2026 Skill Position Prospects

 

KC Concepcion, WR, Texas A&M

It feels like every draft class has one first round receiver who is the “small but fast” guy. Most of the time I find myself a bit lower than consensus on this guy, which is why I'm a bit surprised to be higher on Concepcion than everyone else seems to be. He is my favorite receiver in the class, while most other people have him somewhere between number four and number six.

I do understand some of the concerns with Concepcion. Like all of these smaller guys he can struggle some with physical coverage. He needs to be more consistent about winning against press off the line, because if a defender gets hands on him the play is basically over. But he plays bigger than he is at the catch point, with the ability to go outside his frame to snag the ball and enough strength and coordination to win through contact. He had some issues with drops this year, but I’m pretty forgiving of that as an evaluator. It’s something that can be cleaned up with more experience, and he creates enough positive plays to make up for the negatives.

These flaws are probably enough to knock him outside of the top ten for me, but not much below that. He does too many things well for me to not believe he’ll become a very good receiver down the road. His speed is obviously the first weapon he has, the ability to separate over the top or on crossing routes that makes him almost impossible to match up with in man coverage. He’s inconsistent as a route runner, but his best plays show an ability to set up defenders and then explode into open space, and he does this frequently enough for me to believe he can become an elite route runner in time. He needs to get better at understanding when and where to attack zone coverages, but again that’s something that can be developed.

Concepcion needs some polish, and there is risk of failure here. But if he puts everything together he can be a top ten receiver in the league, and until then he’s the sort of player who will always have value in most offenses. He’s the best deep threat in the class, and also the best with the ball in his hands, with good instincts for attacking space and enough strength to avoid being brought down by arm tackles. Smart coaches will find ways to use him while he rounds out his game and grows into what he has the potential to be.

 

Makai Lemon, WR, USC

You can take most of what I said about Concepcion and apply it to Lemon as well. He’s another undersized receiver who plays bigger than he is but still mostly wins through speed and quickness, with the ability to accelerate out of the breaks in his routes and the creativity to create yardage once he has the ball in his hands. The differences between the two are small, and I wouldn’t quibble with teams that would prefer the slightly safer bet of Lemon, even if I think falls just short of the upside to be among the top tier of NFL receivers.

Lemon is a quick, explosive player, but I would categorize his explosiveness as “very good” compared to Concepcion’s “elite”. He accelerates well when he changes direction, but it occasionally takes him an extra step to get back to full speed. And he doesn’t have Concepcion's second gear to really separate over the top, which will require a bit more precision from his quarterback when attacking down the field. He plays the ball well in the air though, and he can create some catches on inaccurate balls that receivers with his stature occasionally struggle with.

Lemon is fairly polished as a player, and he should be able to contribute immediately in the NFL. He runs good routes, though could also be better at avoiding coverage that disrupts them down the field. He’s very smart at attacking zones and creative about improvising to create separation when a play breaks down. He’s a solid blocker too and might be most effective playing the majority of his time in the slot while he rounds out the other parts of his game to grow into a true number one option.

 

Jordyn Tyson, WR, Arizona State

Tyson is the best route-runner in his class, and one of the best route-runners I can remember studying. He consistently creates separation simply with his technique. He is sharp off the line to beat press coverage, manipulating defenders with jab steps in order to open quick opportunities on slants and whip routes. On longer-developing plays he knows how to use false steps to take advantage of a cornerback’s leverage, and he explodes out of all of his cuts, with fluid hips that allow him to go from running full speed vertically to full speed laterally with as few steps as possible. He is lethal on deep outs and digs, the sort of receiver who is almost always open.

On my first couple watches of Tyson this ability to generate separation had me thinking of him as a potential top ten pick. But the more I watched him, the more I found myself disappointed by the lack of anything else in his game. He has good size at 6-2, but he doesn’t play particularly big, at times struggling to go outside his frame to make catches or win the ball through contact. He doesn’t have the speed to scare defenses over the top, and he doesn’t do a lot after the catch.

