Friday Mailbag: Kyler's here

Not so much free agency though. What's next? Fans are asking...

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By Matthew Coller

Hey everybody! Well, a lot happened this week so I got behind on the Friday part of the Friday Mailbag but hopefully the wait is worth it. Let’s dive into your questions…..

Brad L… How much of a deal is it losing our punter/holder to FA? How much of a surprise was it?

I was pretty surprised. They found Ryan Wright as a UDFA and developed him into one of the best punters in the NFL. I figured they’d find a way to keep him around. I also didn’t think he’d get a four-year deal worth $14 million and $8 million guaranteed. Well earned.

I don’t want to overstate it and say that the Vikings will never reach the mountain top in the rest of their existence because they lost Ryan Wright but I do think it’s important that they find a really good replacement for him. He and Will Reichard had timing and trust that is hard to emulate, as you saw from Oscar Chapman trying to hold last year.

Plus I’ve had a bit of a theory about the increasing value of sniper punters these days. With the average starting position for teams being closer to the 35, punters are almost always being asked to get the ball inside the 20 and offenses aren’t usually required to drive 10 plays in order to get to scoring position, so pinning them back has a serious effect on the success of the opposing offense.

EJ12… It appears the KAM firing was for window dressing as no other firings occurred and all in the building have carried on as normal. No doubt this is just a run-back from 2025. Can you touch on why no one else was fired? And why the reluctance to cash in on one valuable asset, JG, for draft capital? Build not for just 2026, rather build for 2027-2031.

Normally when it comes to other front office people are let go, it’s after the draft. A lot of contracts run through May 1. Also, I would imagine if they are going to hire Rob Brzezinski or an outside GM, ownership would want them to be able to decide who to keep and who to chop.

The reluctance is probably based on price. I’m assuming that if somebody came to them with a first-round pick that Greenard would have been traded. We’ll see if the desperation from someone to land a pass rusher increases as the draft gets closer. The issue in this situation is that Greenard wants a new contract, so the acquiring team has to spend draft capital and cap space for him.

I’m not sure that one player swings the timeline. Because the last few years we so clearly laid out for us, we knew what to expect. At this moment, I’m not sure we can say what the 2027-2031 plans are going to be. We don’t know if they have a future QB in Kyler Murray or if they’re going to draft one and we don’t know what this next draft is going to deliver for them.

Personally, I think they should do everything to win this year and see what happens. They are still in the “win now” portion of the program.

Robert S…. How awesome will it be to have a dynamic, accurate, efficient and young quarterback?

I wouldn’t quite say he’s young when he’s going to be 29. He’s more along the lines of being a veteran in his prime. The other parts, well, we can pretty easily guess that Kyler Murray is going to be entertaining.

I’ve been trying to urge people to try to just enjoy watching Murray play football. I understand that I’m the last person who should be saying that worrying about timelines and 2027 right now is a bad idea because I’m fascinated by roster building but in this case that’s pretty much my take.

They had a good plan that didn’t end up being executed and now they have to take a swing at making something else work. They’ll have to see how it goes and then assess what’s next from there. At this point it’s impossible to say where this thing is going to go.

Jason..Any clear picture on the cap situation right now? I am having trouble figuring it out.

OverTheCap.com has them at $5.9 million. I’m assuming that’s counting Jonathan Allen’s post-June 1 cut. So until they can extend Brian O’Neill and/or Blake Cashman or decide to restructure some other contracts, they are pretty much settled on the offseason.

That is why trading Jonathan Greenard would make sense. It wouldn’t just get them some extra draft capital, it would also provide pretty significant cap relief.

Garrett K… Man things just keep getting wilder, huh? I have definitely gotten excited for Murray (insert Michael Scott I’m ready to get hurt again meme). Would you anticipate much time needed for him to learn the offense? I’m thinking of darnold and cousins taking a little time to really master the offense. Thanks for the content, Matt!

Any time a quarterback has to learn a new system, it’s going to take time. The terminology is going to be different and there’s probably footwork-related specifics that he’s going to have to master.

