Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Some JJ McCarthy optimism? Hints of Greenard return? (Part 1)

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

Matthew Coller talks about a line in Alec Lewis's most recent article about how the Vikings are optimistic that JJ McCarthy's work with a QB guru will result in major progress when he returns to practice. Also Jonathan Greenard posted in IG a reel that had a bunch of photos with him as a Viking. What does it mean? 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 with you. And tonight on the live show, it's pretty wide open. So if you are jumping into the comment section now, let's get into it. Takes, thoughts, feelings, questions. We've hit the Lullen Free Agency. The draft takes are starting to arrive. I saw today Dan Arlofsky coming out with, you know, I actually think the Ty Simpson is, is QB1 and not Fernando Mendoza, which means it must be late March and we've reached the point

where now it's, all right, we got to start revving up the draft take machine. So you know what? We can do that a little bit to here on the show tonight. But I got a couple of news-ish items to get to. And then it is your show for some Q&A. Got some really good stuff coming up later this week, trying to connect with Mike Sando for him to come back from the Athletic and talk about Kyla Murray and what executives think of him. Hopefully that's coming up later this week.

And Matt Verde Ram, National writer from SI. We're going to chat tomorrow. Chris Trapasso also on the show. So like we're rolling along. But, you know, there's space. There's time for plenty of discussion. So let's get into those news items. And I kind of want to use a little finger quotes because they're not news items as in the Vikings

have new players or they've signed. someone or there's some transaction. It's more of things that make you go, okay. That's how I would describe these news items. So let's dive in. Our first one comes from The Athletic and Alec Lewis, who wrote his article today on what is the deal with the Vikings bringing back Carson Wentz. And from reading Alex's article, which you should as well, over at the Athletic, a lot of his takeaways are very similar to mine, that when Kevin O'Connell tells you, I want a competitive and deep quarterback room. You should believe him.

He's telling you the truth. He wants a deep and competitive quarterback room. And the Minnesota Vikings now have, say it with me, a deep and competitive quarterback room. They have now four quarterbacks, all of whom have played in the NFL, including Max Brosmer. And look, you know, Brosmer's career. doesn't have to be over after he didn't play well as an undrafted rookie in tough circumstances.

So you've got him. He's played in some games before. You've got now Carson Wentz, J.J. McCarthy, Kyla Murray is presumably QB1. And there you have it. A deep quarterback room. It doesn't have to be that much deeper than that in terms of reading into it. Once again, this time of year often brings out the take machine. Oh, man, they paid a lot of money for Carson Wentz.

they really didn't pay a lot of money for Carson Wentz. That doesn't mean something can't change. It doesn't mean the right offer can't come along or that something could happen in between now and the start of the season that would inspire the Minnesota Vikings to do something different. But as of this moment, they have a deep and competitive quarterback room. But here's what Alec Lewis had to say about this situation with J.J. McCarthy. And he provided an update on what McCarthy has been up to this.

this offseason. He said, quote, evaluating McCarthy's offseason progress is another focal point of the next couple of months. He has spent a significant amount of time in California. John Beck, a former NFL quarterback who has become one of the premier private quarterback developers, train McCarthy ahead of the 2024 draft. The two have linked back up and are dialed in on mechanical consistencies and applying more touch. The Vikings are optimistic that McCarthy will show up committed to proving that he has made a major leap. I mean, first of all, it's good that J.J. McCarthy is back with John Beck and not his college guy who couldn't help himself from attacking Chris Carter with a bunch of tweets

in the middle of the season, probably one of the dumber storylines that we had to talk about in the middle of the season. So Beck is widely respected. There's a ton of quarterbacks that have worked with him throughout the years. of course, there are no guarantees to anything. Last offseason, Anthony Richardson worked with the same quarterback guru whose claim to fame is fixing Josh Allen's mechanics. So, you know, there's that.

But, you know, when it comes to what McCarthy needed to improve, I think we all understand that McCarthy needed to improve his mechanics. He needed to work on touch, timing, accuracy, and really just get in a lot of reps as a healthy football player. This is one of the toughest things about evaluating J.J. McCarthy and about talking about J.J. McCarthy is that I think we all know that if he was given more time and did not have the injury that set him back an entire year or that had multiple injuries during the season, he would have made more progress or at least we think so.

I mean, I think it's safe to assume so because sometimes I think about the end of 2024 training camp and where I was and what I was thinking and what I was doing and, you know, going to Cleveland, Berea, Ohio, great place in August. Let me tell you. When I was headed to Berea, Ohio. And what I was thinking in 2024 about J.J. McCarthy was, yeah, this guy's going to be the future franchise quarterback of the Vikings. Now, I don't know how great he's going to be.

Maybe he'll be good. Maybe he'll be amazing. I have no idea. But I certainly thought that. And then when O'Connell said it, it was clear that he thought that. And I don't think he was just being polite that day about McCarthy. I went back and watched not that long ago, what was I saying after that 2024 preseason game that J.J. McCarthy had against the Raiders.

