Friday(ish) Mailbag: Minicamp ends with questions abound

As we enter the summer lull, there are no clear answers at QB

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By Matthew Coller

Happy weekend everybody. Apologies for being slow on the mailbag due to covering minicamp on Thursday.

Let’s dive right into your questions…

Base… This is slightly off-topic from mini camp, but regarding future roster construction when we hear that the new GM has ownership of the roster is that the 90 man roster or is that the 53 man roster? How much say do each head of the hydra have when it comes to the cut downs?

It’s everything. He’s in charge of every single player that comes in the building or leaves the building. So when they sign UDFAs in order to get to 90 players, he’s signing off on that. When they cut down from 90 to 53, he’s making those final calls. When they want to trade a conditional 7th for the 54th man on somebody else’s roster, that’s him.

He’s not doing all of this himself. They have directors of player personnel and pro personnel that are going to be involved in identifying players that they want to acquire and evaluating everyone in house but nothing on the roster happens without his sign off. He’s basically you with your Madden offseason.

Robert S… It seems like assessing talent, “anchoring” that assessment in analytics, and then talking over with the coach how that all fits their needs is so logical and is such a sound formula for success that it makes me wonder, Doesn’t everybody do this? and, Is this actually way harder than it sounds, to the point where the formula says little about whether there will be success? What do you think Matthew?

I’m not sure that it’s a revolutionary idea but I don’t know if everyone does it this way and it definitely creates a streamline in decision making from the front office to the coaches.

The way I understand it is this…

So if you have the pro scouts working on free agency, let’s say they identify 20 players that they believe could fit what Kevin O’Connell and Brian Flores want for their systems and that they think are good players. The data people are going to deep dive into them to see if they spot any red flags. Let’s say they chop the list down to 10 players. Then Teasley is going to take those 10 players to the coaches and talk over their potential fit schematically and culturally and what their role would be.

I’m sure there’s always going to be guys that coaches stand on the table for because they know them from other places etc. but I think it allows everyone to be involved in the process and the coaches to have their say.

Kip N….

Matthew
Pie chart time
Trading JJ
1- before training camp
2-before week 1 ( during cut down days)
3- trade deadline 2026 season
4- after 2026 season
5- Kick Rocks, JJ flourished enough for them to keep him

I think they keep him bc trading him after 10 starts is a MASSIVE Mustakr unless a team gives (2) 1st rounders and a haul for them to say No

This is a tough one because I don’t think they are trading him in 2026 but I could certainly see it happening after the season if he doesn’t establish himself as QB1 this year. So I guess I’d go 20% chance that they trade him at any point between now and the deadline, 40% chance that it’s after this year and 40% that he’s flourished enough to keep him.

Saying “trading him after 10 starts” sounds a lot different than “trading him after three years.”

The situation is really up to McCarthy. Training camp is kinda his “now or never” moment.

Jake J… Let’s say McCarthy never was injured his rookie year but he sat the whole year because Darnold played so well. In this scenario, I still have a hard time believing he would have played well last year given how bad it looked and his lack of experience. Do you think it would have been possible for them to re-sign Darnold after 2024 if McCarthy didn’t look great in practice with the scout team? Or is it hard to access during the season and they likely would have went with McCarthy anyways for 2025?

It’s impossible to say how things would have played out if McCarthy had been healthy in 2024 but I’ve always felt like that year would have been huge for him. It would have been hundreds of practice reps with no pressure and a total focus on development. Learning an offense isn’t just about seeing it on a white board, it’s about feeling the footwork and the timing. He also would have been going against Flores’ defense every day in practice.

The other thing is that his upward trajectory would have continued rather than being halted to the point where he was starting from Square One. I underestimated how much of a setback he was going to face because it took him quite a while to look like he did at the end of 2024 camp last summer.

To your question, yes, if they had seen him behind the scenes healthy for all of 2024, they would have had a much more accurate picture of what he was going to be as a starter. If they realized by the end of 2024 that he wasn’t as far along as they would have liked, then they would have attempted to keep Darnold.

I don’t think Sam was going to sign a long-term extension with the Vikings unless they moved on from JJ though. The fans had already gotten so attached to the idea of McCarthy that Sam wasn’t going to want to look over his shoulder. So the only answer would have been franchise tagging him.

We know in hindsight that tagging him would have been the right move but I think it was also something we could have seen coming. McCarthy played so little football in true passing situations in college, those types of QBs generally need several years before they come into their own.

The Darnold part was fairly predictable too. If you search all QBs since 2000 who threw for 4300 yards, 35 touchdowns and made the playoffs, you’ll find 35 QBs and most of them are Hall of Famers. The worst QBs on the list are Baker Mayfield, Carson Palmer, Jared Goff and Daunte Culpepper… all considered franchise QBs at one time or another.

