After a courtship that took longer to consummate than a Victorian marriage, Kyler Murray has signed a deal with the Minnesota Vikings. The Vikes are on the hook for a single season at the league minimum, with the quarterback’s former employer, the Arizona Cardinals, picking up the rest of the tab. It’s just like the deal that Russell Wilson signed with Pittsburgh after getting curbed by Denver, with the notable exception that Wilson was five years older and many years cornier. Out of all the potential quarterbacks that the Vikings could have plucked off the scrap heap, Murray was the best of a decidedly motley crew.
Of course, Minnesota didn't have to be in this position to begin with. Two years ago, the Vikings signed Sam Darnold to a one-year flyer so that he could serve as a bridge QB while the team spent a year developing then-rookie JJ McCarthy behind the scenes. Darnold was a revelation in 2024, tossing 35 TDs and leading the Vikings to 14 wins. Then he fell apart in the final two games of that season, including a woeful performance in a wild-card loss to the Rams, and the Vikings (and their fans) decided that one year of Darnold was all the Darnold they required.
They decided wrong. Infamously so. Darnold went to Seattle and immediately won his new team a Super Bowl. McCarthy—and maybe you heard about this—did not. In just one season, Minnesota went from having the best deep passing attack in football to having no passing attack at all. To make matters worse, the Vikings had also failed to retain QB Daniel Jones for the 2025 season, leaving Max Brosmer and a half-deceased Carson Wentz as the only other options in their QB room. I’ve had more fun watching a fish die out of water.
The Vikings finished an empty 9-8 in 2025, and yet only a single win out of a playoff spot. So when the team did essentially nothing in free agency this month, they were saying that all they really needed was a QB with a pulse to get back into contention. And when head coach Kevin O’Connell, after successfully pinning the 2025 fiasco on the GM who hired him, told beat reporters at the combine when he wanted a “baseline” level of play from his QB, he was saying likewise. The rest of the Vikings roster was hunky-dory, and all it needed was a QB who knew how to tie his shoes.
Kyler Murray is now that QB. He’ll be in “competition” with McCarthy for the QB1 job in training camp, but no one buys that this is actually a competition. Murray arrives in Minnesota with nearly the same pedigree as Darnold: top-five pick, six-plus years in the league, and a disappointing start to his career that has a distinct whiff of lost opportunity. Squint real hard and you can see the similarities, yes?
They’re not exact comps. While Darnold is a beanstalk, Kyler is fun-sized. While Darnold is the best longball passer in the sport, Murray earns the bulk of his money on short-to-intermediate routes, plus the occasional scramble. And where Darnold is revered for his stoicism, Murray sits on the bench alone for five seconds and the football industrial complex suddenly asks, “Why’s that guy such a prick?” These are markedly different quarterbacks, but the Vikings clearly expect Murray to deliver the same kind of results for them that Darnold did in 2024. If he does, then they’ll find themselves mired in the exact same dilemma they faced last offseason. Whatever choice they make will assuredly be the wrong one.