Tyson is a bit of a one-trick pony, but it’s a hell of a trick to have. There are plenty of very good receivers in the league who aren’t the most overwhelming physical specimens, and I think Tyson will ultimately settle in as a solid number one or very good number two receiver, who could be particularly dangerous if placed with a top-notch quarterback. He has some injury concerns that may knock him down further, but I’d be perfectly happy selecting him in the middle of the first round.

 

Jeremiyah Love, RB, Notre Dame

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years discussing how I value running backs in the draft, so I’ll try to be brief here. I think it would require an extraordinarily rare running back for me to justify taking one in the top ten. Not because it isn’t a valuable position, but because the value mostly comes when there is a strong supporting cast to put the back in position to succeed, and teams drafting in the top ten rarely have that infrastructure. Last year was about as close as I’ve come with Ashton Jeanty, and even then I ended up slotting him just outside the top ten.

Love isn’t on the same level as Jeanty, but he’s on the next tier down. He is just a very good, very well-rounded running back, with no real holes in his game and enough top-end speed to keep the defense sweating when he has the ball in his hands. He isn’t the same sort of bowling ball who never goes down that Jeanty was, but he’s strong enough to break occasional tackles, and almost always finds a way to fall forward for extra yards. He gets to top speed in a hurry and can outrace defenders to the edge, but he’s at his best working between the tackles where he can attack moving downhill. He’ll occasionally make a poor choice of hole or get caught trying to bounce outside on a play that isn’t there, but you can mostly count on him getting what’s available and a bit more on top of that.

If there’s one thing that might push Love into the top tier of running backs, it’s his skill as a receiver. He’s dangerous coming out of the backfield and versatile enough to split out wide and run occasional routes down the field. He has very good hands and can make difficult catches, and he transitions smoothly from receiver to runner to take advantage of his skills in open space. He doesn’t have a lot of experience in pass protection, and when he was asked to do it I would mostly describe him as “good enough”. He probably can’t be relied on too much right away in the NFL, but I think he can grow into it.

In total, the package of Love is someone absolutely worth a first round pick, but maybe not until the second half of the round. In the right situation he has the potential to grow into the best running back in the league, but he isn’t the sort of talent that can transcend his supporting cast.

 

Carnell Tate, WR, Ohio State

The top three receivers are all bunched pretty tightly together, and I wouldn’t quibble too much with any order you want to put them in. There’s a bit of a gap down to the next tier, a group of receivers who are better value in the latter half of the first round than the first half. Tate is my favorite of this tier, but again that’s mostly a matter of stylistic preference. He is probably the safest receiver selection in this class, though he lacks the upside of the others above him, and will likely be better suited in the NFL sticking with his collegiate role as an overqualified second option.

As a physical specimen Tate is nothing special. He has decent height at 6-2 but is skinny and only weighs 192 pounds, which means that he plays high and can be pushed around some by press coverage. He has decent quickness but not the sort that can punish defenders by making them miss at the line and then sprinting past them into space. He doesn’t explode out of his breaks in the way the players above him do, and while he’s a very good deep ball receiver thanks to his understanding of coverage and ball skills, he only ran a 4.52 in the forty, demonstrating his lack of real game-changing speed over the top.

There isn’t anything extraordinary about Tate’s game, but there are a lot of pretty good things. His greatest tool is probably his body control, which enables him to extend outside his frame to catch inaccurate passes and to make difficult toe-tapping grabs along the sidelines. He isn’t super crisp as a route-runner, but he is very crafty, understanding how to set up leverage against man coverage and where to settle in against zone. He’s a plug-in starter from day one and will probably have the best rookie season of anyone in this class. In the long run though, I think he’ll struggle against the best cornerbacks he is going to face in the NFL, which is why he’ll be better suited in an offense that doesn’t rely on him winning on a consistent basis.

