Vikings Preseason Week 1 vs. the Giants: Takeaways

There’s never much to learn after one preseason game, and what little we learn will be supplanted a few plays into the regular season. Nevertheless, there’s analysis to be had. Let’s dive deep and overreact!

Kyler Murray’s lone incompletion hit Aaron Jones in the hands on third down, a ball outside of Jones’ frame but thrown away from the defense — an ideally ambiguous situation that allows one to read into accuracy however one wants to. The broadcast referred to it as a potential chemistry issue between the running back and quarterback and that may be the case, but it is, at the end of the day, one throw.

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Without significant sample to really evaluate Murray, we can’t take much from his 3.3 yards per attempt or his 33.3 percent success rate on passes. From a film perspective, he seemed fine — comfortable with the under-center offense, capable of quickly going through his reads and making decisions that moved the chains.

Two-thirds of the plays for the first-team offense operated under center and of the three plays that were in shotgun, two were on third down. We didn’t see that many snaps with motion (some presnap movement, but these were shifts settled before the snap completed), but the second play of the game did see some of that element involved, a play-action dumpoff to Max Bredeson after Tai Felton ran across the formation and faked receiving a direct snap.

Murray’s best throw was probably on third down — the low ball to Jordan Addison on the intermediate out for a first down. Not the world’s most ideal ball placement but it was safe and extremely catchable on a tough throw that can demand a lot of quarterbacks.

McCarthy didn’t look good, but certainly didn’t seem as problematic as he was for most of last year. If we count that as progress, then we have that to hang our hats on.

The first snap from McCarthy felt like a joke played on Vikings fans: a busted play that attempted to incorporate pre-snap motion — perhaps because of the input of new assistant head coach Frank Smith, who helped design Miami’s run game — but couldn’t get the timing right.

In a more forgiving world, one wouldn’t hold this one against McCarthy too much given that this is a relatively new element to the offense and that’s what the preseason is for. But as far as public opinion goes, the leash is tight, fair or unfair.

That might ultimately be fair; when the offense was run by McCarthy in the regular season last year, the Vikings saw a shocking number of presnap penalties. That didn’t hold true when other quarterbacks were manning the helm. In this game, there were two more presnap penalties with McCarthy at quarterback: a false start on rookie tackle Caleb Tiernan and an illegal shift

One of McCarthy’s best throws in the first half came late in the play and was a rainbow off of his back foot. He was lucky it wasn’t intercepted, but also wouldn’t have had to worry too much given the two fouls on the defense.

He also had a laser to Tai Felton on the sideline that was dropped, and this one was on-time; the kind of throw that demonstrates the potential the Vikings saw in him when they drafted him. There weren’t enough of these throws, but it’s good to see.

We may not consider this a “fair” accounting of McCarthy; he was under more pressure than one would imagine a first-team offense would allow against a first-team defense.

McCarthy was often a significant contributing factor to his 10.9 percent sack rate and 39.5 percent pressure rate — one of the highest in the league — and he was subject to quick pressure during this first-week preseason game, with two of his six non-play action dropbacks seeing immediate pressure.

That doesn’t mean he avoided inducing pressures, however. On non-play action plays, McCarthy held on to the ball an average of 3.23 seconds and saw a pressure rate of 50.0 percent.

This egregiously lengthy time to throw does not seem to be a characteristic of the offense, even as they encourage quarterbacks to hold on to the ball longer than normal. On non-McCarthy dropbacks, the Vikings’ average quarterback time to throw was 2.54 seconds. McCarthy’s dropbacks (including play-action) averaged 3.38 seconds. Murray, notorious for long times-to-throw, averaged 2.60 seconds.

Nevertheless, he didn’t overcome this pressure or meaningfully elevate his teammates. A few of his incompletions sailed well over his teammates’ heads. If he’s a better option than Murray, we didn’t see much evidence of it in this preseason matchup.

Carson Wentz coming in and moving the ball better than McCarthy did with a worse OL-DL matchup isn’t a good sign, either. And Wentz didn’t look good.

The starting linebackers — Blake Cashman and Eric Wilson — looked capable and were enough to stymie the Giants’ running game, featuring a return of phenom running back/bowling ball Cam Skattebo. Starting for the Vikings along the defensive line were Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins, Levi Drake Rodriguez and Jalen Redmond, while edge rushers Dallas Turner and Andrew Van Ginkel started for the team.

