Ryan Fitzpatrick On What To Expect From Kyler Murray With the Vikings

Ryan Fitzpatrick changed teams enough times to know what a fresh start does for a quarterback. That is why he is so interested in Kyler Murray landing in Minnesota, and why he thinks the first year could look a lot better than whatever comes after it.

Fitzpatrick, who lived in Arizona and watched Murray up close with the Cardinals, saw a talented player stuck in neutral. "I saw it with the Cardinals and the frustration with the fans and just kind of stuck in neutral," he said on the show. A new home, in his view, wipes some of that away. "He gets to reinvent who he is when he goes to Minnesota."

One thing Fitzpatrick made clear is that he does not see a quarterback battle in Minnesota. "I don't think that one's a quarterback competition. Kyler Murray should be the quarterback from day one there." What he sees instead is a player freed from years of accumulated baggage. "You don't have all those built-up scars and memories in the locker room and with the team," Fitzpatrick said, drawing on his own experience of arriving somewhere new and having to reestablish himself.

That reset, Fitzpatrick believes, plays to Murray's strengths in the short term. A new offense, a new coach, a new voice, all of it fresh. "I'm really excited to see Kyler Murray in Minnesota," he said. "I do think it'll be a one-year great experiment. It's going to work great and then potentially tails off after that."

The Sam Darnold comparison came up, given Darnold's strong Minnesota season before moving on. Would a big year from Murray push the Vikings to keep him over their young quarterback? Fitzpatrick did not rule out a longer stay, but he stuck to his forecast. "I think his best year with Minnesota will be his first year and if they keep him after that then it's going to trail off because some of the issues that came up in Arizona are going to be the same issues that are going to follow him."

Pressed on what those issues actually are, Fitzpatrick was careful. He would not call it a maturity problem. "I don't know that it's a maturity issue," he said. Murray's measurable traits have never been the question. "All the things that you can measure, those are the things that he's always been unbelievable at."

The gap, in Fitzpatrick's read, is in the parts that do not show up on a stopwatch. "I think it's just been some of the intangibles. Where he has struggled fitting into a locker room and being able to elevate a team to the next level." Those things, Fitzpatrick argued, are easy to paper over when everything is new and hard to sustain once the shine wears off. "It's easy in year one because everything is new. As you go on in the same spot for multiple years, those become much more important."

So Fitzpatrick lands in an interesting spot. He is genuinely excited to watch Murray this fall, convinced the marriage produces something fun and productive right away. "This year I'm really looking forward to it. I think it's going to be a great show," he said. He just would not bet on it holding up past the honeymoon.