 

Denzel Boston, WR, Washington

Boston is the big-body ball-winner of this year’s receiver class. He is 6-4 and 212 pounds and takes full advantage of that size, consistently winning contested catches and jump balls. He isn’t the most explosive leaper, but he plays the ball extremely well in the air and times his jump precisely, attacking the ball at its highest point and snagging it with strong hands that defenders usually can’t do anything against.

The rest of Boston’s game is a bit more troubling. Like many in this class Boston didn’t bother running a forty, and he’s the one that I feel most frustrated by the lack of data, because on the field he seems to skirt the line between “fast enough” and “too slow to play”. He can work up good speed once he hits his stride, but he doesn’t have the same acceleration as the players ranked above him, and it can cause some struggles to create separation. He’s mostly a solid route-runner, though at times his larger frame can require an extra step to slow down, but even when he does create separation with one of his routes, he often doesn’t have the burst to stay separated long enough for the ball to arrive.

This is a common problem with larger receivers. Some of them are able to make it work, either through crafty route-running or by working with quarterbacks who know how to time the windows they create. And I think that Boston probably will be one of these guys, which is why I’d still be comfortable grabbing him near the end of the first round. Because if he can create enough separation to stay on the field on a play-by-play basis, his ability to win balls in the air will be a real weapon two or three times a game, either creating big plays down the field or finishing things off in the endzone.

 

Omar Cooper, WR, Indiana

Cooper is another receiver who is held back somewhat by his lack of size. He is usually quick enough off the ball to beat direct press coverage, but later in the route he can be easily disrupted by even a little bit of contact, slowing him down and stopping him from engineering any separation. He is good at going outside his frame to make difficult catches but can struggle some to win the ball through contact.

He is a similar player to Concepcion and Lemon, just minus a bit of explosiveness and polish as a route runner. His 4.42 time in the forty is good but not spectacular for someone of his size, the sort of speed that the defense will have to be aware of but won’t need to fundamentally shift anything to account for. As a route runner he shows flashes of fluid hips and explosive acceleration that could make him dangerous creating separation underneath. He just doesn’t do it consistently enough for me to consider this a strength of his game, rather than something he will have to continue working on to grow into an NFL starter.

Cooper is another one who I think will top out as a good secondary receiving option. He just doesn’t have the traits needed to excel at the position, or the polish to make me think he’ll take the massive leap necessary to becoming a receiver who can consistently win through technique and craftiness. But he does enough good things—making tough catches, winning in the red zone, creating with the ball in his hands—that I would still feel happy to grab him at the tail end of the first round.

 

Kenyon Sadiq, TE, Oregon

There is no questioning that Sadiq is a rare athlete. At 6-3 and 241 pounds he ran a 4.39 forty and had a 43.5 inch vertical, speed and leaping ability that would be insane even if he was forty pounds lighter. He’s a bit on the small size for a tight end, but there are plenty of players with his size and only a hint of his athletic gifts who have made it work in the NFL. On paper, it’s hard not to love the potential Sadiq offers.

On tape it gets a little more complicated. He’s clearly a good athlete on the field, but he doesn’t look like the sort of world-wrecking force he tested as. More like a typical tight end, a little stiff and plodding who doesn’t do much to engineer separation on his routes. He is shifty enough to avoid being caught by press coverage, and he has a nifty sort of flexibility that lets him wiggle past defenders trying to disrupt his route and run down the seam. But on anything that asks him to change direction he struggles, and most of the time any decent defensive back is able to sit in his hip pocket and run with him.

Sadiq’s size and leaping abilities mean that he can go up and get inaccurate passes, though I didn’t see him have any opportunities to actually play through contact. He’s better off when the scheme can engineer space for him. His athletic gifts most clearly show themselves when he has the ball in his hands, as he is able to outrun pursuing linebackers and power through defensive backs. He can be a weapon for an offense, but the coaches will probably have to work to design opportunities for him.

