Kyler Murray is a Litmus Test for Vikings' Future

The charade is over. Adam Schefter announced that Kyler Murray was named the Minnesota Vikings’ starting QB for 2026. Ostensibly in a competition with third-year J.J. McCarthy, the competition never felt real because Murray had no reason to join the organization if he wasn’t going to start.

Signing Kyler in itself was an interesting move in the context of the rest of the team’s offseason, and it’s worth scouting Kyler to see what he brings to the Vikings, as he’s playing the most important position in football.

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When Vikings’ head coach Kevin O’Connell was hired alongside now-former general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, the pair set out with a clear goal (or, maybe more accurately, a mandate from team ownership) for the direction of the team. While the oxymoronic “competitive rebuild” was made fun of by some, the team clearly did execute on that vision.

Instead of immediately moving on from entrenched quarterback Kirk Cousins, the team extended him short-term and worked to turn the roster over without tearing it down to the studs. After two years, they were ready to let Kirk walk, signed a stopgap QB in Sam Darnold, and drafted McCarthy as the vision for the future.

After an unfortunate injury to McCarthy and a fantastic season from Darnold, the Vikings’ staff was again presented with a crossroads in the 2025 offseason. They could have chosen to extend Darnold, but instead chose to continue the vision they set out with in 2022 — building a team taking advantage of a rookie QB contract and spending a bunch of money to bolster the roster outside of the QB position. It certainly felt like the team had finished the rebuild part and was fully on to trying to be competitive.

The 2025 season, of course, was a disaster. While the team around him was good, McCarthy was both injured and bad last season. Four improved games from McCarthy at the end of the season weren’t enough to dig himself out of the hole he’d dug earlier in the season, especially when he left two of the games early with injury. The team still finished 9-8, but that felt hollow as they were functionally eliminated weeks before the playoffs began.

This led, once more, to yet another crossroads this offseason. Where the team had stayed steady the previous offseason, they were now out of patience. Adofo-Mensah was fired. There were certainly reasons to move on from Kwesi other than the McCarthy-Darnold decision, but it’s also self-evident that Kwesi would have kept his job had McCarthy played well, and the team had been successful. 

This past offseason, there was mixed messaging regarding the Vikings’ intentions. The team, mostly under interim GM Rob Brzezinski, clearly chose to cut back heavily on spending, moving on from large contracts in Javon Hargrave and Jonathan Allen, while Ryan Kelly also retired. The team agreed to pay cuts with Aaron Jones and TJ Hockenson, and chose to trade Jonathan Greenard instead of extending him. Greenard still appears to be in a standoff with the team about his contract.

While they were able to keep a key piece in Eric Wilson, they let Jalen Nailor walk for a significant contract in FA and brought in next to no one from outside the team. In fact, besides Kyler, they only brought in three free agents on notable deals — Jauan Jennings, James Pierre, and Ryan Van Demark. After being hired in June, new GM Nolan Teasley really hasn’t had the opportunity to leave his mark on the team’s roster building to this point.

The austerity led ESPN’s Kevin Seifert to describe the Vikings’ actions (or, rather, inaction) under Brzezinski as “right-sizing” their finances for the 2026 season. Certainly, from a monetary perspective, the team is taking a large step back in cash spending for the season. Generally, you would think a team that’s doing that would want to take a season to evaluate and develop the young talent that’s on the roster.

What’s confusing, however, is when you juxtapose the team’s tight purse strings with discussion around the team’s QB situation. Prior to free agency, Alec Lewis of the Athletic wrote this about what the Vikings face at quarterback:

We know that the pressure Lewis talked about was real, as the team opted to sign Murray in free agency. But the organizational leadership also chose not to make other long-term moves to bolster their 2026 roster, which creates a weird limbo.

If the Vikings were feeling the pressure to win a playoff game that Lewis talked about enough to move on from J.J. McCarthy after just 10 starts, why did they feel comfortable with letting other areas of the roster deteriorate?

If you want to sell yourself on the Vikings in 2026, there’s a clear path provided by 2024. The pillars that helped Sam Darnold have a breakout season — Kevin O’Connell, Justin Jefferson, and Brian Flores — are still in place. You’re hoping that Murray can play up to Darnold’s level, but even then, where does that leave the team? The 2024 team was very competitive, but completely fell flat at the end of the season — see the fact that the Vikings haven’t won a playoff game since 2019.

The Vikings have moved on from 3 of the 4 biggest contracts they signed in 2025 free agency. In doing so, they’ve essentially reverted the team back to that 2024 version. Are they a team that wants to compete, wants to take a step back, or somewhere in-between, a perpetual “competitive rebuild”?

