The Vikings’ quarterback battle is still doing exactly what Kevin O’Connell wants it to do: stay messy, stay open, and keep everybody guessing.
Through two weeks of training camp, the picture has shifted almost daily. Kyler Murray has gotten more first-team work than J.J.
McCarthy, but neither quarterback has exactly seized control and run away with the job. McCarthy, meanwhile, is running out of time to make the kind of push he needs if he’s going to take the starting role.
So the expectation remains that Murray will be the Vikings’ Week 1 starter. And O’Connell, along with everyone else in the building, knows the sooner that decision is made, the better.
The reporting around the competition has become a moving target. One practice makes Murray look like the clear favorite. The next, as happened after Sunday night’s session, McCarthy has enough flashes to keep the discussion alive even while dealing with his own uneven moments.
That kind of day-to-day whiplash is good content, but it also raises the obvious question: when does this actually end?
Before Sunday night’s practice, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport had already shifted his stance, moving from the idea that the decision could drag all the way to the start of the season to saying Murray is now the favorite to win the job.
O’Connell has said he has a timeline for naming a starter, though he hasn’t revealed it. The most logical guess is sometime around the joint practices and the second preseason game against the Baltimore Ravens, but that’s still just a guess.
ESPN’s Adam Schefter also weighed in Monday on “The Pat McAfee Show,” and he said the Vikings appear committed to letting this thing run through the preseason.
“They have been determined to have this play out in the preseason,” Schefter said.
After referencing the night practice where neither Murray nor McCarthy clearly separated themselves, Schefter added, “I don’t know that they’re prepared right now to say that one quarterback has distinguished themselves to win that job.”
He then floated a possible path forward that would stretch the evaluation deeper into August.
“I think in a perfect world, what you’d like to do, maybe, is give each guy one start, with the starting offense and the starting offensive line, and then make that decision by the third game and have that guy run the offense as a dress rehearsal for the regular season opener. But it doesn’t sound like they are ready to declare a winner now. I do think it’s going to play out into training camp and into the latter part of this month.”
Schefter also noted the obvious: even if the Vikings settle on a Week 1 starter, that doesn’t mean the job is locked up for the full season if the performance isn’t there.
For now, though, the bigger story is that O’Connell has managed to make this look and feel like a real competition. Based on the reporting coming out almost every day, that part of the plan is working. Nobody seems to know anything for sure, and that appears to be exactly the point.
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