Minnesota has named Kyler Murray its Week 1 starter, ending a lengthy quarterback competition with J.J. McCarthy.
After a long offseason of debates, predictions and opinions on who might be the Minnesota Vikings’ starting quarterback in Week 1, we got an answer on Tuesday.
Minnesota named veteran Kyler Murray its starting quarterback following a training camp competition between him and young quarterback J.J. McCarthy. And so Murray will now enter the season as QB1 for a Vikings team with playoff aspirations, while McCarthy will open the year as the backup.
And that’s important to note. That doesn’t mean Murray will be the starter all year.
He’ll have to retain that spot and prove he can perform at the level the Vikings need him to. Otherwise, McCarthy could eventually get a shot.
Murray joined Minnesota on a one-year deal in March after spending the first seven seasons of his NFL career with the Arizona Cardinals. He was a former No. 1 overall pick, has 87 regular-season starts under his belt and is a two-time Pro Bowl selection.
And while Murray is by no means a superstar quarterback in this league, there’s a reason he and the Cardinals ultimately parted ways, he simply has significantly more experience than McCarthy.
From that standpoint, Murray is head and shoulders above McCarthy, who certainly still has a ton of upside but has dealt with ups and downs and injury issues through his first couple of years in the league.
And that’s a big storyline here too. What happens with McCarthy?
He was the No. 10 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft with the expectation that he might eventually become the franchise starting quarterback. But he missed the entirety of his rookie season with an injury and then dealt with several nagging injuries last season that kept him in and out of the lineup.
And that kind of led to Murray’s arrival and ultimately sparked this quarterback competition.
As recently as this weekend, both quarterbacks were still splitting first-team opportunities. But Minnesota needed to choose a direction. The Vikings needed to commit to one of these two guys so they could really start to game plan for the season.
The preseason is coming up, chemistry needs to be built and depth charts need to be formed.
And so this is the first official announcement of that decision.
For now, and at least for the opening week of the season, Kyler Murray will be the starting quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings, which is a positive development.