And here's what I was saying. that he had made tremendous and impressive progress during that offseason as a thrower with his touch, with his understanding of the offense, with his timing with the wide receivers during practice, and then he brought it over to that preseason game. So at very least, we have seen when McCarthy, because he didn't have an injury then between college and the NFL, he got that entire time to work and develop. that's the last time he has been healthy is when he got drafted. This is 700 days ago when he got drafted that time of winning the national championship,

going through the pre-draft process, and then all of training camp up until the meniscus injury, that's his longest stretch of health since then because he comes back and then by week two, he ends up getting hurt and then he gets hurt multiple more times through the rest of the season and could never really get into a groove where week after week after week he's just playing. And also, as much as Kevin O'Connell was trying, and I fully believe that O'Connell was trying his butt off when it came to developing McCarthy during the season, it's just not possible. There's just not enough hours in the day. It already takes every ounce of mental capacity for an NFL player to prepare for a football game, for a quarterback to prepare for a football

game. You don't have a lot of time inside, just inside of a game week or a lot of space inside of your brain or a lot of energy left in your body to be on the side trying to develop unless you are a backup quarterback and you're not playing, which is why we talk so much about if McCarthy had to sit this year, it might not be the worst thing in the entire world. But this now, from the end of the season when I assume he recovered pretty quickly from his hand injury to when he arrives back here, will be very interesting to see how much progress has been made for McCarthy.

Now, you could say that we have been a little fooled before by practice, and you'd be right, that this year during training camp, that's another thing. if you go back and watch our podcasts and listen to those, you'll see us talking about, hey, there's some good and some bad, but it's more good than bad during training camp. So practice, as Alan Iverson once said, it's not a game. And how they go about figuring out how much development has actually happened here from McCarthy, I think it's pretty tricky because they were sold on him, even just coming back and not bringing in Aaron Rogers. If you remember the timeline, you know, they wanted, I believe,

they didn't make that decision, like, locked in until they had seen him in some sort of capacity. I don't remember if it was an OTA practice or a workout or something that they had seen until they really made it solidified that they weren't going with Rogers. Maybe I'm misremembering the timeline from last year, but I feel like it was after they had had some form of a practice that they said, all right, there's no Aaron Rogers. We're going to officially go with J.J. McCarthy. So you can be fooled by practice. You can be fooled by, hey, you know, he's just out there throwing seven on seven.

But I also think that if you're O'Connell, if you're Josh McCown, you know what he's looked like in games. And you know what he's looked like in practices through his entire career. So you should be able to identify it. Are they better at identifying it than me from the sideline watching from a hill on OTAs? Yes, they are. So they're going to be looking for that. We're going to be looking for that when he does return of does it look more consistent? Because it's not that he couldn't do it.

I could think of two throws that were excellent right off the bat where he had touch on the football. The throw to end the Lions game to Jalen Naylor. And then actually one of them in the Ravens game in the back of the end zone. That was also to Naylor. He made some of those throws. He just didn't make them consistently. And his decision making was not also. ideal, but that comes along with time.

So it comes down to, do you feel like as the Vikings, you're seeing him, come back, looking like he has accomplished the things that I'm sure they told them in the exit meetings that he had to accomplish in order to make this any sort of competition more likely, in my mind for QB2, but I suppose possibly for QB1, depending on how things go. And health is always an issue with Kyler, Murray, so were he to get hurt, he has to prove his case against Carson Wentz, hey, I'm the guy that should be stepping up there. I think what this also says in terms of the Vikings approach is it feels like there's a lot of people that as soon as Murray arrived here, or as soon as

Carson Wentz got his contract and it came out for that whopping $3 million, that it was declared like everyone wants to be the first person to declare it it's over they should trade him get rid of him now which you know look if the right offer comes along everyone's available right but i think what this tells us is the vikings don't have to with j j mccarthy rush anything they can wait and see and he can prove them uh prove to them approve i guess those analysts who want to trade him. He can prove them wrong or he can prove to the Minnesota Vikings. Actually, this is the real J.J. McCarthy, the healthy J.J. McCarthy who can come in and make progress and grow and develop and be the guy that you expected. It feels like that's a little on the far-fetched side that he could show them

so much that they would say, wow, you're the quarterback now, considering the Vikings were a bottom five passing team last year with him as the starting quarterback. So there's, I don't think, any shot that he's just going to beat out Kyler Murray. When you look at Kyler Murray's performance, even over his last 22 games, so even toss out early in his career when he was considered one of the most dynamic playmakers, he's still wildly better than J.J. McCarthy and they want to win. But what McCarthy could do is at least make things interesting. Win the quarterback two job.

Be available if Murray got hurt. Last year, Murray gets a foot injury and goes out. out. Well, who's coming in? If it's Carson Wentz, then yeah, yeah, then it's over. But McCarthy has a chance to show up and prove to them that it shouldn't be Carson Wentz, and instead, it should be him if Kyler Murray were to get injured. So the optimism here is that the Vikings are taking their time with this and they're going to see how it works out for McCarthy. Because I can think of one example from last year of a quarterback who kind of had to go back to the drawing board a little bit and then came back and made some improvements. And that would be Caleb Williams, not in the throwing necessarily, which I actually thought is throwing last year was problematic from the pocket with Caleb Williams.

But really from how you run an offense that Williams had sort of said, you know, nobody really taught me how to watch film. which at the time was red flags all over the place and, you know, it should have been. But it then kind of played out like no one actually ever taught him how to watch film. And then Ben Johnson was able to come in and work with him. And there have been other quarterbacks who have gotten off to poor starts who have then gone back to the lab, back to the drawing board, and then you get to a point where they've developed into a starting quarterback. And that's why I think patience is the right approach for the Minnesota Vikings. and how much progress he makes will tell them everything about McCarthy because there's

different levels to this. There's, he comes back and John Beck is a miracle worker and holy cow, he's throwing the ball like Kirk Cousins level accuracy and he's locked into his timing with his wide receivers and all of a sudden the ball's got touch on and wow, this is wonderful. Okay, that's possible in a pie chart of outcomes. It's not the most likely. The most likely is what? That he has made some growth and that he could, based on that growth, potentially win the QB2 job over Carson Wentz if they really like what they've seen.

