.

one year, $6 million is not a whole heck of a lot for a guy who's got a history with Kyla Murray. And last year was okay as a member of the Houston Texans. But the price is just so low. They need someone to compete at wide receiver three. And I did see that there was a mock draft that was put out there today. That was the first time I had seen the Vikings have a wide receiver going at number 18, which is also kind of interesting.

Something has to happen in that receiver room. It can't just be Ty Felton and Miles Price. They've got to have a plan there. But, you know, Hollywood Brown is another guy who's out there. He's had injury issues through his career, but he's also had some moments through his career. Maybe that's an option as well. And one other note from a slow day in the NFL in terms of the news cycle,

the Vikings announced that C.J. Ham and Adam Thielen will both retire officially on Thursday. So there's going to be a press conference. I will be there. And I promised a podcast after C.J. Ham called it quits where we could wax poetic about C.J. Ham. But now doing it with Adam Thielen as well.

We'll talk about that on Thursday night. We'll play you some of their press conference. And we will kind of go back in time a little bit with two guys. I mean, right now, I was thinking about this today. These two guys were both here for the Minneapolis Miracle. And so is Harrison Smith. If Smith retires, then that'll be everybody. I do not believe there will be anyone left on the Vikings roster if Harrison Smith retires,

who was here for the Minneapolis Miracle. We are all very old. So let's get to your thoughts, your comments here. But, you know, congratulations to those guys on incredible careers. And again, we'll Thursday night. we'll have our we'll share our memories of cj ham and adam theelin and so forth so okay let's get to the chat here and uh oh they didn't they didn't june first alan i thought that they did i i guess i hadn't checked in it made sense to do that but if they didn't then

then i get it okay if they didn't june first allen i'm sorry uh my that's my bad i thought that it would make sense if they did so i guess that's why that was uh in my head i'll have to see right now they're only listed as having five point nine million dollars in cap space i mean they's they need to sign a draft class like that's not enough stuff stuff still has to happen so you know there's a lot of people who have been saying like why haven't they signed you know anybody like well they didn't create enough cap space to sign anybody at the moment i think that those extensions or this is why a jonathan grenard trade does make sense because it opens up cap space you can add a couple of more players to your current roster

and start to fill in in the aggregate to use the, the Billy Bean phrase for Moneyball for a really good player. If they decided to do that and then maybe pick up some draft capital, it's just that there's been no buzz or rumors at all about a Grenard trade. I suppose maybe it'll just drop on us at some point if they do that. Dawn says don't see Harrison coming back. Well, I mean, you've got, you have gotten to the point where we know at least he's considering it. because otherwise he would have retired by now.

So he's got to be thinking about it if we're already into mid-March and he has not made his decision. And they also have let every safety, no matter how cheap, come off the board. And they are fairly comfortable with Josh Mattelis, Jay Ward, and Theo Jackson after Jay Ward stepped up last year at the end of the season. Still, if they were really, really, really thinking that Harrison for sure was out, then I imagine they would have signed someone unless they've got plans to draft Dylan Thineman or Emmanuel McNeil Warren or, you know, who knows,

if Caleb Downs drops or something like that, that is a possibility as well. But at very least, he's thinking about it because when they announced last week that they were officially cutting him with the post-June 1st designation, that it was a procedural move and that he was staying in contact with the team still. So that doesn't scream like he's retiring tomorrow. but, you know, maybe he'll, maybe he'll like WWE style show up on Thursday and be like, I'm retiring too with CJ Hamm and Adam Thielan. I don't know.

Maybe that's going to happen. I've always thought that, you know, he wouldn't put it out there to anybody and it would just sort of happen when it was going to happen, that it wouldn't be something that got leaked or whatever else. Rach says, Vikings fan understandably really want a franchise quarterback after years of journeyman starters, but you can't force it. JJ hasn't earned the benefit of the doubt. No doubt about that.

I mean, last year, it was, he's earned the doubt, a lot of the doubt. But I think what we've seen from Jared Goff, from Sam Darnold, from Baker Mayfield, especially, these guys are similar to Kyler Murray. Where they would have been ranked, in fact, Kyla Murray has never been ranked below Sam Darnold. It's never by the NFL executives. Last year, going into the season, Darnold was ranked 20th. Murray was ranked 15th. So we've seen a lot of these talented quarterbacks who bounce around eventually settle into a home as a franchise quarterback somewhere else.

