How Much Can the Vikings Maximize Kyler Murray?
The Vikings largely stood still in free agency, making just one splash move: signing Kyler Murray to a league-minimum contract. It's an improvement over their quarterback situation, but how much?
The Vikings might have grabbed the best value in free agency, taking a quarterback whose open-market value might be north of $30 million for the veteran’s minimum, an odd quirk of how guaranteed money works in most NFL contracts.
Many might quibble at that valuation — something worth covering in detail — but the implications of the move are clear. As much as the Vikings have refused to commit to naming a starter this early into the offseason, the expectation from the local beat and the national media is that Murray will start for the Vikings in the 2026 season without much of a real competition.
This isn’t the end of the J.J. McCarthy story, but it is a delay. The Vikings have McCarthy under a cheap contract through 2027 and have the opportunity to secure him — at a heftier price — into 2028, should they choose to. For now, he’s an unseasoned backup and may be joined by another before camp breaks in late July.
It is difficult to argue that this is anything but a good move for the franchise, assuming their goal this offseason is to maximize wins in 2026.
Wait, Did You Say $30 Million? How Good is Kyler Murray?
It might seem odd to think of Kyler Murray, a quarterback injured and then benched by his previous team, as a quarterback who could earn $30 million — Sam Darnold, after all, put together a much better season and was never cut by the Vikings before earning $33.5 million in Seattle in the offseason before winning the Super Bowl.
But we’re also not too far removed from an offseason where Derek Carr, cut by the Raiders, signed a contract with the Saints for $37.5 million per year. By percentage of cap at signing, $30 million now (10.0 percent of the cap) would be equivalent to Case Keenum’s contract with the Broncos in 2018 ($18 million AAV), Teddy Bridgewater’s 2020 contract with the Panthers ($21 million AAV) and Nick Foles’ 2019 contract with the Chicago Bears ($22 million AAV).
If we adjust EPA per-dropback rankings for a 35-quarterback comparison set each year, Murray has ranked 23rd, 21st, 12th, 21st, 21st, 14th, and 17th in the NFL. By contrast, McCarthy’s lone season saw him rank 34th, with an unusual end-of-season stretch allowing him to place just ahead of Cam Ward after bottoming out as one of the worst quarterbacks we’ve ever seen through five starts.
When canvassing subjective quarterback rankings lists, like those from the Ringer and NFL.com, Kyler found himself ranked in the top ten a few times (seventh, eighth, or ninth at least once by at least one organization) and regularly ranked in the top fifteen.
By PFF grade, he has ranked between 3rd (2021) and 23rd (2022), averaging a rank of 15.7 since 2020.
The preseason poll of executives conducted by The Athletic reveals that NFL executives have always valued Murray — he’s consistently ranked between 12th (2021) and 17th (2024), with an average rank of 14th since 2020.
Because Murray was benched for Jacoby Brissett and missed time due to injury in 2025, it’s been easy to dismiss him as an overrated player, a process that has occurred so often in media circles that he has looped around to an underrated position.
When discussing Murray, it’s been easy for me to say he’s comfortably a top 20 quarterback who has the ability to challenge for top 12 position, but that argument has received significant pushback. Evaluating it in more detail, it doesn’t seem that far-fetched.
Of the 50 executives and coaches that Athletic author Mike Sando polled, 17 placed Murray in the second tier, a tier containing Jayden Daniels, Justin Herbert, Jared Goff, C.J. Stroud, Jalen Hurts, Baker Mayfield, Dak Prescott, Jordan Love and Brock Purdy. Ahead of the 2025 season, ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler tasked NFL personnel with completing a similar ballot, asking executives and coaches to rank their top ten at various positions. Murray received votes as a top ten player.
Given that 16 quarterbacks make at least $30 million per year heading into 2026, it’s easy to argue Murray is in that range; he is comfortably a “good” quarterback being paid backup money.
Does He Fit the Offense?
At some level, the question of whether Murray fits with what the Vikings want to do is not that relevant to whether it was a good signing. They’ve almost certainly cheaply improved their offensive production without long-term commitment.
But we’ve seen the range of Murray outcomes; are the Vikings improving by default and getting a bottom-third quarterback who can — at best — steer the ship while the defense takes over, or are they getting a quarterback who can knock on the door of top-ten consideration?