And then if there is any sort of injury at any point, we could see just how far along he's come. That's about as far as I'd be willing to go. And then there's another level where he comes back and it's exactly the same. And you're like, okay, well, this probably is not going to work out. And then at that point, maybe at the end of training camp, you entertain offers. That's how I would approach this if I'm the Vikings is give him all the time in the world to show you that you should hang on and see what happens. And then if you get to the end of training camp, there's going to be a team that has an injured quarterback or needs a backup or needs a swing for the future because they've got an older veteran. there will be somebody just as Tray Lance got traded by the San Francisco 49ers after getting beaten out by Sam Darnold for the backup spot there.

So there's different levels of outcomes that could happen with this. And at very least from what Alec Lewis wrote, they want to wait and see. It's just that a lot of the world outside does not want to wait and see. They want to declare it's over. Get rid of him. Not yet. Not yet. We'll see how it plays out.

Also, Jonathan Grenard, speak of things, we'll see how it plays out. Our friends that bring me the news were perusing his social media. And now I'm not too good at Instagram. I'm actually not too good at any social media in general. But I do know how to look at reels now. Jonathan Grenard posted some reels with a bunch of photos of him pressuring and sacking quarterbacks and also had one other post that was very vague. And of course, you know, bring me the news.

It's like, does this mean what? And their assessment was, do his social media posts mean that he is not going to get traded? It certainly didn't look like a Rishon Gary situation. If you guys saw what happened there, Rishan Gary had posted a goodbye to the Green Bay Packers. and then he was apparently told to take it down, but he claimed he was hacked. And it would be very funny if hackers were getting into other people's Instagrams to say goodbye to fan bases. Like, shouldn't you be stealing money for people's bank accounts? I don't know.

But that I'm sure it wasn't true. And anyway, Rishon Gary ends up getting traded. But, you know, the point being that usually if there's somebody, going to social media to let you know what's going on. They tend to post a goodbye or something that's a little cryptic as in, you know, hey, maybe this is it. Certainly didn't look that way from Jonathan Grenard with him posting pictures of himself. I mean, I guess he could be saying, look how good I was.

How dare you consider trading me? But I've not felt like the Jonathan Grenard trade had any real legs to it recently. we had one, exactly one update to the Jonathan Grenard situation since the first day of free agency. I think it was the first day, second day of free agency when Adam Schaefter tweeted that the Vikings were considering trading Jonathan Grenard. And it was Diana Rossini, I believe, who reported that the Philadelphia Eagles had called, of which I'm sure Rob Brzezinski said, not today, Eagle Satan. there's no way that you can trade unless you're getting first round draft picks. Someone as good as Jonathan Grenard to a very good, very strong, very well-built team in Philadelphia,

who's also kind of owned you for a long time now. There's just no way you want to do that unless you are getting a complete steal. And even then, just Howie Roseman's on the phone. Tell him we'll call him back is kind of how you approach that. And at this moment where teams aren't really feeling the heat and aren't really feeling the pressure to make huge moves, we've seen a couple of trades. But I don't think right now with the draft coming up that teams are feeling as pressured. So I would doubt that they're offering first round draft picks and probably not even second round draft picks because Jonathan Grenard is still here. And it is an interesting back and forth.

And I could be sold either way, depending on the quality of the argument. there have been some people who've said, hey, if you look a year into the future, it makes sense to get draft capital. It is expected to be a deeper draft of quarterbacks next year. I know they always say next year is the best year ever. But oftentimes if they say, hey, this is a deeper draft next year. They are right a lot of times. I mean, 2024 is a good example where people were coming out by the end of the previous season and say, hey, there's going to be a lot of quarterbacks that should be available.

and even if they don't work out all of them to be first rounders, maybe there's three, maybe there's four. And unlike, you know, this year where there's one, maybe two, this year, depending on if Ty Simpson really is a first round draft pick or not, I kind of don't see it, but I guess I understand where people are coming from with that. I just don't see the high end. But the point just being that if you could potentially land yourself in a spot where you need extra draft capital in 2027 to move up and draft the quarterback you love, then you should probably

trade Jonathan Grenard. If you are locked into the idea that you are going to have Kyler Murray as your future quarterback, well, that's also pretty questionable as well because he has had injuries and there's no guarantee that he plays to a level where you'd believe that you can win with him long term, right? I think that that bar is actually pretty high to bring back Kyler Murray. he hasn't even started a game yet, you know, can we really start projecting him for the future? At the same time, Kyla Murray's a real quarterback, and he's won a good amount of games in his career when the circumstances have been right.

I'm not sure that I really want to give away one of the best players on the team and one of the most important leaders on the team. And we should keep in mind, too, that the Vikings don't have to do this either because he is under contract through 2027. they could just make a contract adjustment. Maybe that's what Jonathan Grenard is hinting at and then go from there. But man, I just keep bouncing back and forth on, is it a good idea to, you know, make a trade here? Is it, you know, a good idea to keep Jonathan Grenard?

I mean, draft capital, younger players, better cap situation. But on the other hand, look around the NFC. Just look, I mean, tell me in the NFC north. specifically, which team you look at and go through their roster, go through their depth chart, and you go, no chance, no chance the Vikings could beat them. I mean, they beat the Lions last year where they threw for three net yards. I mean, the Packers haven't changed a lot. The Bears haven't gotten a lot better.

