The Minnesota Vikings open training camp in less than two weeks with the league’s most-watched quarterback competition still officially unsettled, and ESPN’s Bill Barnwell used a July 17 video segment to point at the part of it that has nothing to do with who plays better in July.
Kevin O’Connell’s offense operates from under center. Barnwell put the figure at 47 percent of snaps during O’Connell’s tenure — a heavy rate in a league that has drifted toward the shotgun. Kyler Murray, across seven seasons in Arizona, took roughly 5 percent of his snaps under center.
“That’s by design because Kyler isn’t the biggest guy,” Barnwell said. “He’s operated out of the shotgun and the pistol dating back to his time in college. He can see the field more easily, and it’s easier to get him involved in the quarterback run game. That’s what’s worked for him.”
The gap matters because O’Connell’s play-action game is built on it. Under-center run action forces the quarterback to turn his back to the defense, ride the mesh, and reconstruct the coverage picture on the way out of the fake. It is a learned skill, and it is not one Murray has been asked to perform at volume since college. Barnwell’s read is that Minnesota will have to bend rather than ask Murray to snap into an offense he has never run.
“They’re going to have to find a balance, whether that means using more pistol or moving Kyler Murray out of the pocket more often,” Barnwell said. “They’re going to have to find a way to make this work because I don’t think Kyler Murray can just drop into the same offense they’ve run in years past and succeed.”
That creates a scheduling problem on top of a schematic one. O’Connell has insisted the competition with J.J. McCarthy is real, and a real competition means splitting first-team reps. Barnwell’s point is that every rep McCarthy takes with the ones is a rep Murray does not get under center in a system he needs the most exposure to.
“You want it to look like a competition, but Kyler Murray doesn’t have that background under center,” Barnwell said. “It’s going to be a daily check-in for Kevin O’Connell.”
Murray’s Arizona record is a starter’s record: 20,460 passing yards, 121 touchdowns, 60 interceptions and a 92.2 passer rating in 87 games. None of it was compiled the way Minnesota’s offense has been built.
Vikings rookies report July 26, veterans July 28, and the first camp practice is scheduled for Aug. 1. The rep count in those early practices will say more about where this is headed than anything O’Connell says at a podium.
