Tom Pelissero: Don’t Assume Vikings Will Just Hand QB1 Role to Kyler Murray

Mike Garafolo, on the show earlier this week, said the Vikings' starting quarterback job belongs to Kyler Murray. Not close. Tom Pelissero, asked the same question, made the case for why nobody should assume that.

Pelissero started with what is true. Murray chose Minnesota. He had options. He could have gone to Atlanta. He could have gone to the Jets. He picked Kevin O'Connell's offense because he is 28 years old, looking for a real shot in a real system, and money was not the deciding factor.

"The Cardinals still owe him like 36 million this year minus the minimum salary that's being offset from Minnesota," Pelissero said. "And they gave him a no-tag clause. So Kyler Murray controls his future in 2027."

That part is settled. The part that is not is whether Murray walks into camp as the starter automatically.

"Contrary to popular opinion and all the memes, JJ McCarthy's career to this point has not been an abject, unqualified failure," Pelissero said.

The case Pelissero built for McCarthy is granular. The young quarterback has not been healthy enough. He has not been available enough. He has not been consistent enough. But the film, the actual film, is more nuanced than the public discourse suggests. Pelissero pointed to the Detroit game last year, in which McCarthy played six weeks removed from a high ankle sprain.

"He was good that day," Pelissero said. "He did not have to throw the ball a ton. He was under 200 yards passing. I've done this long enough. I can tell when a guy's able to play on time, when he's able to be accurate, when he's able to produce in the red zone. JJ McCarthy did those things that day."

The structural argument is the one Pelissero kept returning to. If the Vikings believed Murray was the unambiguous starter, McCarthy would already be gone.

"If this were just it's Kyler's job and JJ's competing with Carson Wentz to be the two, you wouldn't have traded JJ. You would have gotten whatever you could get for him already because the longer you wait to trade a guy like JJ McCarthy, the less his value is."

Pelissero noted McCarthy was the fifth quarterback off the board in the 2024 draft, after Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, Drake Maye, and Michael Penix Jr. The longer the league does not see the version of McCarthy the scouting community expected, the harder it is to recoup real value. The Vikings, by Pelissero's read, are not yet at that point.

The other piece of the Pelissero argument is what O'Connell has done with the position.

Kirk Cousins played the best football of his life in Minnesota until the Achilles tear. Sam Darnold played the best football of his life in Minnesota. Daniel Jones got a one-month crash course in O'Connell's system and was playing the best football of his career in Indianapolis until he got hurt. Quarterbacks come to O'Connell.

"He's got a runway here," Pelissero said. "Whatever it is, next two, three years, they still haven't hired a GM, that's going to come, but he's got time here to find who the quarterback is going to be."

Three top-10 picks now sit in that quarterback room, between Murray, McCarthy, and Wentz. Two out of four seasons, O'Connell has needed all three because the injuries keep coming.

Pelissero closed with the part most likely to make this competition interesting.

"I don't know how friendly the room's going to be with Kyler and JJ," he said. "They both intend to go and win that job. But why would you not?"