In fact, they've lost a lot of players in their secondary who got all those interceptions for them. And they don't have DJ Moore now, who's been kind of a Viking killer through his career. I mean, I don't know. It seems plausible, doesn't it? That the Vikings could win the North. And if you feel like there's a, if you feel like there's a 30% chance, you can win the North,

it's probably not a good idea to be trading away someone as good as Jonathan Grenard right now. My suggestion would be wait until the trade deadline or adjust his contract. This has the same vibe as for like four years in a row. There was always this debate with DeNeil, Hunter about his deal. It was like, oh, DeNeil wants more money. Yes, he's worth it. Yes, he had another big season,

but they don't want to sign on forever, that kind of thing. And if Grinard was 33, then I would say, oh, yeah, move on. But he's not. He is only 29, and these past rushers can stay good through their early 30s. So there you go. There's your two updates is at least something positive on J.J. McCarthy. That's the first time that's happened in a long time. and Jonathan Grenard were now at the point of the offseason where we are trying to look at his social media post to figure out what's going on. One other thing I did notice over on Fanduil,

the Vikings are creeping. They're creeping on that NFC North. They have moved up to plus 550 on Fandul to win the NFC North. And I am curious if the buzz continues to grow through OTAs mini-camp about Kyler Murray, if we could eventually see them start to creep up even farther in the odds and maybe not be projected as, you know, last, which is where they are right now. So tonight, open door and maybe we'll draft Sim by the end of the night.

The draft conversations are starting to ramp up. So I think that's probably a good idea for this evening's live stream. But the rest is up to you. Free agency questions. Quarterback thoughts. takes, draft, the rest of free agency, what's to happen next for the Vikings. I wrote an article today about the biggest question of every position. So I'm prepared for whatever is on your mind this evening.

So let's get to your questions and thoughts and comments. Sal, or, oh, no, salad bar. That's funny. I just, I just, sometimes I just read the first name. I, you know, some of you have your first and last names. So I don't want to say your first and last name. So I'm like, oh, sell. No, that's the salad bar.

Okay. Uh, I think, uh, our ceiling with Kyler Murray is extremely high, but we shouldn't give up on JJ. He's 23. I understand the first five games were rough, but let's not discredit the last five games either. The problem with the first and, and second five game conversation is that they are not the same.

They're not alike. if it was an even playing field of you played the same caliber of opponents in the first five as in the second five, then I would say, yeah, fair enough. But, I mean, it truly wasn't. The second five was, as I called it then, I mean, it just really fools gold. It was the worst teams. It was teams that weren't playing starters on purpose. You can't really judge it the same.

I do think progress was made. But at the same time, you had players talking about dumbing down the offense, which is not promising. So we have to take it for what it is in its totality. In a season, every quarterback is going to play some good teams, some bad teams. You can't just sort of, well, you know, that happened, but we'll stick it over in the closet. And this sample, now this is the one we're going to really look at. You have to look at the entire thing.

And the entire thing is, I think what is the most disturbing is 12 interceptions and 27 sacks and 243 passes, 243. 43 attempts. I just, I mean, Kyler Murray threw the ball 540 times in 2024 and had fewer interceptions and about the same number of sacks. So that's where he's got to go. It's that far away. But to your point, I mean, why would you give up right now?

Why would you give up well, he's still working out with his QB coach and trying to figure out, like, how to improve some of this stuff to get to that level? wouldn't you rather just see how that works out? I mean, why do you have to rush? You don't have to get ahead of yourself. Because Trey Lance was traded for a fourth. Sam Darnold eventually was traded for a second, Josh Rosen for a second.

It's just really unlikely that someone's going to come up to you right now and say, you know what, we'll give you a first rounder for J.J. McCarthy. It's probably not going to happen. But if somebody got desperate at the end of training camp and their quarterback got hurt, for example, then you might have someone come up to you and say, all right, all right, fine. We'll give you a 2027 second, yeah, second round pick or something like that for McCarthy. And then you get to see, did he make enough progress for you to say no?

Or did he make enough progress or not make enough progress? So you say yes and make that trade. Giving him a chance to prove himself this offseason, I think is pretty logical. Matt says, I don't understand why everyone is so obsessed with deciding who is QB1, 2, and 3 in March. To me, there's no conversation about QB1 because Kyler Murray has been a very, very good quarterback in his career. And think about it this way.

The Vikings signed a quarterback in Kirk Cousins once upon a time in 2018. So the largest guarantee ever after he came off of a seven and nine season, which was his worst season in Washington. And the opinion on Cousins was that he was about the 24th, 12th to 15th best quarterback in the NFL. And they paid that person 30 million at the time, which was wild. And they gave him the most guarantee. It was, what was it, 88 million guaranteed or something like that?

They gave him all that when he was the same caliber quarterback as Kyler Murray and was coming off of a tough season. And the Vikings just got Kyler for $1.3 million. But if you look at where Kirk has ranked through his career in terms of the Mike Sando, executive and coach tiers where coaches and executives rank the quarterbacks and give that to Mike Sando with a couple of comments. And then he publishes it from the athletic. And he's been a great writer and reporter in the NFL for a very long time.

So he's made all these connections and so forth. So those people who vote who are in the league are putting a Kirk Cousins in his prime very near a Kyler Murray. There is no other quarterback that would rank between 10th and 15th that we would ever even have a discussion about whether they were QB1 versus a young guy who had been a bottom five quarterback in the entire NFL. It's only happening now because of odd circumstances and because people completely underrate how good Kyler Murray actually is because he played for the Arizona Cardinals.

I think. I think that's the only reason. Because if you compare where Kirk was coming off in 2017 into 2018, that it wasn't a good season for him. In fact, I remember Jay Gruden saying that their record was reflective of their quarterback play in Washington as kind of a dig at Kirk Cousins, right? So that level of quarterback is arriving right now. If Prime Kirk was arriving right now, we wouldn't have any discussion about who QB1 is.

