Where is the bar for McCarthy and Murray?
How good do the Vikings quarterbacks have to be in training camp and in 2026 to win the starting job short and long term?
By Matthew Coller
The two biggest questions facing the Minnesota Vikings are: Who’s going to start at quarterback in 2026 and who’s going to start at quarterback in 2027?
There are so many things to talk about within both of those questions but the most fascinating is how the decisions will be made. Where is the bar for each player to win the job out of training camp? Where is the bar for each player to become the long-term quarterback?
On Thursday, Kevin O’Connell called it a “feel thing” and said that they would be using data to track each quarterback’s success in training camp but it will be based more on how the QBs handle commanding the offense, especially when they get to the point of camp where O’Connell is sending in plays that the QBs did not prepare for and having their mastery of the offense show through.
Logically speaking, that makes plenty of sense. But the competition isn’t done in a bubble. These players are not beginning their careers today.
If both were inexperienced and hadn’t proven themselves at any point in the NFL before, then the competition could start at 50-50. But Kyler Murray is entering his seventh season in the league.
From a previous performance perspective, let’s take a closer look at both QBs:
Since Jonathan Gannon took over in Arizona, Murray played 30 games between 2023 and 2025. Between 2023 and 2025, 42 quarterbacks threw more than 500 passes in the NFL.
Among those QBs, Murray ranks 13th in Success Rate, 22nd in QB rating, 16th in sack percentage, No. 2 in yards per scramble (8.9).
By PFF grade, Murray ranked 24th of 45 in 2023, 12th in 2024 and 22nd in 2025.
In his full 2024 season, Murray ranked 5th in Pro-Football Reference’s “on-target percentage” and he was 11th in Expected Points Added per dropback.
So what can we say about Murray overall as a quarterback based on recent performance?
It’s reasonable to conclude that his floor is playing like an average quarterback and his ceiling thus far has been a top 10-15 QB.
At the NFL Combine, Kevin O’Connell said that when the Vikings have received a “baseline level” of quarterback play, they have won a lot of games. This rings statistically pretty darn true. Out of the 42 regular season games that the Vikings have won since O’Connell arrived, 31 of them have had a quarterback rating above 90. In total, when KOC’s QB has a 90+ QB rating, the Vikings are 31-9.
Murray’s QB rating over the last three years, by the way, is 91.6.
What all of those stats tell you is that Murray has a level of past production that strongly suggests the Vikings could be a playoff team with him at the helm.
When it comes to setting the bar for his performance during training camp to win the starting QB job, this has to be weighed very heavily. Even if he isn’t mastering the offense at the level that O’Connell would like, the fact that playing at an average Murray level for his career would put the Vikings in position to win a lot of games should give him a lot more benefit of the doubt.
On McCarthy’s side, there are some things that he did in 2025 that reflect well of him statistically. He finished with the second highest Big-Time Throw percentage by PFF behind only Matthew Stafford. While it was a much smaller sample size than Stafford, it still indicates that he was capable of making highlight-reel plays.
He was also the victim of the third highest drop percentage by his receivers. There’s some debate on whether the velocity on his throws and timing was to blame but nonetheless it’s unlikely that the caliber of receivers on this squad would repeat that number again.
And over the final four games of the season, albeit against three DCs who were fired and Green Bay sitting their starters, McCarthy performed like a starting-level QB with 64% completion percentage, 8.4 yards per attempt and a 100.4 rating.
The bigger picture is much tougher to lean on for the young QB. Among all quarterbacks in the NFL last season with at least 200 pass attempts, McCarthy was 36th of 36 in Pro-Football Reference’s “On-Target” percentage. In other words, the least accurate QB in the NFL.
He was 34th out of 36 in Success Rate, 35th in completion percentage, 35th in passer rating, 33rd in sack rate and 36th in interception percentage. The only QB with lower Expected Points Added per play was Cam Ward.
Those stats are rough and you’d be hard pressed to find many QBs who weren’t top-five draft picks who overcame numbers like that but it doesn’t mean that McCarthy should be tossed aside because of a bad 10-game start to his career.
Rather it means that the burden of proof is on McCarthy.
To use some legalese, McCarthy providing convincing evidence that he is the better of the two quarterbacks during training camp might not even be enough. This isn’t a preponderance of the evidence situation. This has to be beyond a reasonable doubt.
O’Connell and the coaching staff have to walk away from training camp like they are jurors coming out of sequestering and declare McCarthy the hands-down, lock-dead, no-doubter best quarterback of the two.
Otherwise, at least to begin the season, the job has to go to the guy who has done it before at a high enough level to win.
The other side of that is that Murray can’t be a disaster in camp. He can’t fumble his way through O’Connell’s offense. He can’t walk into the huddle unsure of himself and try to scramble on every other drop-back. O’Connell has to believe that he can confidently make calls into Murray’s headset and have them converted into successful plays.
But even if the Vikings went into Week 1 without 100% of the O’Connell playbook at hand, Murray’s elite scrambling ability and off-schedule playmaking makes a strong argument in itself that he could still win games while learning the offense on the fly. Heck, it took Kirk Cousins time in 2022 to get it down. Kirk’s QB rating in September of 2022 was only 83.9 but it jumped to 96.2 in October.