Van Ginkel was taken off the field early, with Ingram-Dawkins kicking to the outside; James Pierre took two of the nickel snaps and Jamal Adams took two of the initial subpackage snaps. Adams took snaps at safety and linebacker throughout the game, and with the second-team defense.

Unfortunately, Adams appeared to sustain a significant injury — he left on a cart after being sent to the medical tent for some time. The Athletic’s Alec Lewis reported that multiple Vikings players and head coach Kevin O’Connell looked incredibly upset after checking in on Adams.

Nothing notable stood out for other expected starters; Dallas Turner earned a sack on an extended play that was produced in part by Blake Cashman’s blitz and in part by great coverage on the back end — including Theo Jackson lurking and forcing Dart off of his read.

On offense, there isn’t much to say. The opening run was a product of excellent blocking from both Josh Oliver and Christian Darrisaw — things we expect to see, though it’s good to see that show up again. Murray wasn’t under any pressure on his three dropbacks, which is also nice to see. On his nine snaps, we didn’t see Blake Brandel, who has been struggling with snaps all camp, make any egregious errors.

The run game looked solid, perhaps even improved over last year, and Brian O’Neill told the broadcast that the offensive line was pretty excited with the changes being implemented with how they do things heading into the season.

The story of the game for the depth players has to be Myles Price, who was looking pretty good before his touchdown — but adding in the touchdown, coming off of a Carson Wentz throw — feels good. Price saved some iffy-looking throws and added some great after-catch yardage on top of it. The camp reports that Price has established himself as a true receiver rather than simply as a returner look to be validated.

Unfortunately, first-round pick Caleb Banks didn’t make the most of his reps. He produced some penetration on a rushing play and forced a holding penalty, but primarily played with poor leverage and saw his immense frame get pushed around by the Giants’ backup offensive line.

Second-round pick Jake Golday didn’t stand out either positively or negatively. It’s difficult to get a good sense of linebackers in the preseason, even with a good sample of snaps — as Sonny Styles watchers are figuring out — but to the extent that we could learn anything about Golday, we really didn’t. The Vikings didn’t use him in any interesting ways, lining him up almost exclusively at the off-ball linebacker role throughout the game instead of on the edge or in overhang roles.

That doesn’t mean he didn’t run up the A-gap or line up on the line of scrimmage at the snap, but that is fairly typical for off-ball linebackers in the NFL and particularly in the Brian Flores defense. That doesn’t mean the Vikings aren’t exploring this role for Golday, however — they could just be keeping those snaps off of film in the preseason.

Notably, Golday was a little slow to process and took a bad angle on the 3^rd and 23 conversion Devin Singletary conversion — not as egregious as Marcus Allen or Ivan Pace, but not good.

Pace himself didn’t do much to push himself beyond fourth on the depth chart, with effective blitzing but mediocre linebacker play.

Elijah Williams and Bo Richter logged sacks, and both Chaz Chambliss and Max Bredeson recorded multiple special teams tackles.

Jacob Thomas and Jacob Roberts both earned picks. Jakobe Thomas, the other defender named Jacob/Jakobe and the one with a draft pedigree, did not play due to back stiffness. The other safety named Thomas, Tavierre Thomas, did play.

One item to note: the Vikings were particularly poor on special teams. They incurred five penalties with the punt return unit on the field. The Vikings had the fourth-most penalties on returns in 2025, so this seems like an especially notable problem.

Jay Ward had a good showing, with a thunderous sack to go along with another pressure. He’s competing for a starting safety job against Jackson, who started the game at safety. Given Jackson’s performance last year and Ward’s standout moments in this game, we may see Ward in that starting spot sooner rather than later.

Losing Adams is a blow, and both Tiernan and Max Brosmer sustained injuries as well; Tiernan took on ankle injury and Brosmer hurt his right thumb, according to Kevin O’Connell via Ben Goessling of the Star Tribune.

In this limited preseason showing, did we see enough from the Vikings to be happy? I’d say so. Murray didn’t do anything alarming, the offensive line looks better than before and the defense remains capable of pressure.