But what people truly do not seem to understand about Kyler is that he played in a Shanahan-inspired system in 2024 and 2025 under Drew Petzing. He was here with Gary Kubiak and Kevin Stefanski. There are a lot of things that cross over between that system and what KOC does. Yes, it did take time for Sam Darnold but there were a lot of things that also clicked well for him by the second or third week of camp.

I noticed The Athletic’s top film analyst mention this as he dives into the Murray film:

Ted Nguyen@FB_FilmAnalysis

Watching Kyler and there is a bunch of carryover with his favorite concepts and KOC's

10:47 PM · Mar 13, 2026 · 20.1K Views

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5 Replies · 9 Reposts · 144 Likes

Those who listen to the podcast may or may not have heard me talk about the data pointing to Murray playing much more traditional QB in 2024 and 2025. Soooooo…

Jake J… Let’s say with Kyler the season is very similar to 2024 (we are competitive, make the playoffs with a legitimate chance of competing for a Super Bowl, but the season ends in disappointment with Kyler playing unwell in the playoffs despite looking good in the regular season). Do you think they automatically extend Kyler because of how bad it looked letting Darnold walk?

Yes, I think they would extend him. But I don’t think it would be because of “how bad it looked.” It would be because it’s the right thing to do with no idea what McCarthy is going to be and the sample size of his performance being so poor. We have seen quite a few QBs who are similar have turnarounds i.e. Jared Goff, Baker Mayfield, Darnold, Trevor Lawrence etc.

The circumstances would be so much different. As much as we should/can criticize them for letting go Darnold, they had just drafted McCarthy and felt that he was going to take the reins and adapt immediately to the starting role. If Murray plays well enough to win the division, they wouldn’t still be thinking about McCarthy’s future as any kind of factor. They’d be thinking about how they’re going to construct the roster around a very good veteran QB.

By the way, for a while, it was pretty much impossible to build around an expensive QB. But times have changed when it comes to that. We see all sorts of expensive QBs (Stafford, Love, Lawrence, Purdy etc.) in the playoffs with quality rosters around them. The way teams structure contracts now is different than it was when Kirk first signed in 2018, particularly because the salary cap keeps going up by so much every year that adding void years is a viable strategy rather than a future cap death sentence.

Matt D… If Kyler has a habit of throwing short or checking down, then I’d want to find a guy in the draft that would be a solid missed tackle/broken tackle check down receiver. Anybody in the draft that you think fits that mold aside from Sadiq? Just don’t see them drafting a TE in the first round.

Interestingly ESPN’s Josh Weinfuss told me on the podcast that the Cardinals wanted him to check down more often in 2025. They wanted him to protect the ball.

I’m not sure that you try to draft players based on this year’s current situation but I still like the idea of Sadiq because the league is generally throwing underneath a lot more with teams playing two-deep safeties and TEs are kinda crushing it. Loveland last year, for example, was extremely valuable right off the bat to the Bears. The thought process about drafting TEs early also might be changing.

When it comes to the broken-tackle type receiver, buyer beware on that. To me, separation is king and will always be king. The Deebo Samuel stereotype went out of style quick when those guys mostly failed to become Deebo Samuel. But if you’re looking for guys that should have YAC in their repertoire, Omar Cooper from Indiana, Connecticut’s Skyler Bell and Georgia’s Zachariah Branch are those guys. Cooper might be a first-round but Bell and Branch are maybe second or third rounders.

Wade M… With Kyler Murray, what changes do you foresee to KOC’s offensive scheme?

I can come up with a few thoughts. I do want to mention that the changes KOC will make with Murray will come from many, many hours of those two working together on details that are probably too deep for us to identify.

Back in 2023, I did a story with KOC where I sat down with him and talked about why Kirk Cousins was so accurate throwing certain routes. The biggest thing that I learned is that O’Connell’s depth of thought that goes into everything in the passing game is unbelievable. Not that I didn’t expect that to be the case but seeing it up close was like listening to a jazz musician explain music theory down to the finest detail. You just hear the song but the work that goes into it is crazy.

