Rich Predicts How He Sees the Vikings’ Kyler Murray vs JJ McCarthy QB Competition Playing Out

Kevin O'Connell went out of his way to say the Vikings quarterback competition will not be fifty-fifty. Then he described something that sounded exactly like fifty-fifty.

"We don't need to make this fifty-fifty," O'Connell said. "It's going to be that way to start when we're on kind of a time crunch. But when we get into some longer practices, there's some of the ball periods, there's some periods where the amount of plays is unknown."

Rich caught it immediately. "Didn't he say it's not going to be fifty-fifty and then describe fifty-fifty?"

Somebody on the show compared it to Rick James putting his feet on Eddie's couch. Somebody else concluded that O'Connell is simply too smart for the rest of us. Both feel accurate.

The stage Rich set before the sound bite is worth repeating, because it explains why this competition is different from the one in Atlanta. Michael Penix was a highly drafted quarterback whose knee was the entire question mark on his draft profile, coming off a national championship runner-up season at Washington, and Atlanta went and got Tua as a sense of competition anyway.

Minnesota's version has the same shape with the roles reversed. J.J. McCarthy was the highly drafted kid who won the national championship on that night against Penix, then lost year one to a knee, then got his shot in year two. Minnesota let Sam Darnold walk specifically to find out what it had. What it found was up and down, and when McCarthy was not healthy and Carson Wentz went down behind him, the season went, in Rich's phrasing, SOL in SKOL country.

So they went and got Kyler Murray on the cheap. Or, as Rich prefers, inexpensive.

The reps question is where Rich thinks fans are overthinking it. Nobody is sitting in training camp with a clicker counting snaps like an attendance monitor at a rec hall. Someone will start one preseason game, someone will start the other, and then a decision gets made.

Rich has been leaning the same direction the whole time, and he is not moving off it.

"The guy with all the experience," he said. "The former number one overall drafted player, on the cheap, as you put it."

The logic is about curiosity, not talent. Minnesota has already seen what McCarthy looks like. It saw it last year, and it will see it again in these camp practices. What it has not seen is what Murray looks like in this building, in this offense, with these receivers.

"The last thing they're going to do is wonder what Kyler could look like here," Rich said.

Then he pulled up the schedule, which does the argument no harm. Minnesota opens at home against Green Bay, a division game Rich called as big as it gets. Then Chicago, which would be Kyler against Caleb, two number one overall picks. Then Tampa, which would be Kyler against Baker. After that a nice little break against Miami, then at New Orleans.

That is a brutal front end for a quarterback still learning the room, and it is also exactly the stretch where a veteran's floor matters more than a young player's ceiling.

Rich's read: Murray starts and holds it until the wheels either come off physically or it becomes obvious he is not the guy. Then you go to McCarthy and figure out what happens after that.

He was honest about the confidence level. "Maybe I'm wrong," he said. "But Kevin O'Connell is going to be splitting reps to start."

Fifty-fifty. No matter what he called it.