Kyle Rudolph knows that the Minnesota Vikings have a good history of productive quarterback play.
The former two-time Pro Bowl tight end spent his best years with the Vikings, spending nine seasons with Minnesota (2011-2020). Rudolph’s tenure saw him set the franchise record for receptions in a season for a tight end (83) while also winning Pro Bowl MVP during the 2012 season.
The end of Rudolph’s tenure saw him play with Kirk Cousins, who would emerge as a four-time Pro Bowl quarterback. While Rudolph didn’t play with Sam Darnold in Minnesota, he witnessed Darnold revive his career with a Pro Bowl year while leading the Vikings to a 14-3 record during the 2024 season.
This past season wasn’t so rosy for the Vikings as J.J. McCarthy struggled through his first season as the starting quarterback. McCarthy missed his entire rookie campaign due to injury and took over the starting reins during the 2025 season.
McCarthy threw just 11 touchdowns against 12 interceptions with a 72.6 passer rating, ranking towards the bottom of the league in both passer rating and completion percentage (57.6%). The Vikings missed the playoffs this past season as their young quarterback struggled throughout the season.
The young quarterback’s struggles last season led to the Vikings signing Kyler Murray. Murray is the former franchise quarterback of the Arizona Cardinals who made an immediate impact early on in his career, winning Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2019 before clinching back-to-back Pro Bowl bids during the 2020 and 2021 seasons.
However, Murray’s tenure with the Cardinals ended on a sour note after leading them to the playoffs during the 2021 season. Arizona not only missed the playoffs during his final four seasons in Arizona, he missed 35 games during that time frame.
Murray is obviously being brought in as a potential short-term replacement for McCarthy if the Vikings starter can’t show more consistency. Rudolph left open the idea that Murray could emerge as the season-opening starter if they believe they have a Super Bowl-caliber roster.
“I think it kind of depends on what are they looking to do,” said Rudolph in a one-on-one interview. “Ultimately doing the Sam Darnold coming to Minnesota to maybe revive a stalled career, because you still believe that if someone comes and beats out J.J., there is still an opportunity for J.J. to be your franchise quarterback.
“I think you can look around at a number of guys that are being released, or have been released to Kyler Murray, guys like that that are high draft picks much like Sam Darnold,” Rudolph continued to say. “Didn’t live up to the expectations of a top five draft pick, could revive their career with Kevin O’Connell, much like Sam did. If you’re saying maybe J.J. is not our guy and we want to go all in, we have a roster to win right now. So certainly it’ll be interesting.”
When the topic of the offense being dumbed down to accommodate a young quarterback McCarthy is brought up, Rudolph said it was expected considering O’Connell runs one of the better offenses in the league and is used to having veteran quarterbacks such as Cousins, Darnold and Joshua Dobbs.
That’s where Murray – who is an experienced quarterback at 87 starts – could have the advantage over McCarthy, who was limited t0 just 10 games after missing his entire rookie season due to injury.
“I think that is one of the more challenging things about being the quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings,” said Rudolph. “So much of it was made when Kirk was there, and you bring in veteran quarterbacks like a Josh Dobbs, a Sam Darnold. Ultimately these guys who can handle the volume that Kevin likes to go into a game plan with, and then when you turn around and play with a QB who’s got zero games started in the NFL. You can’t expect to dump the same amount of volume on a young quarterback like that.”
Rudolph gave some credit to McCarthy, saying he did not struggle with progressions — he struggled with his accuracy, something that you don’t often see with young quarterbacks.
The former tight end predicted before the Vikings signed Murray to a one-year deal that they would acquire a veteran quarterback to compete with McCarthy.
“I’ve said it this whole offseason, I think the Vikings go with a veteran, he either makes J.J. better and that’s great for the organization, or he beats him out and you have a better quarterback with a very talented roster,” said Rudolph. “That’s better for the organization as well. However many hours into free agency, the most impressive thing the Vikings did is pretty much go from $45 million over the cap to I believe the last report I saw was about $30 million of cap space. That’s almost a $70 million cap swing, which is 100% Rob Brzezinski and the genius that he is as the interim general manager that they named to run things through free agency in the draft this year.”
