Kevin O’Connell’s latest remarks on Kyler Murray may have quietly pointed the Minnesota Vikings toward a quarterback answer.
The Vikings have already seen this movie with a veteran passer. Not long ago, Sam Darnold stepped in and helped Minnesota win 14 games, a run that ended with a flat finish in the biggest game of the season but still earned him a deal with the Seattle Seahawks.
Darnold then went on to win the Super Bowl with Seattle the next year, while Minnesota’s own quarterback situation went the other direction with J.J. McCarthy.
McCarthy’s stint has gone so poorly that he may not even be the Vikings’ quarterback of the future anymore, and O’Connell’s words about Murray only sharpen that picture.
“But at the same time, guys we’ve had a lot of success with different veteran quarterbacks at different stages of their career, whether it was Sam Darnold or Kirk Cousins, and now we want to do everything we can to provide Kyler Murray with a great opportunity and see what he can do with it,” O’Connell told R.org.
That sounds a lot like a coach preparing to hand Murray the job.
If that’s the direction Minnesota takes, it would also signal a clear lesson from the last stretch: the Vikings don’t want to repeat the mistake of betting too hard on McCarthy. They had Darnold and Daniel Jones in the building and passed on Aaron Rodgers because of McCarthy, only to watch McCarthy struggle and deal with injuries.
Murray brings a different profile. He’s a former No. 1 pick and a proven veteran, and the source material makes clear that it’s difficult to pin everything that went wrong in Arizona on him alone.
With O’Connell’s reputation as a quarterback mind and a strong receiver group around him, Murray would have a real chance to reset his career. If he lands in Minnesota, he’d fit the same broad mold as other late bloomers who only needed a new setting to show their best version.
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