{"id":673362,"date":"2026-05-30T03:02:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T03:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/673362\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T03:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T03:02:08","slug":"first-open-vikings-ota-reveals-clear-leader-in-quarterback-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/673362\/","title":{"rendered":"First open Vikings OTA reveals clear leader in quarterback competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Vikings are having a true competition at the quarterback. It\u2019s not shaping up to be much of a competition.<\/p>\n

Based on this week\u2019s OTA session that was open to the media, newcomer Kyler Murray is well ahead of incumbent starter J.J. McCarthy.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the key quote from Kevin Seifert of ESPN: \u201cOverall, the afternoon was a reminder that McCarthy could continue along the upward trajectory he established at the end of last season — and still fall well short<\/a> of matching Murray\u2019s experience, arm talent and potential to make big plays in the passing game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pro football is the ultimate meritocracy. The Vikings lucked into Murray, the first overall pick in 2019. Cut by the Cardinals with more than $30 million in guaranteed money for 2026, the Vikings were able to get Murray \u2014 who grew up a Vikings fan \u2014 for the league minimum of $1.3 million.<\/p>\n

McCarthy has had a fair shake. He has missed too much time due to injury, and availability is absolutely a skill. Also, McCarthy has had issues with accuracy and a fastball-heavy arsenal that keeps the Vikings from using layered passes to fuel the intermediate passing game.<\/p>\n

If McCarthy had done well enough in 2025, the Vikings wouldn\u2019t have been looking for another viable starter in 2026. Now, the best player will play.<\/p>\n

So far, Murray is on track to be the better of the two. Which will help the Vikings achieve a better outcome than they experienced in McCarthy\u2019s first year as the unquestioned starter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Vikings are having a true competition at the quarterback. It\u2019s not shaping up to be much of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-673362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}