I mean, I know you wanted to be your guy that you drafted, but I remember making someone of this argument with Sam Darnold. Like, it doesn't matter where you found him. It only matters that you found him. Brett Farv was in Atlanta Falcon. It doesn't matter if no one in Green Bay says, man, I wish we had drafted Farv as opposed to him being a falcon first, right? no one cares.

It's like, did you get your guy that was good enough to potentially win with? And I was also looking through something else, which was where did the NFL executives rank the quarterbacks going into the season when they went to the Super Bowl in the NFC, which is not dominated anymore by a Rogers or a breeze? There really is no true mega elite quarterback in the NFC. And the answer was pretty surprising. I mean, when you look at going into those season, and where executives ranked Stafford, they had them as seventh in 2021.

None of the other quarterbacks even cracked the top 10 that ended up taking their teams to the Super Bowl. So a lot of times in the national football conference, it's been about how good is your team build, how good is your coaching? That's what gets teams deep into the playoffs. The Detroit Lions, their initial team build around Jared Gough is incredible. Chicago did a great job last year of getting the coach that fit with their quarterback and then the weapons around their quarterback and the offensive line around their

quarterback. So the Vikings feel that they have a pretty good setup right now, but is it good enough to get you to the Super Bowl all the way through the playoffs? I mean, they certainly have the coaching on the defensive side. I would argue that they have the coaching on the offensive side, even if it's not perfect. It certainly meets a baseline of coaching. And we've seen that when there's been veteran quarterbacks in there with Kevin O'Connell. So, they've got a lot of those boxes checked that are similar to these teams. Even Jalen Hertz had gotten paid and Brock Purdy had gotten paid by the time that they went, or not Brock Purdy, Purdy got paid after that.

But Jalen Hertz, his last time going to the Super Bowl and winning it, he had gotten paid. He was just in the early stages of that contract that didn't have a very high cap hit. Jack's Parks, it seems like Grinard is setting his contract price too high for the Vikings' potential trade partners that could definitely. be the case. I think that if you're the Vikings, it's a little bit of a dangerous game because we kind of went through this a few times. Remember with like Hunter, Kyle Rudolph, Anthony Harris, who I think they thought they could tag in trade and then nobody was making that trade,

that they've gotten caught a little bit with, well, we're going to, we're going to hang on at our price and we're going to be patient. We're going to wait till somebody panics. And then if nobody panics, where do you end up? But that is the one thing that's, for sure driving down the price is that you don't just give up draft capital for Jonathan Granard. You also have to redo his contract. And teams don't love doing that unless they really, really, really want the player or unless they get them for a deal.

And my guess is that teams are coming in with third round picks and saying, well, we've got to take out a lot of money here for you guys. So we're not going to give you huge draft capital for someone who is really good, but is not of the level of like a Miles Garrett. Matt, you got to draft the wide receiver three. No disagreement there. I am going to be on the side of first second round draft pick, take a weapon, tight end if it's Sadiq or a wide receiver.

I like the idea of a wide receiver just with Jordan Addison's future being, in my mind, it's up in the air. I don't see his future at all as being settled just because he didn't, you know, go to prison for life for being. dragged out of a casino or whatever, it is still with the issues that he's had off the field up in the air, where things are going to go with Jordan Addison. And then the price tag is also up in the air.

Even if Addison catches 70 balls for 900 yards and 10 touchdowns next year, I mean, if he does that, you're talking about a contract extension of what, $30 million per year based on the market prices, based on Alec Pierce, who I don't think is as good as Jordan Addison, as a pure wide receiver. he had a better year last year, but just as a pure wide receiver,

and Alec Pierce is pushing $30 million per season? I mean, what's Addison going to want? It makes total sense to me to draft a wide receiver very high. Keenan Allen, I mean, Keenan Allen has been a Viking killer for a long time, but is a hundred? I don't know if, I mean, maybe he could still play. Maybe.