To me, the answer lies in how the team’s new starting QB, Kyler Murray, performs in 2026. Starting Murray implies a desire to compete, but also sets up a major decision in 2027. Assuming Murray plays well, or at least well enough, the team would have another Darnold-like decision next offseason.

In that case, I would find it unfathomable that they would decide to let Murray walk, repeating history and going back to the rebuild. Therefore, Murray’s future determines the future of the Vikings. Barring injury, and if he plays well, he’ll be the team’s long-term solution at QB.

That is the lens through which I studied Kyler’s game. I charted the entirety of Kyler’s 2025 season (5 games) and also went back to watch selected plays from 2024 to fill in the gaps I felt existed from the limited sample size. I learned how Kyler plays at QB, and also looked to see if I could answer the ever-important question of how Kyler would fit in O’Connell’s offense.

Let’s dive in.

Kyler is certainly a unique player at the QB position, as his frame is unlike virtually any other successful QB. He measured just 5’10 ⅛” tall back in 2019 at the NFL Combine. MockDraftable, while not comprehensive, has just three players listed that measured shorter than that height — D’Eriq King, Joe Hamilton, and, from this year, Diego Pavia.

Weighing in at 207 lbs. was considered good for Kyler at his height, although he likely packed on weight to reach that point. Still, Kyler has a pretty thick build and certainly has more mass than Bryce Young, a player who measured in at nearly the same height as Kyler.

Given that he’s going up against athletes who are largely bigger than him, injuries are a concern to monitor. Kyler started off his career injury-free, but has missed games in four of the last five seasons. He had an ankle sprain in 2021, a hamstring injury in 2022, followed by a torn ACL that caused him to miss part of 2023, and last year had a foot injury that sidelined him for the season after week 5. While Kyler’s most major injury, the ACL tear, was non-contact and very likely not due to his size, the ankle sprain and foot issue could be size-related.

I am not a believer that having suffered a string of injuries means that a player is inherently injury-prone. Luck is a huge component of player injuries in the NFL, and in many cases a seemingly oft-injured player will suddenly never get injured again. However, there certainly are players that are injury prone, and I think the two main factors for that are playstyle and size.

While Kyler can’t do anything about his size, he does limit its influence by not recklessly throwing his body around, and generally doing a good job of protecting himself — sliding, going out of bounds, and not barreling into contact for minimal gain. Nevertheless, Kyler shows an understanding of down and distance and will fight for yardage when needed.

On the play below, the Saints blow up a potential shovel pass, but he’s able to use his athleticism to get a first down. He understands exactly where he needs to go to get the required yardage, and works his way in between two defenders to minimize contact.

Ultimately, I think Kyler is doing everything he can to prevent injury, so I’m not worried from that perspective. If he does get injured again, it’s mostly out of his control. If anything, Kyler goes too far to protect himself from injury in the face of contact.

In particular, he will shy away from defenders in the pocket. This will lead to him dropping to the ground on sacks. While annoying, that can be acceptable, as it makes sense to protect yourself as a QB. However, he also demonstrates moments where he falls away from throws to his detriment, which can be a real problem.

On the play below, Kyler’s in a tough spot. He has an unblocked blitzer from the bottom of the screen, which he recognizes and sprints out away from. He comes up with an excellent answer to the problem the Seahawks’ defense is presenting, an over against Cover 0.

However, working away from the unblocked blitzer has left his right tackle compromised, and he now has an unblocked blitzer in his face. Kyler throws the ball off of his back foot, and it falls incomplete, short of WR Michael Wilson.

This type of play is a departure from what Vikings fans are used to. Kirk was extremely willing to stand in the pocket and take hits, and so was Darnold. For all their faults, you can also say that about both Carson Wentz and McCarthy, as that’s probably the reason both dealt with major injuries last year.

It’s also a noteworthy limitation for Kyler — he’s less likely to be accurate under pressure because he’s not a player who’s willing to consistently step into throws while absorbing a hit.

The other major concern Kyler's height brings up is batted passes. Height is not the sole factor for a QB having an issue with getting their passes batted, and people correctly point out that QBs like Justin Herbert and Trevor Lawrence have a high batted pass rate, but it is an issue for Kyler. Because he's shorter than everyone else, he has to actively work to find alternative throwing windows to avoid hitting his own offensive lineman or defenders with the ball.

Per PFF, Kyler has had 67 passes batted since he entered the NFL, never ranking below 15th in passes batted in a single season. He had 7 passes batted on 161 attempts in 2025, or about 4.3% of his pass attempts. The only players with a higher rate of batted passes last year were Justin Fields (10 on 204 attempts), J.J. McCarthy (11 on 243 attempts), and Tyrod Taylor (6 on 134 attempts).

