The Vikings will prepare to kick off their training camp soon, but right now, all the buzz is around who’s going to be their QB1 for 2026. FanDuel has already made Murray the favorite to start in Week 1. However, a former NFL legendary wide receiver sounds off on Murray’s one tactic that sets him apart from J.J. McCarthy.

“Kyler Murray does a really good job of getting the football out of his hands.” Steve Smith Sr. said on the 89 show. “He’s very accurate. Nine and less. His numbers, when throwing the football nine yards or less, are off the charts. He prefers, I call it this, but he’s not doing it; he’s getting the football out of his hands, but I call it check-down Charlie.

“That’s what I do. If you go back and look at the things that he does, and I’m not talking about throwing over the middle. Man, don’t give me a little check-down. Over the middle is 10 plus, 10 to 19 yards, and the 19 is the cap because after that, that’s considered an explosive play, right?

“Just like on the sack for defense, they call that a havoc, right? You cause havoc. When you don’t have an explosive play that teams worry and concern themselves about, you create a little bit of claustrophobia for yourself.”

For example, take Kyler Murray’s performance against the 49ers last year. Murray averaged only 4.5 yards on his 36 dropbacks. He completed 22 of 35 passes for 159 yards and one touchdown, which shows that most of those completions were short, so the offense did not gain many yards through the air.

However, in some games this kind of approach works, too. In that game against the 49ers, the Cardinals used a safe game plan. Instead of asking Kyler Murray to throw the ball far down the field, they had him make short, quick passes to avoid San Francisco’s strong pass rush.

Because of that, Murray’s passes traveled only a short distance. Most of his throws were short and safe.

Kevin O’Connell’s offense usually works best with tall quarterbacks who are comfortable standing in the pocket and throwing the ball 10 to 20 yards down the middle of the field. Quarterbacks like Kirk Cousins, Matthew Stafford, Jared Goff, and Sam Darnold. Whereas Murray is 5’10 and over the past five seasons, the quarterback has ranked just 36 out of 40 high-volume quarterbacks in throwing passes 10 to 20 yards between the numbers. That shows he rarely attacks.

But then comes in J.J. McCarthy, who is 6’3 and is good at making long throws. His average depth of target last year was 9.5 yards. So, the difference is pretty clear. Now, it all depends on the Vikings: if they are ready to take this risk and move ahead with Murray or McCarthy.