Um, P3T. Randy Moss said an interview that he's convinced he could still play to we get a cap discount. If we pay him in stray cash, that's very funny. Yeah. Randy is, I, you know, he's one of the greatest of all time, certainly in the top five, all time wide receivers. But I think Tennessee Titans Randy Moss would probably be proof that he cannot still play. But man, you know, Randy's so much fun. Every time, every time he talks, Randy.

is so much fun. John says, doesn't matter. KOC won't be the coach of the Vikings next year anyway. Who cares what he thinks? I mean, I think that it's interesting how people, or at least a lot of people have turned on Kevin O'Connell.

Because, I mean, looking at last year as being the coach's fault, I have a tough time with that. I mean, coming off a season where they won 14 games the year before where things went right and they had a good quarterback and having it work with Kirk Cousins to go 17 and 8 in his 25 starts. And then looking at last year as if you didn't know anything about Kevin O'Connell, had never seen him coach before and then saying, no, he stinks. And getting, I mean, getting to a winning record at the end of the day and just saying he should be fired, get him out of here. I don't really understand. I think that, I mean, is this just like a, is this a thing that football fans have always done

or is this a more recent thing where anytime there's a mistake, people want someone fired or anytime there's a down something, you want something fired? I mean, we've got to be smarter than that as a society. I'm not sure that owners are always smarter than that, as you see like Arizona firing a pretty good coach and then having no answer for who their next coach was going to be and then just sort of, okay, we're going to land on.

on this guy, I guess. So I guess owners do act that way and probably fans have always wanted their coach fired no matter what. The NBA, the NHL, bad half a season, somebody's out. Championship coaches just fire them all the time. Is that like just a, is it an online thing that it's very easy to just type in somewhere, like get rid of someone, they're going to be fired and so forth? I mean, as of this moment, Kevin O'Connell's history. with quarterbacks like this, pretty good.

Kirk Cousins, well, his statistics were not way better than we'd ever seen him before. His connection with the locker room, his connection with teammates, his comfort in clutch situations was way different under Kevin O'Connell. And then Sam Darnold, who has clearly proven that a lot of it was Sam Darnold, although he went to Clint Kubiak. So it's not like he went to some bum coach and then made them look brilliant, right? Kubiak and Kevin O'Connell have similarities. So, you know, I think it was in terms of a passing game,

not that wildly different from, it was just that maybe Seattle committed to the run and also could run. The Vikings couldn't run in the second half of 2024 to save their lives. So, you know, that may have played into it as well. But I think when you look at a coach and you start talk about it in the same terms of, like, checking boxes, can you win with this guy? until they have, people are going to say you can't, which also goes for quarterbacks as well. But, I mean, is this person a good enough leader of your franchise?

Does this person create a good enough culture? Do they have a good enough passing game? Because always in the passing game, it's going to be number one for what correlates to success in winning in the postseason is your passing game. Defense will win you a game somewhere and you need that. you need a good enough defense. And then every time there's a defensive win, people will say defense wins championships. You also need your passing game to beat the Rams in the NFC championship,

as Sam Darnold did, driving that team's success from the quarterback position. So can Kevin O'Connell create a good enough passing game? Can he manage a game well enough? We've seen some ups and downs there. I think the answer is more yes than it is no. But also, like, I mean, it's very hard to win the Super Bowl. It's like, can you, am I going to guarantee that someday,

he's going to win one. No, but I look at coaching around the league and go, you better be real sure. You better be real sure. And I think what's happened is that the J.J. McCarthy supporters, the people who have decided no matter what, hell or high water, no matter how, what performance, what information, even today, like, no matter what, they're just, they're just riding it all the way to the end. And that's fine. You can do that. And maybe someday you'll be right. But I also think that there's a, because there's not a lot of facts to work with there, it ends up being like create your own and lashing out. And I noticed this from all comment sections where it's like,

the J.J. McCarthy people will just say stuff that isn't even remotely true about Kyla Murray or Kevin O'Connell or whatever that we've dispelled a million times. It's like, it's probably because you don't have a lot to work with in terms of facts. But I think we can keep our rationality here as it pertains to the head coach. and talking about, you know, evaluating him and whether you should keep him as a long term or whatever. I would not put O'Connell on the hot seat.

I would certainly put him under pressure, though. So it's possible that you end up being right. But I, with this, if Murray comes here and gives them the caliber of quarterback play he's capable of, then they're going to go forward with him. And they're going to go forward with KOC. Rob says agree. Kirk was a person of interest. Do you mean Christian Kirk?