The odds lean heavily in Murray’s favor. The news of splitting reps in camp didn’t faze the sportsbooks with FanDuel giving Murray -1000 to win the job and McCarthy +600.
That should be the viewpoint going into camp. Where it goes from there, who knows.
After someone wins the QB competition, then the question becomes whether the Vikings have their long-term quarterback.
How will the Vikings decide if Murray or McCarthy is their QB1 going forward?
In this case, the bar is lower for McCarthy because he’s still on his rookie contract. Theoretically speaking, he doesn’t have to be as good as Murray in order to maximize his talent because the team will be able to use more cap space to build around him.
Of course, that was a major part of the theory of letting Sam Darnold walk in free agency and Seattle was able to win the Super Bowl with him.
The QB meta has changed since Kirk Cousins was making 20% of the Vikings salary cap because there is so much more cap manipulation these days. Out of the seven teams to make the playoffs from the NFC last year, six of them had quarterbacks that were at least on their second contracts.
Teams are now pushing more money down the road or setting up contracts to either be extended into eternity like we’re seeing from Patrick Mahomes or go bust. That’s pretty much how Kyler Murray became a Vikings, by the way.
That means if the Vikings did want to sign Murray to an extension, they could do it in a way that wouldn’t destroy their chances at building a complete team. Daniel Jones, for example, signed a two-year, $88 million contract with a cap hit of $19 million this year (6.3% of the cap) and $49 million in 2027. The deal has a void year in 2028 but the Colts can restructure the contract in 2027 and cut that number to $22 million and they can extend him and lower the number and spread out the dollars over several more years.
Another developing pattern in the NFC is that there are a lot of good QBs but no dominant QB like Mahomes, Lamar Jackson or Josh Allen, so teams can build top-notch supporting casts and elite defenses and have a chance to chase a Super Bowl.
So how good would Murray or McCarthy have to be in order to lock in the QB1 job in 2027?
To stick with the imperfect quarterback rating markers, 142 out of 175 QBs to make the playoffs since 2010 have managed at least a 90 rating during the regular season.
Last year 11 out of the 14 quarterbacks to make the playoffs ranked in the top 20 by PFF grade. Only CJ Stroud, Bryce Young and Aaron Rodgers were the only ones who were below that marker.
In 2024, 11 of the 14 QBs to make the playoffs ranked in the top 20 and another was 21st.
In 2023, 12 out of the 14 QBs to make the playoffs ranked in the top 20.
You get the point.
Unsurprisingly, it takes a top 20 quarterback to get into the postseason.
Does that answer the question?
In some ways, you might say yes. The last three QBs to win the Super Bowl ranked 10th, 20th and 10th by PFF in the regular season. One of them was the best QB of a generation and the other two had incredible defenses that tortured opposing offenses. Bo Nix ranked 17th for the Broncos last year and he was an ankle injury away from possibly reaching the Super Bowl.
So the Vikings could adopt the thought process that if they can solidify the position with a top-20 player, that the rest will be determined by whether they can build an unstoppable defense and quality offensive line and run game.
But there has to be more to it than that, right?
Certainly context matters.
If McCarthy ends up playing the majority of games and ends up as a top-20 QB, it’s not quite the same as if Murray cracks the top-20.
In this case, the standard has to be higher for Murray because there isn’t likely to be a higher ceiling for him than this year. He’s being given the best supporting cast in terms of wide receivers and coaching that he’s ever had in his career. Ranking as the 20th best QB in the league for a 29-year-old player who has missed a lot of time in his career might not be enough.
The Vikings also have to be careful about chasing their losses. Botching the Sam Darnold decision shouldn’t influence what they do with Murray. In order to be worth paying/keeping, he would need to be capable of leading a top-10 offense and performing in the same range as other second-tier QBs like Dak Prescott, Jordan Love, Brock Purdy or Justin Herbert.
They also can’t factor O’Connell’s timeline if they end up having to decide on Murray. Not many coaches get a chance to draft two first-round QBs but if Murray isn’t worth the price tag and they’d prefer to turn to the draft, they should adjust the timeline and adapt how they evaluate KOC rather than trying to keep a middling QB to make sure he remains competitive.
If McCarthy, with only 10 games under his belt at age 23, ranks as a top-20 QB, then it’s worth finding out if there’s more there. If he was any better than 20th, the choice would be pretty easy.
The devil will be in the details for whoever ends up starting. How do they respond to KOC’s offense? How do they gel with Justin Jefferson? How high are the highs and low are the lows? How healthy are the QBs?
The discussion is reminiscent of something that Kwesi Adofo-Mensah revealed after a question about why they let Darnold walk. He said that the team had set markers before the season that if Darnold was able to meet them then they would consider sticking with him. The idea was not to adjust in a reactionary way.
Yes, that’s exactly what they did but the concept was right. The Vikings should do the same thing with Murray and McCarthy for both training camp and the long term. Decide before camp on what it would take for McCarthy to win the job or for either player to keep the job long term so they don’t get caught up in the way the 2026 season ends or how desperate they might be at QB influence the right call.
I’ll put Murray at an 80% chance to start week 1, and 30/70 to start next year. My guess would be they prefer to sign him to a shorter deal and draft a QB on top of that, but Murray probably plays well enough to walk and sign a longer deal elsewhere.