It's Kyler Murray until other notice. But when you're talking about trading McCarthy in March, you'd have to be really, really done with J.J. McCarthy, you'd have to be mortified at something with McCarthy in order to do it now, or you'd have to get an amazing offer. Those are the only two ways that you would do that. Cooper says, do you think that the Vikings pay Addison when the time comes? I'm intrigued with the idea of trading him after the Waddle trade, then drafting a wide receiver early and signing a veteran like Hopkins or preferably Joanne Jennings. Like where your head's at there, Cooper. I think that that is a reasonable thing to start considering,

which is how much would someone give you for Jordan Addison? What a team give you, it's not going to be a first, but would it be a second round pick? And could you draft someone? And in terms of team building philosophy, salary cap, so forth, it does make a lot of sense. As good as Addison is, I would not say Addison has ever been truly great.

I think he's been good. I don't think he's been truly great. he's been a hit of a first round pick, certainly a success, was a big part of what they did in 2004, but overall, when you add in the off-field stuff, you take away three games due to a suspension,

you bring up the other questions. I saw Kevin Seferred a few days ago, did report that the Vikings are at least carving out the money in the future as part of an idea to extend Jordan Addison. I can't imagine that they do that this off-season. it would be very surprising if they said this off season without getting a bigger sample size to look at with him off the field. All right, man, you're in for 30 million a year or something. That would be wild to me.

I think you have to listen to offers at least with Jordan Addison and see what's out there. And if the highest offer comes in fourth rounder, okay, just play it out, see what happens. Maybe you lose him in free agency someday. Or maybe you use his fifth year option and you continue to kind of. you know, tow the line year to year, fifth year options are there for a reason. So they could do that. But from a long-term team building, yeah, I mean, you can't have Jeffrey. I mean, you think about this.

If you have to sign Murray because he plays so well, how are you going to, isn't this the Bengals? How are you going to sign Kyler Murray to an extension and have Jefferson's contract, which is now the third highest in the NFL, and maybe an extension for him at some point, and a Jordan Addison $30 million contract, that doesn't seem like that's a great idea to put all that money into those couple guys. It makes a lot more sense to draft a young wide receiver and hope that that person works out as well as Jordan Addison. But when you draft a young wide receiver, you are weighing the odds. You're tipping the odds in your favor with a couple of things.

Number one, they'll never have to face double coverage. That's nice. That will help you succeed as the number two wide receiver. receiver. The other thing is you have Keena McCardo, who is one of the best wide receiver coaches in the NFL. So I like your idea. I think what they'll do is they'll probably play it out this year and see where things stand. And then if they love the way that it looks, yeah, okay, maybe. And look, after that most recent thing with the casino, that could drop the value. Because if I'm another team, I'm saying, all right, I would love to have Jordan Addison.

but I'm not giving you a second round draft pick only to have it blow up in my face because if anything else happens, Roger Goodell could come in and say, hmm, we've got a multi-time offender here. Now it's eight games, right? Or whatever it might be. So another team would be taking on the risk. Plus, another team would be saying, yeah, now we have to pay him because we traded for him, which also moves the needle down in terms of what you're going to get back.

So these are these leverage plays like in theory. I like where you're at. But in practice, it might be better to just play it out. And if you want to get rid of him, let him hit free agency and eventually get a comp pick. But I'm all for trying to draft a wide receiver and seeing what the market is for Jordan Addison. There's only one guy that I would not be trading. And his name is Justin Jefferson. The RAF cave.

Has there been any McCarthy quotes posted of Murray? I mean, you mean after Murray has signed. No, I don't believe that J.J. McCarthy has done any interviews after Kyler Murray has been signed. Eventually, we will talk to him, I'm sure, at OTA's mini camp. And I think that McCarthy has always been good at saying the right thing. I imagine that behind the scenes, this is one of those, the way they look at it. It's just a make a break. It's like, hey, welcome to the NFL, dude.

where if you're not good enough, we replace you. They look, with Lewis Seen, he wasn't good enough. They replaced them. Why would they do it differently with any other position with quarterback or whatever else? Quarterback is the only spot where it feels like fans hang on to forever, whereas other positions, we move on pretty quickly. Oh, LeQuan Dreadwell's not as good as Thielen and Diggs. Whatever, man.

Like, just stick them in the closet and have those to play. but quarterback there's always this hey maybe greatness is right around the corner but this is the way that they treat every position in general which is if you perform at a well below average level which he did then they will look for other options because they don't have all century to wait around to see if you become that guy or not and just keep running you out there time and time again especially if they're not in a position from a timeline perspective and that's That's what O'Connell basically said at the combine, which is, I mean, the timeline has changed. It's different now.

If he had played in 2024, they might have been able to give him a couple of years to see where he was at. But instead, now they really need to win. That was an acknowledgement of like, we've got to win with this team. It's got to win with the situation that he's in. So, but, you know, in terms of what he's going to say, McCarthy has always, I think, been very good at saying the right things at the podium. And there's a few times where he's caught me off guard with a comment.