I'd still go Greg Dorch, perfect. Also kick and punt returner. But, you know, I think Miles Price is probably good there. Is it redundant with Miles Price? Like, Dorch to me is another undersized like Brandon Powell type. That just doesn't really move the needle a lot. If you had to do it, then you could do it. But it, to me, doesn't really change much.

I mean, I guess like a bit of a playmaker with the ball in his hands, but those guys, they just aren't having a ton of success in the NFL. You're getting like eight yards per attempt throwing to those players. BM says J.J. McCarthy was historically awful prior to the cupcake finished to the season. And he was able to elevate his overall grade to the second worst starter in the league. It's a little on the harsh side there because we can't totally throw out. the good moments that McCarthy had. And that includes against the Lions who are a good team and it includes against the Bears in the fourth quarter.

But when you can only play 10 games in two seasons from a health perspective, even if he had been good, then you're still looking at other quarterback options. And then, yes, yeah, by the time that they're four and eight, and remember, he didn't even play the Seattle Seahawks. I don't even want to think about what would have had. Oh, well, I guess we saw it with Max Brosemer. I think you would have been better than what happened with Bros. But it would have been gnarly.

Considering coming off of that Packers game, he missed the game against the Seahawks. Who even knows what the statistics end up looking like if that happens. But this isn't something that we have to work too hard for. I mean, we all watched what happened. We all saw even by the end of the season, the injury issues. The performance is also against Green Bay and New York. It wasn't like it was spectacular. It was just kind of okay.

and the numbers at the end of the day are really bad. And if you're any franchise, you can't just hit your wagon, no matter how much you like the guy, no matter how much you loved him in the draft, you can't hit your wagon to that person. So it feels like a lot of McCarthy's super fans are just like gripping onto this and sort of lashing out at everyone around that it's happening that Kyler Murray is not only their quarterback, but Kevin O'Connell is hinting that he could be the longer term quarterback if this works out. but how would you operate? I mean, no matter how much you love J.J. McCarthy and you totally can.

Like, there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with believing that he can long term play in the NFL, that he could someday be a good starter. That's fine. I mean, I held on to Tim Couch when I was a kid for a really long time. I thought that it was the Brown's fault and it was, and the couch was eventually going to come back in the NFL and be great. It didn't happen, but I have had this with other quarterbacks too,

and sometimes it's actually worked out. Like I thought that I thought Ryan Tannenhill got a raw deal with Adam Gase and it worked out for him eventually. So it's happened enough times that the Baker Mayfield fans don't give up on your guy. I'm not saying you should. But also you have to put yourself in the shoes of the franchise and go, well, if you were them and you can get someone who's been a top 15 quarterback and that player clicks with your organization and plays really well, like what would you do? go back to the person who wasn't even refined enough as a passer to really be starting in the NFL yet. Like, that's a tough ask. So even if, you know, you want to believe in McCarthy, again, that's perfectly fine.

But asking them, asking the franchise to stick with that when someone of this caliber is available, just is, it's unrealistic. Rage says by any metric you use, JJ was one of the worst quarterbacks in league in 2025. that doesn't necessarily mean he'll always be bad, but there's no sugar-coting how bad he was. Yep, I agree with that. Totally agree with that. You got to live in reality when we're having this conversation. Jack says saying JJ's 10 starts went bad as they possibly could is insane over-exaggeration. Jack, I mean, insane over, well, first of all, over-exaggeration is redundant.

So for your future, let me help you. Just say exaggeration. It's not an exaggeration. it's the data. There's nothing we can do about it, Jack. We can't help you. We can't change the facts. We can't change what happened. It's just the numbers. It's how the games played out. It was as bad as we've seen from the start of someone's career through their first six games and then through the first five games. And then down the stretch, it wasn't at all convincing. It was okay against teams that all fired their defensive coordinators or didn't play their starters.

But at the end of the day, you just can't have numbers like that. I mean, think about, think about it this way. There are a dozen quarterbacks that have played 10 starts whose teams didn't even think about having them play again that were much better than J.J. McCarthy. I'll give you an example. Like, go look up Desmond Ritter's first 10 starts for the Atlanta Falcons. They're much better than J.J. McCarthy's.