It’s a catastrophic mistake but they can’t go back and time and have better luck with McCarthy’s injury or make a better decision by keeping Darnold. So they have to move forward and decide whether McCarthy can ever reach the potential they thought he had in 2024.

Kip N… What positions do you think they try to sign during or after training camp ? I hear Judd saying CB, DT, QB ( if JJ is traded), Rb? What does the old crystal ball say ?

The biggest one for me would be outside linebacker. I’m very intrigued by the idea of Ty Ingram-Dawkins, Bo Richter, Chaz Chambliss and Tyler Batty fighting it out but I think you need at least one proven person at that position in case Andrew Van Ginkel or Dallas Turner gets hurt.

Maybe some of the guys who are out there like Leonard Floyd and Kyle Van Noy are weighing their options but both of them would be the ideal fit for a rotational role.

They signed two DTs already, just neither has a super impressive background. I’d be surprised if they went to free agency for a corner when they signed James Pierre and drafted Chuck Demmings and still have Dwight McGlothern but there’s always room for Fabian Moreau to come back.

Running back would make some sense. I’d want to see Demond Claiborne first though. With two starting-type RBs on the roster, I’m not sure any remaining free agent would be targeting this place right now. That would have to be if someone got hurt.

Al N… If you were head coach, what would you need to see from J. J. McCarthy to choose him to be QB1 in Week 1? Assume Kyler Murray remains healthy and plays as well as expected. What could J. J. do to win the starting position outright, if you’re making the decision?

I would need to see breathtaking play in training camp. I’m talking Sam Bradford 2017 level camp.

There’s just no way that I could ignore what has happened during the real games when making this decision.

I see all sorts of folks on the internet trying to sell one stat or another to make Kyler look bad but the reality is he’s 12th out of 42 QBs with at least 1,000 passes since 2020 in Success Rate (the top 5 are Purdy, Allen, Mahomes, Prescott and Brady). The guys close to him in that stat are Herbert and Jordan Love. His best three PFF seasons are in the top 13. He was 9th in ESPN’s QBR in 2024. This is a good NFL QB, even if he’s not perfect.

If I’m going to pass up playing someone who’s been that good, I’d better be blown away.

Matt D… Probably too early to ask but I’m going to ask it anyway. Who are your top 3 guys to watch for Mr Mankato?

The way-too-early Mr. Mankato picks for me would be Chuck Demmings, Demond Claiborne and Dillon Bell.

Corners and receivers are always good picks and those three guys caught our eye during minicamp. They are also likely to get a ton of work during the preseason and could become fan favorites with a big game or two.

Bekwelem… What’s your opinion on the “splitting reps” thing with the QBs? I don’t see it as a bad thing. JJ knows the system and Kyler is a vet. Whichever person wins the competition should be able to carry on into the season just fine.

With a guy learning a new offense, I’m not sure it’s something that I’d want to go on very long into training camp. However, if Kyler comes back and looks like he hasn’t been able to wrap his head around the offense and practices are going horribly, the coaching staff has to be flexible enough to keep going until there’s an answer.

The biggest problem with the whole camp competition is that I remember feeling like Kirk Cousins in 2021 with Klint Kubiak was having a lifeless training camp and the guy ended up putting together a really good season. In 2022, Kirk was having a ton of trouble picking it up and he struggled at points early in the season but ended up winning 13 games.

After watching JJ light up joint practices and coming away feeling pretty confident that he’d be quite good in 2025, my degree of certainty with camp equating to the season for QBs is very low. That’s why I’d be more apt to try to get JJ as much work as possible with the 1s to see where he’s at but I wouldn’t want to do this thing deep into August.

Thomas S… Thanks for your tireless work Matthew. Over or under 1.5 Emergency Podcasts before the start of training camp?

I’m going to go with under, though the bar for an emergency podcast around here is very low.

I don’t think Nolan Teasley is going to make any earth-shattering moves before seeing the team out on the field for training camp.

Maybe a Brian O’Neill or Blake Cashman extension could inspire an emergency pod or if they added a veteran right before camp but I’m not sure if those things are going to happen before then.

Everybody should subscribe to the pod and put on notifications just in case.

Bekwelem… I’m seeing that there’s a staff overhaul including in the scouting department. Does the is mean that the new GM felt like scouting needed some freshening up?

I wouldn’t call it a total overhaul of the scouting department. Per Alec Lewis, they moved on from Jamaal Stephenson, who has been with the team for a long time and a college scouting exec and pro scout. And then it was reported Friday that they added two new assistant GMs Andrew Healy and Trent Kirchner.

Interestingly, Healy used to write for Football Outsiders and worked his way up to football research and strategy with the Cleveland Browns. So I guess the idea that Teasley was going to go “old school” with scouting was not the right assumption. Though people who thought that forgot to check his bio in Seattle.