Anyway, coaches are always going to try to play to the QB’s strengths. What Kyler does extremely well is throw in rhythm. If he can drop back, hit the back foot and fire, he can put the ball right on the money anywhere on the field. That really fits well with O’Connell’s system. Leaning into those types of plays rather than asking Kyler to drop back, hang onto the ball for 3.5 seconds then let it rip like Sam Darnold did probably isn’t ideal. Kyler and TJ Hockenson should work brilliantly together.

Spacing is huge too. If you can get receivers isolated with space out in front of them, he is brilliant at leading guys downfield with those high, floating passes. Jefferson and Addison win those matchups a ton.

I actually don’t love his throwing on the run as much as I do from the pocket but when it’s designed rollouts from under center, he’s good at it. They could lean into that even more than Petzing did.

The biggest misconception about Murray is that he just runs around. Anybody who says that has absolutely not watched him play. I think the key is avoiding situations where he has to stand in the face of pressure and stare down the barrel. He’s going to still make plays in those situations by scrambling and you want to take advantage of that but you don’t want it to turn into him trying too hard to make plays all over the place for the entire game.

I think Petzing did a really, really good job of that in 2024/2025.

David H… Matt, thank you for your steady support of us Vikings fans. How much pause should the Cardinals willingness to eat over $30M of Kyler Murray’s salary be to the Vikes?

That wouldn’t give me any pause. If we look at recent history, teams have moved on from Jared Goff, Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold, all of whom were top picks who went on to win playoff games with their new teams. You could even count Matthew Stafford, even though it’s a little different.

The Cardinals letting go of Kyler is a decision about where they stand as a franchise. In that division and with that roster, they have basically zero chance of being competitive in 2026. So why would they keep a QB that can win them 7-8 games on the roster when they ultimately want to draft their next QB and rebuild from scratch?

Also they benched him to tank last year and they fired the coach that Kyler was close with. He clearly wasn’t happy in that situation, so he wasn’t going to sign an extension after this contract was up. Better to rip off the band aid now.

However, even if there was pause, the Vikings are paying Kyler $1.3 million. It’s not like you’re going to find a flawless deal at that price but you certainly won’t find a better bang for buck than that. He’s costing less than Andrew DePaola.

Jim L… Hi Matt, the Vikings replaced their slit film turf with monofilament turf an early 2024 in an attempt to reduce injuries. With two full seasons now behind us, do you know how the injury rate for the new field compares to the old one?

I can’t say for sure about the injury rate, especially when it comes to trying to figure out turf-related injuries versus regular football injuries. What I can say is that the Vikings got the highest grade from players on their playing surface in the NFLPA survey, as reported by Kalyn Kahler of ESPN.

Joe J… With Kyler you’d want to keep JG for a more competitive team this year, right?

That’s what I would think, yes. While they haven’t gone crazy and sold the future down the river in order to sign every top free agent and try to win this year, they still have a ton of win-now veteran players who made up 90% of the 2025 roster. Trading Greenard would leave a pretty massive hole in the edge rushing room, not to mention the locker room.

I will say that trading JG doesn’t completely implode next season though. Dallas Turner would get a chance to take on that role full time and they could also draft an edge rusher. This draft is supposed to be very deep at that position.

As Billy Beane said in Moneyball, maybe they can replace Greenard in “the aggregate.”

Turner, Van Ginkel and Wilson along with a draft pick and a veteran Jihad Ward type could still be a pretty good OLB unit (maybe DJ Wonnum?). The problem is if anybody gets hurt, it’s going to get ugly.

Florian K… This question might already be answered by the time this goes to press but is Murray looking for more than one year from the teams he’s interested in? Do you think the Vikings are willing to commit to more than one year?

The other question is I heard Drew Brees say it takes about 50 big time quality starts between college and the pros for a QB to settle in and know what he’s doing. I figure he knows what he’s talking about but I was wondering if there are any metrics which might back that up?

In terms of this contract, it was always going to be one year, $1.3 million because Murray has zero incentive to do anything else. He can keep his options wide open for the future. Is there a chance that he wants to stay with the Vikings if it goes well? Absolutely. Keep in mind: This organization basically doesn’t lose anyone unless they want to let them go. Nobody leaves a team with A+ ownership, and a coach that consistently gets graded by the players as the best to work with. Plus, if he vibes well with Jefferson, that’s a hell of a WR to play the rest of your prime with.