And they were like, no, that's not. That's not. nope, that's not a franchise quarterback. You can make a lot of excuses, but you can't change the, you can't change what happened. In fact, it's one of the great things about sports is that, well, you can have a lot of different discussions about what could happen in the future and where this thing's going to go and the context of why someone didn't perform at a certain level, which you cannot do is change what happened on the scoreboard.

And what happened on the scoreboard is McCarthy ranking 42nd out of 45. quarterbacks in quarterback rating and even through his first 10 starts I look this up the other day I can actually bring this up in my article the other day actually this this will be useful give me a second I'll bring this up in my article to kind of make the point of like why would the Vikings why would the Vikings do this you know why would they why would they continue you know think about you know moving on and so forth okay here we go this is from the Friday bag, feel free to sign up for the newsletter if you want to. Purpleinsider. Football.

All right. So here is the couple of paragraphs from the newsletter and the research that I did about McCarthy. And this is why, again, as the team, you cannot go into this season with him as your only starting quarterback option. And you have to consider Kyler Murray as a potential long-term option. and that it's not ridiculous at all to say to Kyler Murray, hey, man, you could be our guy long term. This is why. All right, I'm just going to read from this. Out of 113 quarterbacks to throw at least 200 passes in their first 10 starts from 2010,

McCarthy is 94th in adjusted net yards per attempt, which factors in sacks and interceptions. Here is the list of guys who were taken between 10th and 64th overall draft picks that rank below 60th on the adjusted net yards per attempt over their first 10 starts. Here is the list. Teddy Bridgewater, who was exactly 60th, Bo Nix, Will Levis, Mason Rudolph, Mitch Trubisky, Dwayne Haskins, Jake Locker,

Derek Carr, Ryan Tannhill, E.J. Manuel, Brandon Whedon, Johnny Mansell, Kenny Pickett, Justin Fields, Christian Ponder, Josh Rosen, Geno Smith, Deshaun Kaiser, and Jimmy Cawson. And even if we count Bridgewater as a success, that's five out of 19 that became anything. And it took Tannehill and Smith a long time. Bridgewater played on a brutal team in 2014. And Derek Carr's Raiders were even worse.

And that's it, not exactly promising. So as we work with the set of facts and projections, which that's what everything is in the NFL when you make moves. It's all projections. Like you're trying to project what Kyler Murray is going to be. and the Vikings can rationally project that Kyler Murray could be a franchise quarterback for them. And the word franchise quarterback, I think, has shifted a little bit because of what we've seen in recently in the NFL. I mean, even think about when we talk about, oh, you can't pay anyone, you can't pay anyone. I just think that it's old thinking.

I think that we have changed enough as an NFL to where the thinking is different than it was just a few. years ago. Because when the environment changes, we need to also change the way that we evaluate our own opinions as well. Because Trevor Lawrence just won 13 games with the Jacksonville Jaguars. When he got paid, it was like, oh, it's going to be impossible for the Jags to ever win around that contract. And it was not. And there's a lot of guys that have gotten paid and are not even the best of the absolute best. You could say, well, you know, okay, Stafford, Stafford has a big contract. He is the MVP. He's the best of the best. But there is a number of other quarterbacks who are on second contracts whose teams have found ways to work around it and

still win. Johnny says it's going to be entertaining. Love seeing a DT pass out trying to chase our quarterback. Yeah, there's, it looks like to me that Vikings fans have broken into sections about Kyler Murray. There is a group who I think is very, very excited. And the funny thing that that I've noticed is that the group who's very, very excited is people, often people who are much older than me and watched Fran Tarkington. I've gotten, I don't know how many notes of people like, hey, hey, is this guy kind of like Fran Tarkinton? Like, well, not exactly because Fran Tarkinton, you know, went to four Super Bowls and finished his career basically at the top of the list of everything passing wise of anyone. It wasn't actually, Fran was not a prolific

runner, he would gain 100, 200 yards a season, but it wasn't like Fran was gaining a thousand yards or 500 plus yards like Kyler Murray. But, you know, when you look at the beginning of Fran Tarkatant's career as a scrambling quarterback, he played for some teams that weren't very good, including the early Vikings teams and then the New York Giants. And it wasn't until the Vikings had a stacked roster around him that he became the great, great Fran Tarkitin in terms of win lost. Like he was always great. But in terms of winning success did not happen until later in his career. And I think was he maybe 20, 28, 29 in that ballpark when he first started to like have 12 win seasons for the Minnesota Vikings, which no surprise went along with them having Jim Marshall

