The Minnesota Vikings have their starting quarterback after naming Kyler Murray the winner of their quarterback competition last week. While Murray now gets all of the first-team reps in preparation for the season opener, some wonder if it was the runaway victory the Vikings made it seem to be, with the 29-year-old struggling to stack competent practices together during training camp.
O’Connell has cited “what could be” as the reason Murray got the job. But KFXN’s Dan Barriero also recently noted that O’Connell may have feared for his job security and the wrath of the Wilf family, which made the decision to start Murray even more obvious going into training camp.
“Wasn’t it fairly apparent that the key attribute whoever started the position for the Vikings in 2026 was simply that he wasn’t named J.J. McCarthy?
...They got scared. KOC got terrified because there’s no one else to fire. You got the previous general manager out.
…I just don’t think other than McCarthy through the offseason and the first [two weeks] of practice…just going ‘Oh my God. Look at this guy. He's changed [this] offseason.’
The offseason meetings had to be…’I can’t afford as a head coach to take the risk, right now, at least, that McCarthy can avoid what he couldn’t avoid or I couldn't avoid being the quarterback whisperer with him a year ago.’
So that’s in a sense faint praise. It doesn’t say that Kyler Murray has taken this job by the throat [or by the short hairs]. He has made it what looked pretty apparent as an obvious decision, a slam dunk.”
Wilfs’ "super competitive" mandate has hurt the Minnesota Vikings at times
The Wilfs have been tremendous owners during their time in Minnesota and have given the Vikings all the resources they need to be a championship franchise.
While US Bank Stadium and TCO Performance Center are some of the top facilities in the NFL, they’ve also been their own worst enemy at times with a desire to be “super competitive.”
One of those times came during the 2023 season. Kirk Cousins tore his Achilles tendon in October, and instead of trading Danielle Hunter and attempting to climb up the draft order to get a quarterback, the Vikings finished 7-10 and wound up settling for McCarthy over O’Connell’s draft crush, Drake Maye.
It’s also notable that when asked about the quarterback situation the following season, Vikings co-owner Mark Wilf said Cousins’s injury was not an excuse and reiterated his expectations.
“Every year, pretty much, our goals never waver,” Wilf said in 2024. “We want to compete and win divisions and ultimately win Super Bowl championships.”
On one side, players appreciate this. While it’s easy for fans to demand tanking late in the season, a team like the Vikings – who had the eighth-oldest roster in the league at 26.4 years ahead of Week 1 – is looking to win as many games as possible and chase a championship before they age out of the league.
But as the 2023 team showed, it also could have a detriment to the long-term health of the franchise, which is important when discussing the decision between McCarthy and Murray.
J.J. McCarthy no longer fits in the Minnesota Vikings’ timeline
The Vikings are right to go with Murray over McCarthy, and if it was a decision that was 99 percent certain in March, it would have been totally understandable. But it also comes as Murray was just as inconsistent as McCarthy at times, including a pair of interceptions during the night practice.
O’Connell had to make a decision on his starting quarterback as his offense has many layers. But if both quarterbacks were in a tie, wouldn’t it make sense to go with the player that O’Connell – a self-proclaimed “quarterback killer” – declared as their franchise quarterback in the summer of 2024?
The answer is no, especially if the Wilfs were pushing their mandate. Barreiro correctly mentioned that Kwesi Adofo-Mensah was the fall guy for the Vikings' quarterback struggles in 2025, and with a team that believes it can win a Super Bowl in 2026 despite a 4-8 start one year ago.
Brett Kollman of "The Bootleg Football Podcast" also wondered if McCarthy’s issues, including throwing to targets as opposed to space, could be fixed with time, but also admitted that if he does figure it out, it’s unlikely to happen in Minnesota due to the team’s timeline.
“Yeah, he could learn how to do it. [But] I don’t think it’s going to be in Minnesota. And I don’t think it’s going to be in the next two years.”
The Wilfs haven’t been mentioned in any of this, but it is interesting to wonder how much pressure they could be putting from above. With the Vikings needing to win now, it may have forced O’Connell into hitting the abort button on McCarthy and going with a more experienced quarterback in Murray.
McCarthy’s play did not do him any favors. But the Wilfs’ insistence on winning at all times may have been what ultimately pulled the plug on his development.
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