He’s a similarly interesting case as a blocker. His lack of size can cause real problems when asked to block defensive linemen, most of whom have no trouble tossing him out of the way. He looked better playing out in space where he can make plays on linebackers and defensive backs, engaging with the proper leverage and swinging his hips around to seal a play off. Again, you probably have to specialize his role to play to his strengths and avoid his weaknesses. But he is enough of a weapon in the running game to at least be able to get onto the field, and I would feel fine grabbing him in the second round in the hope that with experience his athletic gifts can grow to a more complete player.

2026 Defensive Back Prospects

Caleb Downs, S, Ohio State

Downs is the first prospect I’m breaking down this year, and he is also the easiest. He is, simply put, everything you could want from a safety, the sort of player who can fit into any scheme and do anything a defense could ask him to do. He has the range to play as a deep safety, the quickness to match up in man coverage in the slot, and the physicality to make plays in the box. He can cover, he can blitz, and he basically never misses a tackle. He’s a day one starter with the potential to be the best in the league at his position.

Downs isn’t the most explosive athlete, but he has plenty of speed when he needs it, and he combines this with rare fluidity. He is always under control and always in balance, able to react to what he sees in front of him at all times. And as good as he is as an athlete, what really sets him apart is his intelligence. He is always moving in the correct direction, typically a step or two ahead of anyone else, whether it’s anticipating a receiver’s break to jump a route or charging downhill to plug a gap in the running game. At times it seems like he knows what the offense is doing better than the offensive players themselves.

If there is a nit to pick with Downs, it’s his size. He measured at less than 6 feet tall and only 203 pounds, and this lack of size can sometimes cause issues on the field. He’s a sure tackler, but he always goes for the legs, meaning ball carriers can often fall forward for an extra yard or two. And while his intelligence means he can often react to the ball before a blocker can cut him off, when he does get caught in congestion he can get pushed around. It might make me a little reluctant to have him play in the box too often, but there are enough roles to fill on any defense that this doesn’t bother me too much.

The last thing to bring up about Downs is something I’ll be talking about a lot in this draft class, and that’s positional value. Typically safety isn’t considered that high-value a position. There are too many plays where the ball doesn’t come anywhere near a safety, and too many ways for an offense to play around them. With most safeties I would be reluctant to ever spend a top 10 pick on the position. But Downs isn’t most safeties. He’s a rare talent, and I might even be able to talk myself into selecting him in the top 5.

 

Jermod McCoy, CB, Tennessee

McCoy is a more complicated evaluation, though not because of anything he does on the field. His tape is comfortably the best of any cornerback in the class, and based on that alone I’d be willing to take him in the top 5. He is an elite coverage corner with special stop-start ability and explosive speed that allows him to take chances and then instantly erase almost any mistake he makes.

McCoy played primarily man coverage in college, typically on an island walked up in the receiver’s face with no help over the top. He has the strength to disrupt receivers with a jam and the quickness to turn and run with them if this isn’t enough. He uses the sideline to his advantage to eliminate throwing windows, and his ability to change direction on a dime makes him next to impossible to beat on comeback routes. He’s another player with extraordinary balance, and this allows him to keep up with just about anything a receiver throws at him. And when the ball does come his way, he has very good ball skills, able to go up to get an interception or play around a receiver to swat it away without getting a penalty.

There are things for him to clean up in his game. He can be a little too physical at times, which even if he doesn’t directly commit a penalty can make him vulnerable to some bad officiating luck. He doesn’t have a lot of experience in zone coverage, and at times it shows, as he can get caught on one receiver too long and let someone run into the space he’s supposed to be covering. And he needs to get better about recognizing when he can and cannot get away with gambling. In college he could erase his mistakes against all but a handful of receivers. But elite receivers were able to take advantage of him at times, and that level of competition will be more common in the NFL.

These are all things that are fairly common with young cornerbacks, and I expect he’ll clean them up with time and experience. And if he does so, he has the potential to be an All Pro. The issue that makes him a challenging evaluation is health. He tore his ACL last January and missed his entire final year in college. He skipped athletic testing at the Combine 13 months removed from an injury that normally takes 9 months, but then he ran a 4.38 forty at his Pro Day, which should put a lot of minds at ease. NFL teams have access to full medical testing of these players, and I’m just some dude in New Jersey sitting at a computer, so this is a place where I’m not really qualified to weigh in. But it’s a reason for concern, the only one I can find for an otherwise stellar prospect.