I can buy that number from Brees. I talked to a former NFL scout for a story back in 2024 who told me that it was an old scouting axiom that a QB had to have at least 1,000 passes. He said that he didn’t fully buy that — and guys like Kyler Murray and Cam Newton have certainly proved it wrong — but it stands to reason that a bigger sample of playing QB is going to be more telling.

The problem with trying to get to that 50 mark is: Who has time to give a quarterback 50 starts if they play poorly? Nobody.

It’s been a little bit odd to me to see people trying to rewrite JJ McCarthy’s 2025 season. It was his second year in the NFL and he ranked 36th of 45 in PFF grade, 42nd in QB rating, 40th in Turnover-Worthy Play percentage and 39th in pressure-to-sack ratio. What’s the team supposed to do? You can’t wait around for 40 more starts to see if all the problems get resolved. In a fair world, I think McCarthy absolutely has the talent to get there. Unfortunately, that’s not how the NFL works.

I’ve mentioned before that the list of QBs who are drafted outside of the top five that survive a rough first 10 starts is very thin.

Out of 113 QBs to throw at least 200 passes in their first 10 starts since 2010, McCarthy is 94th in Adjusted Net Yards Per Attempt (which factors sacks and INTs).

Here’s the list of guys who were taken between the 10th and 64th overall picks that rank below 60th in ANY/A over their first 10 starts:

Teddy Bridgewater, Bo Nix, Will Levis, Mason Rudolph, Mitch Trubisky, Dwayne Haskins, Jake Locker, Derek Carr, Ryan Tannehill, EJ Manuel, Brandon Weeden, Johnny Manziel, Kenny Pickett, Justin Fields, Christian Ponder, Josh Rosen, Geno Smith, DeShone Kizer, Jimmy Clausen.

Even if we count Bridgewater as a success, that’s five out of 19 that became anything and it took Tannehill and Smith a long time. Bridgewater played on a brutal team in 2014, Carr’s Raiders were even worse. And that’s it. Not exactly promising.

Colin O… Ignoring the merit of the plan to trade Greenard, what’s the minimum return you would advise the Vikings to accept in a trade. Options “High” to “Low”: 1) Pats #31 for JG & #97. 2) Bengals #72 & Future 3rd, #3 Eagles #98 & 122.

Out of those offers, I’d probably take No. 1. Even if it’s a late first, I’m taking that. The Vikings need more cost-controlled starting players going into the future. The second offer is less enticing but I’m not taking anything outside of a second-round pick when a team was briefly willing to trade two first-round picks for Maxx Crosby and another team gave $30M per year to Jaelen Phillips.

Patrick G…do you think Harrison Smith’s decision could be decided by who’s under center next season? less likely if it’s JJ as QB1 vs. Kyler?

It’s possible. I can’t pretend to know what Harry is thinking. He’s always said that the two biggest factors for him were whether he’s still fast enough to play in the NFL and whether he still has the drive to put in all the work that it takes to do the job.

The fact that he hasn’t announced his retirement and is still leaving the door open certainly makes it possible. We had an answer by this time last year.

Len… Any thought to trading back from 18 and accumulating 2027 picks. In mock sims it’s pretty easy to trade back from 18, stay in the top 40, and accumulate 2027 1st round picks. Keep and even add picks 40 - 150.

Definitely thought to trading back in this year’s draft. With every draft simulation that I’ve run, I keep coming back to having 4 or 5 players that I’d be happy with at No. 18 overall, which seems like a good position to move back. I wouldn’t want to go too far and end up leaving the first round because A) you get a 5th year option B) you’re moving too far away from where the good players are usually taken. But I’d be fine with staying in the top 25-30.

The question is: Will teams be looking to move up in a draft like this? The way I could see that happening is if there is a team that’s in search of an offensive tackle and that guy is still there at 18 and the Vikings can slide back. I’m not sure there’s other positions in this draft that are going to force someone to get desperate.