Anyway, as expected, the guy who was the outside hire is getting fresh eyes on the organization. That’s what I liked about the hire from the jump and it’s the right move to get his own people in the building quickly.

I’ll say this over and over: The Vikings didn’t need to be torn down, they needed fresh eyes.

Eldon… Do you think the Vikings keep Murray, McCarthy and Wentz to start the season and if so do we see all three play meaningful snaps?

There’s so many different scenarios that could play out. I would think that KOC would want to keep three quarterbacks because two seasons have been derailed by QB injuries since he arrived here.

What it might come down to is how KOC feels about McCarthy at the end of all this. Assuming Kyler wins the competition, if he believes that McCarthy has shown a lot of growth toward being a starting NFL QB and he’s being a good teammate to Kyler Murray and doing everything he can to help the team prepare each week, then it’s a luxury to have a backup QB who has come in and won games before and has a few years in the offense.

If it doesn’t check those boxes and things get uncomfortable between KOC and JJ’s camp and he wants out of Minnesota, then they might feel that a trade is the best option.

I have no idea if QB1 is going to stay healthy. People are talking about how he’s injury prone when he played 30 games in a row from 2023 to the beginning of 2025.

Bill F… Great work Matthew. Can’t miss for each every day. Isn’t splitting reps between KM and JJM detrimental to KM learning the offense? Won’t doing this delay his progression into KOC’s full playbook? McCarthy at least in theory should know it fully.

It depends on how long they split reps. We get super jacked up for the official start of training camp and then the first three or four days look like minicamp practices without pads on as guys ramp up. I don’t think splitting those reps is going to be problematic and they’re going to design them to work on specific things for Murray.

But the longer camp goes on with split reps, the more I would think that it could hurt Murray. If we’re talking about going through two preseason games and they still haven’t leaned one way or the other, then I would imagine that would be more damaging to Murray than it would be McCarthy.

If I’m KOC, I’m deciding which way to bend the first-team reps by the time pads come on. That doesn’t mean bench the other guy, it just means to start leaning one way or another and then see where it goes. It took Sam Darnold until probably the fourth or fifth padded practice before he really got going in this offense so you want the starter to have all the reps you can but also be ready to pivot if needed.

Jordan D…. It’s time to buy stock in the rookie class. How are you pie-charting up your portfolio?

Here’s mine: Jakobe Thomas-32%, Brett Thorson-16%, Jake Golday-14%, Dillon Bell-12%, Demond Claiborne-9%, Chuck Demmings-8%, Caleb Tiernan-6%, Max Bredeson-3%.

Obviously I want the most stock in my plant-the-flag guys (Thomas and Thorson), but I tried to factor in initial cost vs potential upside. 2nd round picks cost more than UDFAs. Fullbacks get smaller contracts and impact the game less than WRs. Earlier picks have less risk of ruin than UDFAs.

IMO: Safest stock-Jake Golday. Highest upside-Brett Thorson. Best risk-Dillon Bell. Worst risk-Caleb Banks. Intriguing upside-Caleb Tiernan.

Alright, I’m going to tell you the truth: I have zero idea how the stock market works so I can’t say that I’m going to get any details regarding stocks correct but I think I’m following along with what you’re saying here…

If I was given $100 to put on each guy and I’m looking for the most return on investment for future earnings, who would I take?

I’d go with $40 on Caleb Banks. Yes, he’s risky but… is he really? Defensive tackles are at such a premium that even if Banks only becomes 75% of his ceiling then he’s still going to be valuable to this team or sought after as a free agent. Guys like Grover Stewart and DJ Jones are making $13 million. Everyone wants DTs who can overpower offensive linemen.

The next would be $20 on Jake Golday. I agree he’s a safe stock. If he doesn’t become Andrew Van Ginkel, he can still play inside linebacker and be a starter with his size and athleticism. Not to mention that first and second round picks have the best chances at success by a mile. After that I’ll go $10 on Caleb Tiernan, $10 on Chuck Demmings and $5 each on Jakobe Thomas and Demond Claiborne.

If I’m playing the game correctly, it’s not so much about odds to become a starter as positional value. I think a guy like Thomas has a good chance at starting eventually but safeties just don’t get paid very much, neither do RBs. If Tiernan or Demmings hit, they’ll get the bag.

Fun exercise. My first impression of the draft class in minicamp is pretty good. It’s super, super early but I can see the fit for each guy and some athletic traits stand out.

Brent M… Hey Matthew, I just watched your Minicamp 2 Review with Emily (who, I thought, was great, by the way!) and I saw that you started to bring up Hekker, but then realized you had time for a higher priority topic. So, without stealing any thunder away from any planned pieces coming up, what are the under the radar developments that you have seen to this point or are looking forward to watching during training camp?