 

Mansoor Delane, CB, LSU

Delane is another cornerback with an elite combination of quickness and top-end speed that makes him a challenge to beat both over the top and underneath. He ran a 4.38 forty at his Pro Day, and that speed shows up on the field, as he regularly erases anyone who tries to run past him deep. He can be a little passive at times allowing space underneath, but when he tries to clamp down he has the ability to make hard breaks downhill without sacrificing the flexibility to flip his hips and open things up over the top.

Delane has experience in both man and zone coverage, and he’s capable in both, though he still has some occasional lapses in the latter to iron out. He’s less versatile when asked to play with physicality. He doesn’t get much disruption when he tries to jam opposing receivers, and he often settles for just grabbing hold. His issues with physicality occasionally show up at the catch point, where he has the balance and skill to make plays on the ball but can still sometimes be bullied away from the catch point.

I think Delane is a bit farther from a complete player than McCoy, but he has most of the tools needed to be a top-tier cornerback in the right scheme. He has all the speed and quickness in the world, and he just needs to get better at harnessing the latter and playing under control to keep sharp-breaking routes from opening separation. He’s good enough right now to be worthy of a selection in the top half of the first round, and he has enough upside that I’d be willing to gamble in the top 10. 

 

Dillon Thieneman, S, Oregon

Thieneman is explosive. It shows up on tape, where he covers ground in a hurry flying back and forth across the field. It shows up in testing, where he ran a 4.35 forty and had a 41 inch vertical leap, insane numbers for any player at any position but particularly for a safety. He is one of the best athletes in the class, and he is well-rounded enough as a player that I wouldn’t categorize him as a pure project.

Thieneman isn’t on Downs’s level mentally, but he’s pretty advanced for a college player. You can generally count on him making the right decision and being in the right position, especially when he has the chance to sit back and read the field from the back end of the defense. He’s at his best in a deep zone, where he can anticipate routes and use his speed to close off a massive chunk of the field. When matched up in man coverage his speed allows him to turn and run with receivers on vertical routes, but he struggles some with change of direction, so I would be reluctant to ask him to do too much covering players in the slot. He’s good at filling lanes downhill in the running game but can get a bit caught up in traffic if asked to scrape laterally through the box.

There is one major problem with Thieneman’s game, and it’s a big enough problem that I would be reluctant to take him until the tail end of the first round. Simply put, he’s a terrible tackler. And it isn’t just one thing that holds him back here. The lack of lateral quickness I mentioned above means he can be broken down in open space. His small stature means he can get blasted backwards on contact. And he consistently takes awful angles, letting ball carriers beat him to the edge and on at least one occasion I saw race past him for a touchdown.

There are some things Thieneman can do to get better here, and he showed enough progress between his last two years of college that I think there’s a chance he can figure it out, in which case his tools could make him one of the best safeties in the league if placed in the correct scheme. But if he can’t figure it out, he’s borderline unplayable. Safety is the number one position where you need to be able to count on someone making a tackle, a position where one tackle can be a difference between an eight yard gain and a seventy yard touchdown.

 

Colton Hood, CB, Tennessee

Hood is a very good athlete who knows how to make use of his 4.44 speed on the field. He can turn and run with any receiver, and he has no trouble sticking in man coverage on crossing routes across the field. He isn’t quite as fluid an athlete as the top cornerbacks in this class, and it can sometimes take him an extra step to change direction, but his closing speed is often enough to erase the small windows this opens up.

There are the makings of a very good cornerback here, but he has a lot to clean up on the next level. He played very little zone coverage at Tennessee and appeared lost when he was asked to do so, either late to rotate in coverage or often just drifting in the middle of two receivers covering neither of them. He has the physicality to be very good in press coverage, but he doesn’t utilize these skills in the right way. Sometimes he gets too physical and draws a penalty, others he doesn’t use his physicality at all and lets the receiver get down the field too freely.