The Vikings are no strangers to quarterbacks who get their passes batted down, as McCarthy is on the list above and Kirk Cousins had 57 passes batted down across his 5 full seasons as the Vikings’ starter. Here’s a compilation of some of the passes Murray had batted in 2025:

With that being said, Murray has shown some skill at manipulating timing to create throwing windows for himself, preventing potential batted passes. On the play below against the Saints, you can see him double-clutch the ball, causing the defender’s arm to go up, and then throw the ball over the middle for a nice completion.

This is a nice workaround. Defenders time throws to bat passes, and throwing off that timing is key for any QB. However, changing the timing can also lead to closing windows downfield, so the fact that Murray has to work more often to change that timing than other, taller, QBs is simply a limitation he must live with.

Historically, Kyler has oscillated somewhere around the middle of the NFL in terms of accuracy metrics. If you look at PFF’s adjusted completion percentage, he actually ranked 4th in 2025, at 78.4%, but that was driven by a very low average depth of target (6.4, t-2nd shortest in the NFL). Throughout his career, he’s ranked somewhere in the teens most years, about league average, but was in the bottom third in 2023.

Completion percentage over expected is less generous to his 2025 season, as he had a -1.0% CPOE in 2025, per NFL Pro. Throughout his career, he’s had three seasons of positive CPOE — 2020, 2021, and 2024 — and his other four seasons had negative CPOE. He seems to oscillate on either side of zero depending on the year.

Watching the tape, I was impressed with Kyler’s accuracy over the course of 2025. I charted it, and have him to be pinpoint accurate on 63.4% of his throws, generally accurate on 17.2% of his throws, inaccurate on 9.1% of his throws, with the remaining 10.3% of throws charted as “not aimed” — either throwaways or batted passes. If you remove the non-aimed passes from the sample size, Kyler was pinpoint accurate on 70.7% of his throws.

I also charted the Vikings QBs, JJ McCarthy and Carson Wentz, over the first five games of last season. McCarthy was pinpoint on 47.9% of his throws, and Wentz on 50.5% of his throws. Kyler was much more consistently accurate than either player, virtually across the board on short, intermediate, and deep passes. The Vikings should see a major upgrade in accuracy with the switch to Murray.

To me, the biggest positive to Kyler’s game is his quick game accuracy. He was consistently a pinpoint passer and did an excellent job of getting the ball out on time to his targets. He does a great job of quickly distributing the ball and leading targets for maximum yardage after the catch.

The throw below is right on the RB’s facemask, allowing him to quickly turn and work upfield for the TD:

By my charting, Kyler was pinpoint accurate on 81.5% of his short throws last year, and generally accurate on a further 13%, only inaccurate on about 5.5%. Both McCarthy and Wentz were pinpoint on under 70% of their throws (69.6% [Editor’s Note: nice] for McCarthy, 66.1% for Wentz), meaning that Kyler is a much more consistent thrower. That shouldn’t be a surprise, but it’s worth noting.

Another plus for Kyler on short throws is his understanding of how ball placement impacts after-the-catch opportunities. He will throw away from the defender’s leverage.

On the play below, he and tight end Trey McBride connect on a really nice play to manipulate the defender. The defender is outside McBride, and Kyler places the ball on the inside shoulder. McBride does a really good job of selling outside before coming back inside to make the catch, maximizing his gain.

Kyler is quite accurate in the intermediate range of the field as well. I charted him as pinpoint accurate on 67.9% of his intermediate passes, generally accurate on 17.8%, and inaccurate on just 14.3%. That’s once again a much higher rate of pinpoint accuracy than I had for McCarthy (46.2%) and Wentz (44.0%).

Murray has the arm to fit balls into tight windows that are closing quickly, like on this throw on a curl over the middle of the field, where he hits Greg Dortch on a 3rd and long between three defenders.

I think Kyler is accurate over the middle of the field, throwing slants, curls, and digs. This throw on a dig to Marvin Harrison Jr. is accurate and, in my opinion, placed very well because it’s low for the receiver to go down and catch it, but the defender makes a nice play to knock the ball away.

He also hits players on the run, like this glance to MHJ.

Kyler is also excellent in the intermediate range outside the numbers. His bread-and-butter is the backshoulder fade, where he has a great connection and timing with his receivers to get completions. This fade is perfect coordination with MHJ.

Kyler has a combination of arm talent and touch to make throws like the below corner to McBride. This is a difficult NFL throw, where he has to get it up and over one defender, down before the deep defender, and deliver the ball before that deep defender can get a hit on McBride to knock the ball loose.

