The Vikings' quarterback competition was supposed to be a real battle. Instead, early camp reports are painting a pretty lopsided picture, and it's not the one Minnesota probably wants circulating a year after benching McCarthy's rookie predecessor Sam Darnold for the kid in the first place. According to Alec Lewis's reporting, Murray took a 'hefty amount of snaps' with the first-team offense while McCarthy spent more of his time running with the second unit.
That's a stunning development for a guy who signed for $1.3 million, the veteran minimum, after Arizona released him and ate the remaining $36.8 million owed on his deal. Murray landing in Minnesota on a bargain-bin contract was framed as low-stakes competition for a roster still figuring out its QB1. Early camp reps suggest the Vikings are already leaning toward the former MVP over the guy they used a 1st-round pick on just 2 years ago.
Jon Gruden weighed in on the whole situation, and he wasn't shy about where he thinks this is headed. "I gotta think Kyler Murray is gonna be the guy, but I don't understand what the hell is going on in Minnesota," Gruden said. "How you let Sam Darnold walk, after the year he had winning 14 games, I have no idea. You get what you deserve in this business."
Gruden's not wrong to be baffled. Darnold went 14-win seasons in back-to-back years, first resurrecting his career in Minnesota, then signing with Seattle in free agency and winning a Super Bowl there on a 3-year, $100.5 million deal. The Vikings let that walk to bet on McCarthy, and now McCarthy can't even hold off a guy Arizona just cut loose for nothing.
Naturally, the internet piled on. McCarthy's camp performance has already turned into a punchline, with fans and reaction accounts running clips and jokes about him getting outworked by a quarterback playing for a fraction of what most backups make.
A wave of camp reaction clips mocking McCarthy's early struggles against Murray for the starting job.
None of this settles anything yet — camp reps are camp reps, and Minnesota still has an entire preseason to sort out who actually starts Week 1. But the optics are bad for a franchise that traded up for McCarthy, sat him behind Darnold for a year, watched Darnold leave and win it all elsewhere, and now can't hand the job to the guy it drafted without a fight from a minimum-salary vet. If Gruden's right, this competition might already be over before it really started.