Hood is a work in progress, and I think even if he develops he will ultimately top out as a pretty good, not great cornerback. He is an explosive athlete but has just average size and average quickness, and his technique is far enough from a finished product that I’d be reluctant to take a chance on his development until the end of the first round.

Emmanuel McNeil-Warren

McNeil-Warren is more of the project of this safety class. He is a long, lanky athlete (he weighs about the same as Downs and Thieneman despite being 3 inches taller than them) who flies all over the field, arriving with violence and making splash plays at every level. He is a strong tackler who can stop ball carriers dead in their tracks or cut their legs out from under them, and his best plays are up there with the best plays of the two safeties I have ranked above him.

In the mental part of the game he’s a bit farther from being ready to be on an NFL field. He generally makes the right reads in coverage, but in the running game he too often winds up out of position. He has a tendency to bite hard on fakes, and at times this can pull him too far out of position to be able to make a play on where the ball actually goes.

McNeil-Warren is a good athlete, but not a great one. His 4.52 time in the forty is perfectly fine for a safety, and he plays faster than that on the field, but he definitely isn’t elite in that aspect like Thieneman. He struggles some in man coverage too, which limits him schematically. With time I think he will probably develop into an above average starter, and I might be willing to justify grabbing him at the end of the first round, but would be more comfortable waiting until the second.

 

Avieon Terrell, CB, Clemson

Terrell isn’t the most physically impressive cornerback you’ll see. He’s only 5-10 and 186 pounds, and he doesn’t explode on the field, but he makes up for it with impressive quickness and intelligence. He changes direction with ease, and he has a tendency to anticipate the route the opposing receiver is running, breaking before he does to beat him to the spot where the ball is supposed to be. At that point he can have some issues, often being boxed out or outmuscled by bigger and stronger receivers, but just as often the quarterback refuses to throw the ball to a receiver who appears blanketed.

Terrell’s strengths profile as someone who would be great as a slot cornerback, but I have some concerns there too. Playing in the slot places a heavier burden on a cornerback in run support, a part of the game where Terrell is very boom or bust. His effort is inconsistent—alternating aggressive attacks with plays where he looks almost afraid of contact—and his lack of play-strength is an issue here as well, as he can be bowled over by ball carriers as if he isn’t there. He makes up for this somewhat with a knack for being able to knock the ball free, forcing five fumbles in his last year in college. Though at times this seems to make him even worse as a tackler, as he’ll jump out of the path of a ball carrier to try to get a better angle to punch the ball free.

There is a way to make it work as a player with these limitations, and Terrell seems pretty far along towards figuring it out. Finding the right fit for him will be tricky, but once that happens I think he’ll settle in as a solid, if unspectacular starter for a while. I don’t think there’s a lot of downside here, but not a lot of upside either. He’s the sort of player I’d be happy to get in the second round, but a little disappointed if he was the best I could find with my first pick.

 

Brandon Cisse, CB, South Carolina

Cisse is the project of this year’s cornerback class. He has decent size to go along with tremendous explosiveness, a 41 inch vertical leap combined with a 4.40 forty that both show up on the field. He flies all over the place and makes some really good plays on the ball in the air, and at times shows flashes of physicality that could turn him into a lockdown cornerback someday.

Unfortunately, that day is a long way away. His technique in coverage is somewhat baffling, which I think is mostly due to some strange coaching, but also means he will need to make a major adjustment to play in the NFL. He tends to just sit back and watch as guys make breaks away from his leverage, then hoping he has the speed to erase the easy separation he’s given them. He rarely engages with physicality, and he often doesn’t even try to match or anticipate a receiver’s breaks.