and Alan Page and the Purple People leaders completely built by then. So even the greatest quarterback in Vikings history would tell you that his supporting cast had a lot to do with why he's in the Hall of Fame and considered one of the best quarterbacks of all time. Patrick says the 27 QB class is stacked. We will see. We'll see if it's stacked. I mean, right now it looks stacked, but we'll see if it's stacked.

You never really know. They were completely right about 2024, but they've been wrong about other years that we're supposed to have stacked quarterback classes. It's going to matter a lot about how guys play through a year. And then also, you know, someone like Joe Burrow wasn't even considered a prospect and then is suddenly the number one pick. how about Mendoza? Did anybody have Mendoza's the top overall draft pick? Probably not.

So a lot can change. P3, can we talk about how much I missed Dante Culpepper? He was never the same after the neat thing, but man, he was something when he was healthy. And this is why I have tried to suggest that you sort of strap in for the ride and see what happens with Kyler Murray. Because Dante Culpepper also did not win the Super Bowl, along with every other person, who's ever played for the Minnesota Vikings is not one in purple. So the odds are not in Kyla Murray's favor that he's going to win the Super Bowl. But the ability to throw the ball to your number one wide receiver,

the playmaking ability, the potential for a really cool story. And I felt like in 2024 that not enough people really latched on to the story until late in the season of Sam Darnold. There was a lot of, like, don't play too well, dude. We can't wait for JJ. Like, just don't, don't get in the way of what's supposed to happen here. And of course, he did. But like, don't get in the way.

Just win seven or eight games and get the hell out of here was kind of the vibe. And then when he had some bad games in the middle of the season, it was like, all right, this guy, he's nobody. He can't win. Get him out of here. And I felt like there was far too much of that until late in the season when they beat the Falcons. That's where I felt like it changed with the fan base, starting to accept Sam Darnold. This time around, I mean, I just think when you have a quarterback and Darnel was so much

fun watching him throw the football, it's going to be like that, only different. But this is an entertaining football player and football is an entertainment product. You'd like them to be in a position where you were saying they're going into the season as a favorite. They're not going into this season as fourth out of four on Fandul at plus 600. to win the NFC North. You'd much prefer that J.J. McCarthy had become Drake May and that the Vikings were in a Super Bowl window that now extends for the next decade.

That is not really on the table at this moment. So could it be fun? Could they potentially be very interesting? Could they win? Could they win the division? Could they be in the playoffs and be relevant and have big games? Yes. And at the moment, that's what you can ask.

ask for. So spending the entire off season and the entire season just sort of pounding the table, they can't win, fire KOC and whatever. I was like, I just, I don't know how you live that way sometimes. I'm not saying that you will be wrong because I don't know how it's going to play out and neither to you. But I kind of don't know how you live in that world where you're in March with a quarterback who's had some of the moments that Kyler Murray has over his career and your main disposition is can't wait till the coach is fired. Like that's just, that's kind of odd to me.

BM says, Kyler's going to be in the MVP frontrunner conversation this year. I think that's probably, see, that's what I was talking about, about the segmenting of fans where there's a group that has convinced themselves that it's going to be so good that, like,

he's going to be the franchise quarterback and they've got their guy and they've got this, you know, superstar who's going to take them where they want to go. And then I think the majority of people are probably in the bucket of, Well, this could be interesting and fun, but it's probably not going to get you there. And then there's this other smaller percentage that they can't kind of let go and can't accept what's happened here yet. But maybe that will happen eventually.

Coltrane says, come on, Matthew. Funny how everyone forgets how bad our offense as a whole was last season. I guess we put all the blame on Quasi. Let's pile on JJ. No, I did not put all the, well, I definitely didn't put all the blame on Quasi because they had a good enough. roster, but if you don't think the quarterback position was responsible for them ranking 28th in the passing game, when the year before they were sixth in expected points added with Sam Darnold, I don't know who you think is responsible.

