It appears the Minnesota Vikings lit a top 10 draft pick on fire by selecting J.J. McCarthy. Remarkably, it might not matter.
Like in 2024, head coach Kevin O'Connell has a high profile reclamation project ready to lead his offense. Sam Darnold got his team to 14 wins that fall. Now Kyler Murray gets the opportunity to do the same. He'll be flanked by the league's best wide receiving corps and a defense stuck on "shaken hornets nest" at all times.
Murray is playing on a one-year prove-it deal. He'll test himself against one of the toughest and deepest divisions in the NFL. Let's take a look at how Minnesota got here and what its 2026 might look like.
There's still time for JJ McCarthy to embody the potential the Vikings saw in him when they made him the 12th overall pick of the 2024 NFL Draft. But, uh, hoooo buddy, it doesn't look good. His 66.5 percent on-target throw rate ranked 33rd of 33 qualified quarterbacks, nearly three full points below No. 32 Caleb Williams. Since Pro Football Reference began charting that stat in 2019, only one player has been worse: Anthony Richardson in 2019. Ooooof.
That leaves Murray with a path to redemption after his Arizona Cardinals career flamed out. He's been a nest made of vacated promise after his Pro Bowl 2021 season. His 0.097 EPA per dropback since then ranks 20th out of 33 quarterbacks to play at least 1,000 snaps, just behind a diminished Kirk Cousins. But this is his age 29 season. But he was a useful dual-threat presence as recently as 2024 (where, admittedly, Arizona went 8-9) and now gets the most talented supporting cast of his career.
#minnesota #Vikings #mccarthy #since
Like in 2024, head coach Kevin O'Connell has a high profile reclamation project ready to lead his offense. Sam Darnold got his team to 14 wins that fall. Now Kyler Murray gets the opportunity to do the same. He'll be flanked by the league's best wide receiving corps and a defense stuck on "shaken hornets nest" at all times.
Murray is playing on a one-year prove-it deal. He'll test himself against one of the toughest and deepest divisions in the NFL. Let's take a look at how Minnesota got here and what its 2026 might look like.
There's still time for JJ McCarthy to embody the potential the Vikings saw in him when they made him the 12th overall pick of the 2024 NFL Draft. But, uh, hoooo buddy, it doesn't look good. His 66.5 percent on-target throw rate ranked 33rd of 33 qualified quarterbacks, nearly three full points below No. 32 Caleb Williams. Since Pro Football Reference began charting that stat in 2019, only one player has been worse: Anthony Richardson in 2019. Ooooof.
That leaves Murray with a path to redemption after his Arizona Cardinals career flamed out. He's been a nest made of vacated promise after his Pro Bowl 2021 season. His 0.097 EPA per dropback since then ranks 20th out of 33 quarterbacks to play at least 1,000 snaps, just behind a diminished Kirk Cousins. But this is his age 29 season. But he was a useful dual-threat presence as recently as 2024 (where, admittedly, Arizona went 8-9) and now gets the most talented supporting cast of his career.
#minnesota #Vikings #mccarthy #since
6 hours ago
