We’re doing that thing again. Dreaming our little preseason dreams about what might happen when a one-time explosive quarterback force gone astray teams up with a noted quarterback whisperer (which usually means coach that happened to work with a lot of really good quarterbacks), hungry for his next project. The result is a Texas-sized Gulf of America fireworks show of hype, which almost always misses the point, and, worse, sometimes winds up disappointing on the scale of True Detective, Season 2. Not all dream pairings are worth multiple games, or episodes.
The Vikings signed Kyler Murray not because he has a late-stage Warren Moon–like stretch of Pro Bowls on the horizon, but because Minnesota has been grasping for the most coveted element in NFL football right now: dependable quarterback play without the disastrous side effects. Murray does not need to—and likely will not—end up being the skillsmaxxed version of the electrifying Air Raid prospect we saw at Oklahoma who won the Heisman Trophy in 2018. He will more than likely be a forced-functional cog in a drastically remade offense that seeks to place the quarterback in more advantageous situations while leading with a run-first mentality that complements the true strength of the team: its defense.