The person who holds the football and throws it to people, that's who I would generally think when you have the same offense. I mean, that's not to say that Kevin O'Connell had nothing to do with. their struggles last year offensively. I'm sure at times that he certainly did. And maybe there was coming into the season some other way they could have approached it to have less on the plate of J.J. McCarthy, maybe from the very beginning, as opposed to later on in the season, although I'm not convinced against good teams that actually works.

I think it gets really bad teams. You have a few better players than they do and you're fine and those teams gave up or were firing defensive coordinators or were injured or whatever. and you could get through it. But even then, even then the numbers weren't that special. I mean, they're just okay against, you know, the tomato cans that they played at the end of the season. They're just, oh, they're fine. But they're not the 350-yard performances or something that we see star quarterbacks put up.

Everyone is to blame for what happened. And with Kevin O'Connell, it's more of letting go Sam Darnold is really, it's like, let's blame people for the right things. If you want to point a finger, how about letting go Sam Darnold is the thing to point the finger for? It's not to say that he was the reason J.J. McCarthy couldn't hit open wide receivers. And one of the stats that I think is the most demonstrative of what happened last year is that the completion percentage, the expected completion percentage, the expected completion percentage for Sam Darnold and. J.J. McCarthy was exactly the same. But McCarthy was 5% underneath it and Sam Darnold was above it. And that's how you end up with the performance that those two had is the wide receivers were the same amount open that they were targeting. And yet Darnold hit them and J.J. McCarthy didn't. And I don't

know what you're supposed to do from the sideline as, you know, Kevin O'Connell when your quarterback cannot hit open wide receivers, which happened most of the season. And not only that, 27 sacks when you only threw 243 passes is a freaking insane amount of sacks to take. That to go along with double-digit interceptions, which you shouldn't have double-digit interceptions in the NFL in 500 passes, much less 243. Once you start adding all of these things up, and then you look at how Darnold performed, how even Mullen's performed, how. her cousins performed in this same offense with this same coach.

It's just, it just defies any sort of logic, which you're allowed to do in forming your opinion, but it defies any sort of logic that I tend to work inside the constraints of to say that it was all the coach's fault. John says, I love the idea of mobile quarterbacks. Our history was built on it, Tarkington, Cunningham, and Culpepper. Well, I'm in complete agreement with you there, John, because, you know, I look back at a lot of quarterbacks that I was in favor of, whether it's for the Vikings or, you know, just in general, because of growing up watching Cunningham, Steve Young, Steve McNair,

quarterbacks like that, even to some extent, Michael Vic, I was in like high school when Mike Vic was playing. And I mean, just guys who can turn nothing into something. and Kyler is one of those guys. He doesn't quite do it at the same level that he did early in his career or as often as he did early in his career. But there are plays where it is just shocking how he could escape or even just make a play off schedule. So he was able to make in the New Orleans game last year a couple of plays off schedule

where the protection breaks down instantly and then all of a sudden he, he's out and he's making a play and finds Trey McBride down the field. Like that is something that was really a struggle when they had Kirk cousins. And I, no matter how many times I say it, people will still leave in the comments, do you hate Kirk or whatever? Okay, fine. Any objective analysis of any player always results in people saying that you hate them. So I guess I shouldn't worry about that.

But with Kirk, one of the issues was if your offensive line loses, you lose. and this is the same issue that Jared Gough has and what the Vikings took advantage of last year to beat Jared Gough twice was if your offensive line loses, you lose. There were very few games that the Vikings won in the Kirk era where they got beat in the trenches. There are games for the very mediocre, if not bad, Arizona Cardinals, where their offensive line doesn't play that well or they allow free runners at Kyle or Murray and he just makes a play. There's a play and I will do, I've, I've, I've,

started, I've gotten, collected the clips from his 2025 and we'll get into that at some point and do some film later in the week. But there's a play against the Saints where there's an edge rusher who just, they forget to block entirely. And Kyler sort of takes one step up the field. The guy chases him and then he swoops back around him and runs for a big game. There's a game play against the Panthers where they send a free running linebacker. Their blocker doesn't get over to get him.