Last year when he said he thought he had done enough to be the QB1, I was a little surprised by that because I thought, I kind of expected him to say everyone has to earn their job. And I don't know, like, it just didn't come across like I had expected. But I think with Kyler, you're going to hear him say similar stuff to what happened with Sam Darnold. And if it's different than that, then it would be a big red flag. If it's not, hey, I'm here to compete.

you know, like we just, we want to win games and I'm going to do everything I can to show the team that they should believe in me. That's where he should be at with whatever public comments eventually come out. If it's different than that, then the conversation might change about a trade or whatever else. Salad bars is the only way I'd want Murray to stay is if we make the NFC title game. Well, that is a really, really high bar. I think, in fact, that's like a kind of a crazy high bar because if you were to, how about this? You make the playoffs with 10 wins and Murray plays really, really well. He throws for 3,800 yards, 24 touchdowns, 10 picks.

I'm giving you a stat line from 2024, runs for 500 yards, five more touchdowns. He plays really, really well, and he's PFF's 12th best quarterback. Again, this is exactly what he did in 2024 and you win 10 games. That's some really darn good quarterback play. Do you want to roll the dice if you were to go to the divisional round? Do you want to roll the dice and say, you know what? Let's move on from our very good quarterback and go draft somebody else with the 24th overall pick.

One of the problems with wanting, even with a J.J. McCarthy, like one of the problems with wanting to draft or needing to draft a quarterback in a particular year where you're not drafting in the top five is you might not get any of the good ones. If the Vikings went into 2027 saying, well, I guess, you know, Murray played great, but we're going to move on and draft someone else. That has to come along with a complete teardown, which if they decided to do and it was truly a complete teardown, then yes. But if it's a competitive rebuild, which to tell you the truth is kind of what Seattle did,

or Detroit did the full tear down, but they had a good quarterback in the mix in Jared Gough, who was a, I don't know, I think he's better than Kyler Murray, but, you know, his team let him go. And he was maligned at the time and wasn't considered a top 15 quarterback by a lot of people when he left Los Angeles. He was considered totally a product of Sean McVeigh, who had basically just been exposed. We've seen, the point is we've seen teams, the Jaguars have done this, rebuild or continue to build around good quarterbacks and eventually be rewarded for doing so. So I think if you were to get so far and he had that good of a season and you're talking about someone who's not even 30 years old yet, you probably want to roll that out for multiple years and see how good of a team you can build because there is no Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes or Lamar Jackson in the NFC that's just going to own the entire division. If you build a team good enough for this level of quarterback, then you can win with them. And if you signed a three or four year deal, it gives you three or four years to try to do that.

I think that's a better route than just saying, well, you know, came short of the NFC championship. So see ya. I mean, that's kind of what they did with Sam Darnold, right? And I don't know that that was actually a good way to go about it. P3T3 says a deeply incompetent quarterback room. I'm actually really optimistic about it. It's been, Kyler's the beat out Max Brosmer.

That's funny. It has been an interesting journey already with Vikings fans. Because when the idea of Kyler Murray was first floated by a certain local podcaster, me, it was not met with a lot of joy. I got to tell you. Now, there were some of you folks who listen every night. that came in and said, yeah, you know, I mean, if it's $1 million, why would that be a bad idea?

But there was also a lot of, I think, trepidation about, well, is it going to be a fit? And, you know, is Kyler really liked in Arizona and et cetera, et cetera, stuff like that? The injury history is very relevant, no matter who you're talking about that hasn't played full seasons year after year after year. Although Kirk did and then his Achilles tour. So I don't know. Who knows? It's football. but I've seen a lot of warming up recently to the idea of Kyler Murray.

And this goes from our comment section, but also in the national media, a lot of people have seemingly come out and talked about how they think this is a good fit. And one of the reasons I think for this is that everyone started looking into it, that not to pat myself on the back, I wasn't that busy at the beginning of the off season, or maybe with like four weeks left to go in the season because things had gone to hell. I started watching Kyler tape. I started looking at his data as just one of a bunch of guys who we started doing that with, Derek Carr and whatever other options when it kind of became clear that they were going to look at other options.

And I liked the profile. I liked the statistical profile and the more film I watched, I thought this is actually a real offense. This is not some cartoon nonsense that he's just running around doing crazy stuff. So I liked, I like the fit, as you guys know, and then when I found out from the guy from over the cap.com that it was going to come at a $1 million price tag. He was like, all right, well, sign me up for this.

This makes the most sense. And it feels like there's been a little bit of like a snowballing of kind of having these things click for people. At first, it's like, oh, Kyler Murray really is he really any good? and then you start looking into and you go, well, I mean, recently he was pretty good, but also his team, why what the heck is their deal? And they fired their coach and their owner got an F. And then, you know, you can start to put together all the pieces.

So it does feel like that is growing. And I think Dane Mizatani from the Pioneer Press really nailed it when I asked him what he thought the approval rating was going to be if the Vikings got Kyler Murray. And his answer was, well, when they first make the move, there's going to be people down on it. But then as soon as he starts to assimilate himself as the quarterback and you start to see some of these throws and some of these scrambles that he's going to win people over. And I also thought that even though it was not like the press conference of the century,

Kyler Murray legitimately is a Vikings fan, which is kind of nice. Like the whole, the whole room in there now is Carson Wentz and Kyler. I think that endears him a bit. He went to Parlor Burger. They're making a Kyler Murray burger. like these sort of things it's i think it's growing on people is the point there's still some who are going to be kicking and screaming the entire way but uh yeah and we don't know how it's going to play out but i am starting to feel that corner of acceptance being not just acceptance but also

recognition that it could have a fairly high ceiling i was talking to a friend today in the league and i said it's going to work isn't it like vikis viking viking viking history is just too clear on what's going to happen here. It's just too, too crystal clear from Vikings history that that's going to happen. Nick says, even if J.J. McCarthy doesn't play a snap, sitting and learning could be the best thing for his career. Totally agree.