Rob P…. Talk me off the ledge. I foresee another 4-6 Kirk’ian type years on the horizon. Kyler is good but not great (12 -15 type qb play). The Vikings go 10-7 or max 11-6. Lose in the first round of the playoffs or squeak one out and then get outclassed in the Divisional Round (so repeat of 2019 or 2022). The Wilfs are too afraid to take a step back and have Darnold PTSD so we sign Kyler to 3 years - 140M which is likely what it would take. Then fumble around for the next 3 years being a fringe playoff team and wasting Jefferson’s prime. I almost any scenario but this would be a minor miracle. I’ll save this and repost again on Purple Insider chat in March 2030. We can just change the QB and star WRs name then and it will likely be spot on again.

We probably need to update our way of thinking and move on from the Kirk thing.

The Kirk situation had a few issues that don’t apply here.

1) His contracts were always fully guaranteed (or almost), which was an anchor on the salary cap. QB contracts now are designed much more flexibly with the cap, as you’ve seen from some recent restructures in Mahomes/Allen/Jackson etc.

2) Kirk was a very good QB but ranking them 12-15 doesn’t really tell the whole story in comparison to Kyler. Sam Darnold might be the 12th best QB in the NFL according to some of the folks who rank QBs that way (NFL execs ranked him below Kyler coming into 2025, by the way) but he played above that level with the right team and situation around him. We have seen that level of QB get deep in the playoffs many times in recent history i.e. Jared Goff, Jalen Hurts, Darnold, Brock Purdy, Bo Nix etc.

There is still no all-time great QB in the NFC. Stafford is the closest and he’s likely to retire after this year. It’s really a battle of the roster builds. Kyler Murray has shown to be capable of taking a team to an 11-win season when they were even a solid roster in Arizona with a very mediocre head coach.

So I wouldn’t say that it’s impossible to make it work with Kyler because we’ve seen it happen with other teams with top 12-15 QBs recently.

But I’d also add: He just signed on Thursday. Can we see his first two or three OTA practices before we decide what the Vikings are doing in 2027? I’m a big fan of mapping out timelines for rosters as you guys know but so, so, so much can change quickly in the NFL. We have no idea where this thing is going to go from here.

Andrew K… From the remaining unrestricted free agents who the Vikings haven’t re-signed, any that you think they really should/need to re-sign?

So the only players they have left as free agents that they haven’t signed yet are Justin Skule, Jeff Okudah, Carson Wentz, Fabian Moreau, Ty Chandler, Ben Sims, John Wolford and Brett Rypien.

I’d be very interested in bringing Wentz back as QB3. He can show up in August again if he wants.

The unfortunate thing about the tackle market is that Skule is probably still the best option. He ranked 63rd out of 94 tackles (part-time and full-time) in pass blocking and 51st overall. That’s about all you can ask out of that position unless they feel like Rouse is going to be ready.

Moreau was also pretty solid for them last year.

They should just add Rypien to the coaching staff already.

Pheaney…How does the salary cap actually work? Like, is there a set date that a team needs to fall under it? Or is it at the end of the season? What are the consequences if teams overspend?

Yes, they have to be compliant with the cap by the start of the new league year (March 11). They can’t go over it at any point after that. The “legal tampering” period gives some grace though. They can agree to deals while still over the cap, just can’t make them official until they are compliant. I actually do not know what the consequences of spending over the cap are because I’ve never seen a team do it. I don’t recall any instances of a team overspending. I’m assuming that it would be getting docked draft picks.

Evan… It’s throwback Thursday so… what’s been your favorite Vikings free agency to cover since you started covering the Vikings? What would have to happen for 2026 to be ranked top 3?

I’m not sure it’s possible for 2026 to rank anywhere in the top 10 because nothing has happened outside of Kyler Murray. That might end up being exciting and it’s been interesting to discuss but it wasn’t exactly a flurry of moves.

No. 1 is 2024. Kirk moving on, AVG, Greenard, Cashman, Darnold all coming in at the same time. It just felt like such a monumental shift.

Last year was a lot of fun to cover because they were doing so many things. The discussion about whether it was right to do all those things was fascinating as well.