The guy is two inches from the face of Kyler. when he gets the snap in his hands and Murray turns it into a 30-yard gain. I mean, there are things that running quarterbacks can do that add value. And that's why when I looked at one of the more interesting stats that I looked at with Kyler Murray was approximate value from pro football reference because that adds up. It's like a wins above replacement stat. It adds the rushing into it. So it's not just the passing, but it adds in the rushing.

and Murray was in the top 10 most valuable quarterbacks from 2020 to 2024 because that's an additional, I think in 2024, he had 27 first downs or something. In the first five games of last year, he had 10 additional rushing first downs. And you know those aren't Cubey sneaks like they are for Jalen Hertz or something. So those, that's a lot of extra drives that stay alive because of this guy. And it's also a lot of fun. P3 regarding J.J. McCarthy, I think Matthew nailed it. Thank you. Before when he mentioned the fact that McCarthy never experienced failure and didn't know how to handle it,

there was no way to predict that. I 100% agree with that. The NFL is not something that you can prepare yourself for mentally because the strain, it's kind of like this. Think about, let's say that you're going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. I read an article about how a lot of, lot of people want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, and a lot of them are definitely not prepared to be able to do this, and they are just brought down the mountain in a wheelbarrow, basically. And one of the things is, if you want to climb an actual mountain, how do you get ready to do

that? You, I don't know, like use a stairmaster. You climb, you go into a really tall building downtown. and you climb the stairs over and over and over again or something, you work out, you work on your breathing, I don't know. I've never climbed a mountain. I promise you I will never try it. But you cannot prepare yourself for what it's like to actually climb that mountain.

And I look like, or I think of that, I look at the NFL like it's the same thing. You cannot prepare yourself if you've never done it before for what it's like to climb that mountain. To deal with the amount of hits that you take, they're different than college hits. To deal with the amount of pressure, it's different than college pressure. And really, there was no pressure at Michigan other than, you know, there's a couple of games that you can point to, but how many games? Alabama, he played well for sure. He played really well in Alabama in his second to last game that got them to the national championship. There was a lot on J.J. McCarthy. There's a game against Ohio State that tends to mean a lot to Michigan people.

But that's kind of it though. I mean, his junior year, what they lost to was a TCU where they got beat pretty badly. I mean, look, there just hadn't been a lot of those NFL-type moments. And even the ones that are there are not like the NFL because you don't have a locker room of 20 guys who are in their primes and are making a lot of money and have families and everything else who are looking over at you, you're going to dictate what happens with my career and my success in the NFL and my happiness and so forth. I mean, you have the best wide receiver on earth who had more catches through the first five

years and more yardage through the first five years than anybody else in NFL history and you can't find him. Imagine what that feels like. You can't simulate what that feels like trying to work your way through that. And then it's probably hard to simulate what it feels like when you succeed. and being, you know, the king of the mountain, too, when you have it work out in the NFL, when, because I don't know that he handled that the best either. After, you know, winning the game against the Lions, that's great, but you've got to just

be ready for the next week and the next game. So that takes time and it takes growth. And Kyler Murray is also, along with Baker Mayfield, I think for a personality perspective, Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray are success stories of maybe the NFL was a little volatile for them. and they didn't handle everything the right way early on and then grew from that. I mean, I think Murray is, if you do any research about his connection with Drew Petsing and Jonathan Gannon, but Baker Mayfield definitely is.

He's found his real home in Tampa Bay. It took time to do that for a little different reason than J.J. McCarthy, but it takes time. So you can't ever really know. And this is what the Vikings underestimated. They thought we'll be here for him. He'll have all this leadership. he'll have all these other good players around him. He'll have good coaches.

McCown's been through everything. But even then, you can't put him in a bubble. And emotionally, you can't control that. You can control a lot of stuff as a coach. You can't control the emotions of the player. So that's why I just think that he needs more time. But you can't re-write what happened last year. You can certainly argue that more time and the calluses that are built

from what happened last year could result. Dalton being the best thing for J.J. McCarthy, but you can't rewrite what happened last season. It was very, very rough. And the quarterbacks, I read you their names, it's not a lot of quarterbacks who have ended up working out after they had a start like this. Rob Dorch was Kyler's outlet with the cards. Yeah, yeah. And he shouldn't cost a lot. I have no problem if they get him. I was thinking for a wide receiver three, maybe someone who has a little more capability of being a deep threat since that's what Jalen Naylor was.