The Zach Nusser, he can improve as much as he wants, but can he stay healthy? Great point. He does have to stay healthy. And I think that those two things can be related of getting that chance to develop and have it be the best thing for his career is connected to his health. If he can be healthy for a very long time and grow and grow and grow and grow and grow and develop and really, I mean, fuse these things into your brain and your body. I mean, you don't learn.

Here's a good example. I was watching a YouTuber who's a golfer, golf instructor, talk about improving as a golfer, which we all would love to do. And one of the things he said was, look, I can give you all the lessons in the world. But if you only play every Friday afternoon with your buddies, you're not getting better. There's no way.

I can tell you a million different, oh, well, you know, do this and put your hands like that and change your grip and, you know, whatever else. But if you only play once a week, you're not going to get better. It's just not going to happen because it's not enough reps. And the problem with J.J. McCarthy is not enough. It's not enough reps to be able to finish his first training camp or multiple preseason games or behind the scenes. Think about how many passes are thrown. I did this one time.

I had this story plan and it didn't end up working out, but I had this story plan one time where I was going to count up how many passes Kirk Cousins made in a training camp practice. I guess I could still do this at some point. So I sat there with a pen and pad and I wrote down every single time. I don't remember exactly how many it came out to, but it was a lot. It was like a hundred something passes by the end, warmups, seven on sevens, 11 on 11s. I was like, man, that's a lot of throws. Think about over a 17 game season and a playoffs.

Had he been healthy behind Sam Darnold, how many passes he would have gotten to throw in practice? It would have been thousands that were taken away from him. And then over a five-week span where he didn't really practice, For the Vikings, that's hundreds and hundreds more that were taken away. So now he's getting that chance to have those and not be the weekend golfer who's trying to play catch up all the time. Last year, coming into OTAs, minicamp, whatever, trying to just play catch up and relearn the stuff that he had to learn. I mean, that's really hard to do. And I think they overestimated how far he could come.

Actually, I don't think that. I know that because that's proven in the results. so I think your point is that it could be the best thing for his career for sure. Tom says, I think McCarthy is going to surprise people. He may not get the starting nod, but I think he's going to be closer than people think. I could see it. It's really the ball is entirely in his court. It's up to him now.

They can only do so much as the team. And it would be, I think, nice if those people, who think that the organization or KOC or Justin's school or whatever else were all responsible for the failures of last year. And there's some, the receivers who didn't catch the ball, there's some, there's truth in that. But 97% of it is the guy wasn't ready to play. So it's entirely on him to not let this knockdown end him. And I've seen it go either way. I've seen quarterbacks who Christian Ponder is one of them, E.J. Manuel's another that comes to mind that they lose the starting job and it never comes back. And maybe even they go to other teams, but just fizzles out pretty quickly and they're out of the league pretty fast.

Christian Ponder was capable of being a backup quarterback, but I don't think he wanted to be. And it just ended pretty quickly, right? And the same thing with E.J. Manuel, I'm sure there's 50 more quarterback. that we could talk about. And then there's other ones who have gone to other places or who have sat on the bench and eventually turned out to be good starters in the NFL. And I said like, hey, we shouldn't really compare him to number one picks. But Alex Smith was one of those guys that after a few years ended up turning out to be

a very good NFL quarterback. And he did get to play, but it was some serious ups and downs during that time. So we've seen it enough to believe. that it's possible for someone to get better over time and get their chance again and then make the most of it. So there's no writing them off, but it really is up to him now. I mean, this isn't, they're not going to spend every single minute of every practice with three coaches trying to work with J.J. McCarthy to figure out how to throw a touch pass. That is no more. Kyler Murray is the guy and that's going to be the focus and it's on J.J. McCarthy himself to develop.

Wesley said, so if Murray comes in and balls out, do we let him walk like Darnold? I do not think that they will make that same mistake twice. If he plays really well, then he's got a chance to be their franchise quarterback. And then it's up to whoever the GM is, whether it's Rob Brzynski or someone else, to prove their worth. Because if we go through the NFC, maybe we should do this. We should go through the NFC and then just compare and contrast. Kyler Murray to all the other quarterbacks in the NFC. Like how much,

how close is Kyler Murray to the other quarterbacks in the NFC? So if we go NFC East, Dak Prescott, I think is better than Murray, but it's not worlds better. Jalen Hertz is, I mean, he's a Super Bowl champion. So he's, I think you have to say that he's a little better being a Super Bowl champion. I also wonder how Kyler Murray would do in a vacuum.

If we're just doing in a vacuum, How good is this guy at football? I think it's pretty equal between Murray and Hertz. It's just, you know, Hertz had a freakish team. I would definitely take Jaden Daniels before Murray, but it's one year. And then, you know, he had the injury last year. So maybe there's a lot of similarities. Daniels upside is higher.

I think as of right now, you'd probably say they've got similarities. Playmakers who have had injury issues, who can be a little bit on the erratic side. so, you know, okay, ballpark and the New York Giants, clearly Kyla Murray is better right now than Jackson Dart. Jackson Dart will have to prove that. Jared Goff is better. Jordan Love, I think is better, but Kyler Murray's peak has been in Jordan Love's ballpark. And if you're ranking all quarterbacks, love probably gets rated a little higher, but is not wildly higher. And then Caleb Williams, who kind of played like Kyler Murray, except for less accurate, I would say Murray is better than Caleb Williams.

this moment, at this moment, uh, Williams is an exciting player, but as an actual passer, Murray is farther ahead. I haven't said anyone so far that I was, that I would be going, yeah, no, he's not even close. I haven't said anyone so far. We've gotten two divisions down and no one you would go, oh, well, Murray's not even in his ballpark. All of it's like, hey, on Murray's best, best stretch, best season, he's kind of in this

range. I think Dak is probably the farthest ahead. golf certainly has the, you know, gaudy statistics too. And this is a Jared Gough show. So, yeah, I think golf and Prescott and love has shown in flashes, in stretches, which is the same thing that we say for Kyla Murray. Nobody is worlds better with Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison and so forth. NFC South.