The 2021 to 2022 free agency was pretty fascinating because we had no idea what KOC and Kwesi were going to do and then they decided to keep the band together.

Al N…What would you say are the most significant similarities between Kyler and Fran Tarkenton and what are the most significant differences?

It’s funny, right? Tarkenton reached four Super Bowls but at Kyler Murray’s age, he had one winning season. And what people thought about Tarkenton by age 28 was that he was a really fun player but you couldn’t really win with him. Maybe history repeats itself.

Another thing that’s similar is that Jerry Burns was running a lot of quick game before that was popular in the NFL. Back in the early 70s, quarterbacks were either handing off or throwing 25 yards down the field. When Fran went 12-2 in 1975, he averaged 11.0 yards per completion and Chuck Foreman and Ed Marinaro were his leading receivers in receptions. The NFL average was 12.7 YPC and the top team was almost 15 yards per completion. Today the average YPC is 10.9, by the way.

Murray has a stronger arm than Fran but they both throw pop flies downfield and ask the receiver to go make a play.

The biggest difference is that Murray is a true running threat. Fran never reached 400 yards rushing. He was all about being a creative playmaker with the passing game and eventually taking off. Murray will bail quickly on a play if it isn’t there because he knows he can get a free 10 yards.

jcphitman…Could the potential rumored deal of Jonathan Greenard to the Eagles (seen the various rumors on X) be in a hold-up until the Murray decision is made? Could Tanner McKee be part of the return for Greenard?

If I’m Philly, I’m just keeping Tanner McKee like the 49ers have with Mac Jones. Backup QBs are needed. Don’t let good ones go just because someone else might use them. Why help other teams unless someone’s going to give you the moon?

Also, I would not even pick up the phone if Howie Roseman called. No way I’m giving the Eagles a player as good as Greenard. Trade him to the AFC.

Jake J…What if we traded Greenard to the Eagles for AJ Brown? Could they make that work financially?

I don’t know if they could make that work financially. Brown’s cap hit is only $23 million and OverTheCap says they’d make $12 million for trading Greenard. But it also says that the Eagles take on a dead cap hit of $43 million if they move Brown before June 1 and only $11 million after June 1. It seems like something that’s more likely to happen in the summer.

That would be pretty wild to get Brown but I’m not sure it’s a great fit. He seems like he struggles a lot when things aren’t going his way and I don’t know that you want to undermine the way the locker room is run by Jefferson. I’d prefer they just draft a guy and pay nothing.

Evan… Tavierre Thomas got re-signed? Myles Price just fell to his knees. Can you explain why they re-signed him after he caused almost every one of Price’s big returns to get called back because of penalties?

This question right here is why I love data.

Tavierre Thomas was on the field for 370 special teams plays and committed four penalties.

In terms of players who were on the field for more than 300 special teams plays, he had the 5th highest PFF grade and had the 5th most tackles in the NFL. Of the 47 guys who played that much on special teams, 20 of them had at least 3 penalties.

Thomas is like a gold standard special teams player in the NFL and because he committed a couple memorable penalties, people want him gone.

This is why we have the data. To tell us whether this guy’s performance overall outweighed a couple miscues or if he actually struggled. Matt Daniels doesn’t just bring back a special teamer like this randomly.

(Actually the same analysis works for Daniels. His unit had a few very bad mistakes but they were elite in terms of Expected Points Added created on special teams this year).

Eric…. I think it still makes sense to trade Greenard now if they could get a 2 or a 2 and a 2/3/4 in 2027 (ideal). Then you bring in more young talent to start developing now, and are better set up for the cap to either navigate a more expensive Kyler contract in 2027 if he does well, or have space to again build around JJ or a new QB if they are going that route. The dead cap hits for Hargrove and Allen will be off the books in 2027, so they would be in better shape for a 2-3 year window in 2027-29. Greenard has been great, but in 2 years won’t be worth the $30M+ price tag for a likely declining player, when you compare to having Turner and some younger guys you add in the draft or FA in 2026-2027.

From a future planning perspective, you are totally right. If we are trying to look into 2027, there are quite a few benefits. The salary cap situation would be better, the draft capital situation would be better and they would get an opportunity to see if Dallas Turner could play a full-time pass rusher role.

