Vikings’ Kyler Murray Gets Strong Words Ahead of Packers Game

The Minnesota Vikings’ preseason is over after their 34-6 loss to the Denver Broncos on Aug. 28 at Empower Field at Mile High. Now that the roster is cut to 53 men, the focus will shift to the Week 1 contest against the Green Bay Packers.

Moreover, that will be the opportunity for Kyler Murray to prove that the Vikings made the right decision to make him QB1. Murray beat out J.J. McCarthy during training camp, with the decision coming right before the preseason.

After that, Murray has had first-team reps in practice, and now it’s go time against the Packers. While Week 1 is still a few days away, Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell shared his thoughts on his starter.

“When you really study him and watch him over the years in Arizona, there was just a lot of times where he was asked to do a lot to move the football, whether it was plays off schedule, extending plays, we really have talked a lot about just the simplicity of throwing completions because he’s really accurate and he should be,” O’Connell mic’d up during the third quarter of the Broncos-Vikings game.

“He’s career-wise a very high-completion type of thrower. We just feel really good about him peppering completions, putting the ball in play, and then allowing the game to come to him a little bit. Pairing that with the way we hope to run the football when we get our ones out there.”

Moreover, O’Connell shared that he’s excited about the offense’s outlook with Murray taking the reins under center for the Vikings this season.

“I’m pretty excited about it,” O’Connell added. “But Kyler’s really smart. He’s really taken to the mindset of rhythm, timing and allowing the playmakers around him to put the ball in their hands, and let’s move the ball.”

During his seven seasons in Arizona, Murray posted a 92.2 QB rating with 20,460 yards, 121 touchdowns, and 60 interceptions over 87 games, per StatMuse. As a result, O’Connell will be looking to get the good aspects of Murray’s game out consistently this season.

Now that Murray is a starter once again after winning a QB battle, former Vikings wideout Adam Thielen shared his thoughts on the team’s new signal-caller and even revealed what he was told behind the scenes during the competition with McCarthy.

“I think from him individually, I’ve just seen and heard a lot of confidence since they named him the starter,“ Thielen said during an Aug. 28 appearance on “Good Morning Football.“ “It was kind of this battle, and I don’t think really anyone was sticking out as the guy before that. And then they named him the starter.

“You just see this confidence, leadership, and kind of swagger as he continued to just, I think Paul Allen mentioned it on the radio and told me that he went, I don’t know what it was, like 16 or 18 in the next seven-on-seven and team periods the next day after he was named the starter.”

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