Coming off a 2025 season that saw them fall just short of the playoffs with a 9-8 record despite egregious production from the quarterback position, the Minnesota Vikings went out and signed Kyler Murray earlier this month in a move that many believe will result in the team returning to the postseason in 2026.
Well, Yahoo's Frank Schwab is absolutely not in the category of people who think that Murray's arrival in Minnesota was one of the most notable moves of the 2026 NFL offseason. In fact, Schwab went as far as declaring that the Vikings have had the worst offseason in the entire league this year.
Really? The worst?
Worse than the team whose 2025 first-round pick was arrested and charged with three serious felonies? Worse than the team that fired almost its entire coaching staff, but kept the head coach?
C'mon, what are we doing?
Crown for worst 2026 offseason in the NFL should not belong to the Minnesota Vikings
Let's get honest here. There are times when we might write things on this site through a lens that has a little more purple tint than recommended.
But this isn't that.
Even a Green Bay Packers fan would argue against Minnesota as the NFL team that has had the worst 2026 offseason so far (ok, well, maybe not).
Schwab wrote more about his thoughts on the Vikings' offseason than any other team in the league, so let's examine some of the things he pointed out.
Unsurprisingly, since he has Minnesota ranked so low, he wasn't even close to being impressed with the Murray signing.
"The Arizona Cardinals had no backup plan at quarterback this offseason. They had a choice: Make it work with Kyler Murray, or take a $54.7 million dead cap hit just to be rid of him forever, without any idea who would play quarterback.
The Cardinals chose the $54.7 million dead cap hit.
Yes, Murray came cheap to the Minnesota Vikings, on the veteran minimum because the Cardinals are still paying for him. But there was a reason the Cardinals moved on. And that move, signing Murray, has been celebrated as the highlight of the Vikings’ offseason.
And, the truth is, taking on a quarterback who was run out by a perennially terrible Cardinals team (again, at a massive expense) really is the highlight of the Vikings’ offseason."
First, he's not wrong about the Murray signing being the highlight of the Vikings' offseason so far. But adding someone with Murray's level of talent is something that should boost Minnesota's offseason ranking, not hurt it.
Schwab seems to indicate that because the Arizona Cardinals, one of the worst-run franchises in the history of the NFL, were willing to take on a bunch of dead cap to move on from Murray this year, they must know something about the veteran quarterback that other teams don't, and that's why they were okay with moving on.
Or, or, hear me out with this one...
The Cardinals are dumb.
Right now, Arizona's top two quarterbacks on their depth chart are Jacoby Brissett and Gardner Minshew.
We're really going to sit here and declare with a straight face that the Cardinals, with a first-year offensive-minded head coach in Mike LaFleur, would rather roll into the 2026 season with Brissett or Minshew, two career backups, as their starting quarterback than Murray?
No, we're not.
Zero of the 31 other teams in the NFL would not pick Brissett or Minshew over Murray.
Zero.
Many of those who don't think much of Murray signing with the Vikings tend to bring up a similar narrative about how Arizona was okay with moving on from him. But what if they didn't have a choice?
What if the Cardinals' decision to keep Murray on the sideline and lose 11 of the 12 games he missed completely ruined the relationship between the quarterback and the organization?
But no, that couldn't be possible, right?
Ok, what else did Schwab say about Minnesota's offseason?
"Minnesota spent just $19.1 million in free agency to date, second-lowest in the NFL according to Spotrac, with the big addition being cornerback James Pierre at a modest $8 million over two years.
Meanwhile, defensive linemen Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave and receiver Jalen Nailor got big deals to leave. Allen and Hargrave were cut because of salary-cap reasons as the Vikings clean out some bad deals.
Top pass rusher Jonathan Greenard was also subject of trade rumors, though maybe the Vikings will hang onto him after dumping others.
They’re also working with an interim general manager, Rob Brzezinski, after dragging their feet on firing Kwesi Adofo-Mensah until nearly a month into the offseason.
They did hold onto defensive coordinator Brian Flores despite some head-coaching interviews, which is one of the few unquestionable positives of the offseason."
So, not spending money you don't have, getting rid of two underperforming defensive linemen, Jonathan Greenard just being the subject of trade rumors and not actually trading him, and firing a general manager who has been one of the worst at drafting players in the history of the NFL are all bad decisions?
Minnesota was heading into the 2026 offseason in need of clearing a significant amount of cap space, so they were never going to be big spenders in free agency this year, and that's not a bad thing.
Far too often, teams around the league are praised for spending a ton of money in free agency, and then it turns out that they just overpaid a bunch of players who were never going to reach the large expectations that came with their lucrative contracts.
And let's just make this clear because Schwab also labeled Jonathan Allen as one of two "huge defensive additions" by the Cincinnati Bengals in free agency this year:
Jonathan Allen wasn't good last season.
He wasn't good in 2024 and he wasn't good in 2023.
Allen's PFF defensive grade in 2025 ranked 84th out of 127 qualifying interior defenders. In 2024, his grade ranked 70th out of 118, and in 2023, it ranked 65th out of 130.
Shout out to his agent for still finding a way to get him a nice payday from the Bengals, but it's been quite a while since Allen was the dominant force in the trenches that he was for so many seasons with the Washington Commanders.
Schwab mentions Brian Flores returning for another year as Minnesota's defensive coordinator as something positive that happened for the team (something positive!), and that, on its own, should be enough for the Vikings' 2026 offseason to be viewed as more successful than multiple teams in the NFL.
With Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton (yuck) handing offensive play-calling duties to Davis Webb for the upcoming season, Minnesota and the Kansas City Chiefs are now the only two teams in the league that will have the same offensive and defensive play-callers for the fourth year in a row.
That continuity should at least be worth a few more spots higher on Schwab's rankings, but apparently not.
In case anyone was wondering, he picked the Las Vegas Raiders as the NFL team that has had the best offseason so far this year.
Good for them, that will really help keep them motivated when they're getting blown out by 30 points against the Broncos next season.