The downside is that you have a roster here with Jefferson, Addison, O’Neill, Darrisaw, Fries, Jones, Mason, Van Ginkel, Murphy, Cashman, Redmond… that’s a pretty big number of veteran players who are quite good and they have the top DC in the NFL. If things go right and some guys step up, you could see that group being pretty dangerous. Doesn’t it make sense to see the plan through?

I feel like there is a pretty good argument if they can’t get incredible return for him that they should just go for it. Losing Hargrave and Allen is tough but they can fill in the gaps there and still put out a top 10 caliber defense. That might be harder to do without Greenard since there isn’t anybody to replace him.

So I can see it from both sides.

Dennis A… Murray is signed. KOC really seems to like Anthony Richardson as a developmental QB. Any thoughts on trading JJ while he might have *some* value (3rd?), and switching (through less costly trade - 6th?) for AR? One less year on his rookie contract, but maybe more KOC love for a developmental guy?

Trading McCarthy is complicated. What we don’t really know is exactly how they feel about him. They might want to see how McCarthy performs in the “competitive environment” over the summer before they make a decision. Remember how the 49ers handled Trey Lance. They had Brock Purdy, Sam Darnold and Lance battled it out over the summer and then they traded the loser of the competition. That could happen, I suppose.

I would be in favor of them trading for Richardson, not just because KOC likes him and he has a freakish upside and is more similar to Kyler in terms of being a runner, but also because I think they need a No. 3 receiver considering Kyler has had some injuries and they need an insurance policy.

With Richardson, I look at Malik Willis as being similar. Insanely athletic but just in need of coaching and development. He’s still younger now than Jayden Daniels or Bo Nix were when they were drafted.

Gary A…How much leeway do the Vikings have in paying Murray for the first year? He is getting $30+ million from the Cardinals, and from what I’ve read, the Vikings will pay him the league minimum. Is that some NFL rule? Can they pay him a signing bonus? And can they sign him for two years?

It’s not an NFL rule, it’s how the guarantees in his contract work out. When you sign a player to guarantees, it can include what’s called “offset” language, meaning that if he’s traded or released that the team is still on the hook for paying his guarantees. I would guess that one of the reasons for that is that it’s an incentive for the team not to trade/release the player. Like, you can’t pawn the contract off on somebody else.

Could they sign him for two years? Yes. But if you were Kyler Murray, why would you sign for multiple years? You’re going to want to get another big contract next year after winning 12 games for KOC and throw for 4,000 yards throwing to Justin Jefferson.

Brad L… We got our QB (priority 1), now what? Should we expect to see much/anything before the draft?

I wouldn’t guess so. There’s some decent options still out there that they could do in order to add some depth but I’d be surprised if there was anything that really moved the needle. However, they are the Vikings so you never know.

Bradley P… With this draft looking lackluster isn’t it fairly unlikely that the Vikings will be able to get future capital?

Do you mean from a JG trade or trading down? Feels like it would be more likely that they could get a higher pick for Greenard if the league isn’t that high on this draft but the chances that a team is willing to sell out and trade up into the first is probably lower. Then again, last year Atlanta completely lost its mind and traded up with the Rams. This time around they might take that trade.

TheDude… What would by your pie chart for our 2027 starter between JJ, Murray and also a 2027 1st round QB?

I’ll go 30% chance it’s Murray, 20% it’s McCarthy, 25% it’s a first-round pick, 25% it’s somebody else. Totally up in the air.

TheDude… Not so much a question as just that I thought the Pierre signing made sense and hope they do a few more like these (guys who were not full time but graded very well on cheap deals with an option for the 2nd year). I am sure Flores`s fingerprints were all over this. Also (more of a question).. Given Brandel was at least competent as a center, to me it makes no sense to get an FA center (unless in the top 12 ish)... Of course burning a 3rd rounder on the center of the future makes sense but still Brandel might be the starter at the beginning of the year

No disagreement on either point. If you compare the other centers that were/are out there to Brandel outside of Linderbaum, it’s hard to justify spending in free agency just to get someone with a different name.

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