Tua and Michael Pennix. No, Bryce Young, no. Baker Mayfield, I think, is a great comp for Kyle. Murray actually. So I would put those two as being very similar. And Tyler Shuck, we have no idea what Tyler Shuck is going to be. So once again, there's nobody in that division that I'm saying, wow, they are way better than Kyler Murray. Matthew Stafford presently is way better than Kyler Murray. Absolutely. No question about it. He is the MVP of the National Football League, but he is unlikely to play multiple more years. And if this conversation is about, are you

extending Kyler Murray if he plays well, then you're not likely to have Matthew Stafford there. So then they have to find a different quarterback. And it sounds like the Rams were even trying to talk to Kyler Murray about being their future quarterback. So that's interesting. San Francisco Purdy is very, very good. I would put him in the same range as Kyler Murray. Sam Darnold.

Well, he did win the Super Bowl. So he gets a little bit more cachet for doing that. And I think that Darnold is a lot better than some other people did throughout this season and then maybe eventually had to admit how good he actually is. So, yes, I would say Darnold is a better quarterback than Murray, but I would not go that he's as good as Josh Allen or Joe Burrow. But he, you know, he's good. And then Arizona, we don't know who their quarterback is. So the whole NFC, and I wouldn't be surprised either if Sam Darnold does come back a little bit now that they've had to pay Smith the Jigba, now that they've had to pay Smith the Jigba, now that they're not. they've lost Murray or Kenneth Walker and and so forth.

I mean, you could see him being more like the 12th best quarterback in the league this year. So here's the point. If you're the Vikings and you look at the NFC and you go, well, there's a lot of teams that are just like us. It really becomes a GM competition. Who can build the strongest roster? Who can draft the best? They've been losing that one. Who can get the best free agents?

They've been more winning than losing on that one. who can develop players from UDFAs, late round draft picks, who can coach the best? It becomes a coach and GM competition if everybody has similar quarterbacks. So I'd sign up for that before I drafted the fifth quarterback in the draft with the 23rd overall pick or something. Bradley says just thinking that this offseason seems to be going well, no money, no big buck players to sign, no Quasi new general manager and four top four picks in the top 100. is it, it's going well because they got Kyler Murray for $1 million. I think that's probably the number one reason that it's going well and that they have not done anything to severely damage or even really damage their future.

They've only done things to make their future better. Working out something with T.J. Hawkinson, working out something with Aaron Jones. That's making their future probably better than just eating some dead. cap space. I'll have to look into, like, if there is still going to be dead cap space. But they've reworked those contracts, which helps them to make those players free agents after this year. And then they can make a decision on those guys like Hawkinson. You know, you could work out a new deal with him or you could just let him go. There is a detail that you don't get a comp pick.

If you guys are wondering, for players that you reworked their contract. So sorry about that. You won't get compics for those guys. the defensive tackle room would be the one where I would go, I'm not so sure that it's worked out great for you. But if you got development, drafted a player there, maybe sign a guy late in the off season, could you get something similar to what they got from Allen and Hardgrave?

I think so. And you could get a serious improvement in run defense from somebody. If you draft someone, a Caden McDonald or a Daryl Jackson or one of those big behemoth guys or even if they went Caleb Banks really early in the draft. That could help. Or if you go into free agency, there's still a few guys left.

DJ Reeder is a good choice. Shelby Harris is a good choice. So, you know, they could get to a point where the offseason is equal in most other areas. Because I think that's kind of how it is. It's equal in most other areas

except for really defensive tackle. And they, I think, have needs at each spot. But when I look at last year's roster and compare depth chart for depth chart, that's the only spot that I would say is really different other than center, but they ended up having to play Blake Brandel at center a lot last year anyway. Jay says, why don't the Vikings trade JJ for a third or fourth round draft pick? I think if you're doing that right now, you're sacrificing the pot, well, the,

an answer if Kyler Murray were to get hurt. That would be an issue is with trading McCarthy at all, and you're not getting that much out of it. Trading McCarthy at all is, look, they show that they can, under the right circumstances, win some games with J.J. McCarthy. And many of you have pointed out that they went six and four. I kind of argue that it's more like five and four because,

well, you know, Brozmer had to come in and win the one game and he didn't play the full half against the Packers. But one way or the other, you could win some games with J.J. McCarthy probably more over a long term, at least you'd think so, then Carson Wentz, if he takes a step forward, that's if Kyler Murray were to get hurt. But if he plays really poorly in training camp and shows no progress whatsoever, then yeah. But don't do it right now.

If you do it right now, the value is low, no one's desperate for a quarterback. You might get somebody who's very unhappy with their quarterback competition, Arizona or whatever the hell is going to happen in Cleveland or Pittsburgh. That just says, you know what, give us your kid. We're going to aim for the future. So doing it now feels like low value. Also, teams don't like to trade the draft that they're just spent so long preparing for. They'd prefer probably to trade after the draft when we get to this point and send draft

capital that they don't have to think of for a long time. Nick, only way McCarthy starts week one is if Kyler Murray's hurt. We do not want this outcome. Fair enough. P3T3. There's no rush to move McCarthy if there's. there's any chance he might become something. I think that's totally fair.