The Kyler Murray Project, Part II: The Great Unknown
“It’s now or never. Hopefully he senses the moment.” How will Kyler Murray perform as the new QB1 in Minnesota? Go Long speaks to those who know both the QB and the QB's game best.
Read Part I here.
Our 2026 NFL Season Preview Features continue with a comprehensive, two-part series on Kyler Murray and the Minnesota Vikings.
Part II is below for paid subscribers.
EAGAN, Minn. — There’s an NFL nobody sees. This NFL is scrubbed from those generously sanitized episodes of Hard Knocks and ignored entirely from cheery docuseries produced by the teams themselves. Millions are fed a manicured script, ripe with poll-tested press conferences and mic’d up segments because, frankly, there’s a growing legion of fans who demand the Disneyification of their favorite team. If reporting suggests there is not a Santa Claus, mobs assemble. Feelings trump truth.
Reality — protected behind virtual barbed-wired fences, moats and cannons — is far more cruel, cutthroat.
This is what Kyler Murray wants.
This is what Kyler Murray needs.
Each quarterback dynamic is different. In Buffalo, Josh Allen and Sean McDermott were never as close as snow angels on ESPN suggested. The two have polar opposite personalities. Change was desperately needed. In Chicago, Ben Johnson made it clear on Day 1 that Caleb Williams needed to align with his vision and his offense fresh off a nightmare rookie season. After our series published, one source close to the coach told us Johnson was fully aware of all issues before accepting the job. So far, so good. In New England, Mike Vrabel, Josh McDaniels and Drake Maye wasted no time.
Here in Minnesota? The worst mistake any coach can make is to be gentle, to tiptoe around the new QB1’s surly exterior in a kindergarten teacher’s tone. Coddle him, past coaches say, and he’ll get bored. He knows when someone isn’t operating on his Mamba frequency. Autry Denson, the ex-Arizona Cardinals assistant who grew close to the QB, repeats that Murray must be challenged.
“And I think he didn’t get challenged enough because when you challenge a competitor, they only have one response: to compete,” Denson says. “Hold a really good player to the standard that he should have been held to anyway because all he’s going to do is respond.”
The last quarterback any team should want is a mute who mopes at the sound of one coach’s piercing vulgarity. That’s never been Murray. He craves hard coaching, thus craves all pressure coming his way this season. Murray relishes the sort of debate that’d never make its way to public consumption.
When he barks, you must bark.
When he bites, you must bite.
“You ever see a dog just take it and lay over it? No!” Denson says. “Show me a great player that doesn’t have an edge and he is not a great player. People haven’t necessarily been on the same level as him. He’s not told what he needs to hear all the time because people are fanboy’ing him. They don’t understand the edge God blessed him with.”
When I ask a different member of that Cardinals coaching staff how this 2026 season will go for Murray, he echoes the anonymous Viking player who sees no middle ground. This experiment could lead to a championship podium or unravel. He begins with sharp criticism. This coach declares, point blank, that Murray’s personality is not conducive to winning. Calls him passive-aggressive. Prickly. But then something strange happens in our conversation.
This coach says he had a good relationship with the quarterback and offers the secret to unlocking Kyler Murray in full.
If the Minnesota Vikings do exactly this, he explains, they can win in 2026. And win big.