Deep accuracy is a fascinating question when it comes to Murray. Throughout his first three years in the NFL, he was a very effective deep passer. In 2021, he had an adjusted completion percentage of 51.3%, per PFF, which was 5th in the NFL, and he threw for 1,125 yards, 9 TDs, and 3 INTs on deep passes.

However, he has not lived up to that standard in subsequent years. In 2022, 2023, and 2024, he ranked 36th, 32nd, and 34th in adjusted completion percentage on deep throws, respectively. His 2022 adjusted accuracy percentage on deep throws of 26.7% was dead last among qualifiers.

In my charting, I felt Kyler was fine as a deep passer. There was a pretty limited sample size with just 5 games, but while he wasn’t consistently pinpoint accurate with just 3 pinpoint throws, he was often generally accurate, with 9 generally accurate throws and 5 inaccurate throws. That sums together to being accurate on 70.6% of his passes.

[Author’s note — my charting number for total deep attempts (17) is off from PFF’s number (16). These numbers differ because I included plays that were negated by penalty in my charting. This applies to the other depths as well]

When he’s accurate, Kyler throws an absolutely beautiful deep ball, with a really aesthetically pleasing arc. This throw on a fade to MHJ is incredible, virtually a handoff 50 yards downfield:

Kyler thrives when throwing with touch. Take this seam ball to Michael Wilson for a TD:

Kyler can also hit players on the run deep downfield, like this throw to MHJ:

When Kyler did miss a deep throw, I didn’t think there were many egregious examples. If anything, where he struggles most is when he has to drive throws down the field. The play below really should have been a TD, as MHJ soundly beat a safety. However, Kyler left the ball high and outside, and it fell incomplete.

[Author’s note: As always, and worth a discussion later in the piece, there may be a miscommunication between Kyler and MHJ on the play. Kyler might be trying to throw the ball up the hash, and if MHJ took a flatter angle on the cut on his post route than he expected, the ball may have gone where Kyler intended.]

Under pressure, I thought Kyler was alright as a thrower, but he struggled to stare down pressure. Generally, when throwing under pressure, he would move until someone was no longer in his face.

I charted Kyler with 12 pinpoint passes, most of which were checkdowns, 6 generally accurate passes, and 3 inaccurate passes. He also had 8 passes that were not aimed, which is a pretty high rate of throwaways and plays where he was hit as thrown. 

Here is an example of a miss while staring down pressure. The Saints are running a zero blitz, and Kyler has the right answer with the out route, but can’t throw an accurate ball.

Playing under pressure leads to throwing on the move, which I think Kyler does a decent job of, although he’s maybe not as good as you would expect for a player who has his mobility. The play below is a rollout example, and he does a nice job of putting touch on the throw to get it to McBride while on the run.

There were a few plays where Kyler threw a very nice, accurate pass while climbing towards the line of scrimmage, which was nice to see. Here’s an example:

One limitation I think Kyler has is the ability to drive throws on the run. If you watch his throws while moving, they are mostly higher-trajectory, touch passes. He’s pretty accurate with them, but sometimes NFL QBs need to bring out line drive throws, and Kyler didn’t really show the ability to do that. He could get great distance on throws, but doesn’t do a great job of driving them.

The TD is obviously a nice play, but it’s also a high, arcing pass:

This play, moving to his left, is one where Kyler really needs to flip his hips and drive a throw to Elijah Higgins running the back line of the end zone. It’s a really difficult thing to do, and he has a defender in his face, but he leaves a looping pass that is uncatchable and out of bounds.

This kind of throw is something that’s really beneficial for NFL QBs. Here’s an example of the throw that McCarthy made last year. The defenders aren’t quite as tight, but he has pressure from the rush and is still able to flip his hips and drive a throw for the TD. I don’t think Kyler has that in his bag.

Overall, I think Kyler has a lot of arm talent. He can certainly access all areas of the field with his arm, and to my eyes is a very accurate QB. He has a quick trigger and machine-like accuracy on short passes. When he’s on, he throws a beautiful deep ball.

He might not have a top-tier arm in terms of velocity, and despite his athleticism I’d say he’s mostly average throwing on the run, with the inability to drive the ball while moving being a notable limitation. Put another way, he has a very good NFL arm, but he’s not among the NFL’s elite in terms of arm talent.

Physical talent, of course, is only part of the picture for QBs. The mental side of the game may be even more important to long-term success, and certainly a QB needs to be strong in both categories if a team wants to give him a long-term extension. After watching the tape, I have a lot more questions about the mental side of Kyler’s game than I did his physical arm talent.