If he can figure this out, the sky is the limit for him. But the infrequent occasions he tried this in college were enough to raise concerns. He seems somewhat linear as an athlete, struggling to change direction when he needs to. There were times where he made sharp breaks in a way suggested this might be an issue of technique more than physical tools. But at this point it’s mostly an unknown whether or not he can ever figure this out. And if he doesn’t, he’s the sort of player who could struggle to make it onto the field.

The Kyler Murray Era

 

Kyler Murray is a Minnesota Viking, and I have a lot of thoughts.

Let’s start with Murray himself. I’m going to get a bit negative as this goes along, so let me be clear from the beginning that I do believe the Vikings just got the best quarterback available on the market this offseason. Murray is a phenomenal athlete with a strong arm who has been a bit erratic but typically is somewhere between the 10^th and 20^th best quarterback in the league. This is the sort of profile that has been earning quarterbacks contracts worth $30+ million a year, and the Vikings got him for the veteran minimum, making him instantly one of the five best bargains at the position in the league.

Murray does a lot of things well, but he also has clear limitations. His short stature means that he has trouble seeing the middle of the field, and the rash of injuries he’s suffered over his career have made him skittish in the pocket. He’ll bail early at any sign of pressure, and he has a tendency to fade away on throws, leading to inaccuracy issues on deeper targets. Despite his arm strength, he’s consistently performed as a bottom 5 quarterback on targets in the intermediate range of the field.

There is a way to build an offense around a quarterback like this, and Murray does enough other things well that he can make it work. An ideal offense for him would look a lot like the one he ran with Kliff Kingsbury the first four years of his career. Spread the field out, let him operate in shotgun making quick pre-snap reads and getting the ball out in a hurry. He is smart and accurate when making these underneath throws, and he’s creative enough with his athleticism to make plays if these initial reads aren’t there.

If a team wanted to build an offense this way, they could do a lot worse than Murray. The questions I have are less about him on his own, and more about how he’ll pair with Kevin O’Connell.

Since the Vikings hired O’Connell, their offenses have had a few key trademarks. They operate under center more than almost any other team in the league, leaning on an attack that blends condensed formations and play action to engineer separation down the field. They are heavy on seven-step drops and long developing routes, with the aim of generating explosive plays down the sidelines and over the middle of the field.

You know, all the stuff I said Murray doesn’t do well.

If you were designing an offense to be the worst possible fit for Murray, it would look an awful lot like O’Connell’s. And if you were designing a quarterback to be the worst possible fit in O’Connell’s offense, it would look a lot like Murray.

Something has to give, and the general assumption seems to be that O’Connell will adapt his offense to fit Murray’s skills. I have some skepticism—O’Connell has shown an unwillingness to adapt in the past, such as this past year when he continued to call deep shots with an offensive line that was missing multiple starters for most of the season—but even if the Vikings do overhaul their offensive scheme this offseason, there will be other downsides.

Changing the scheme to play to the strengths of the quarterback makes a lot of sense, except if by doing so you’re minimizing the strengths of your other players. In Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison the Vikings have two of the best receivers in the league at creating separation on deep routes, but also two players who can sometimes struggle with press coverage. In the past defenses had to be wary about how they took advantage of this. Pressing these receivers can disrupt the timing of routes, but that’s not as big a deal on longer-developing concepts where they have time to get open anyway. And if they are able to win at the line, the result can be a massive play that makes this strategy too costly to risk.

That calculus changes in a Murray-style offense. Timing is much more critical on the slants and hitches he excels at, and he doesn’t have the consistency as a down the field thrower to punish defenders for failing at the line. Jefferson is a good enough player that he’ll be able to make things work, but he probably won’t be able to hit the same heights he could in a scheme more designed to suit his talents.

There are similar issues with the running game. The Vikings love to run a scheme that utilizes multiple tight ends and under center rushes, and players they’ve acquired like Jordan Mason and Josh Oliver will have less value in a scheme that spreads the field and operates out of shotgun. Murray’s value with his legs can make up for this, but you also have to be worried about how much they can actually utilize that, given his injury history.

I think ultimately the Vikings will settle into some middle-ground offensively, where they are better than the mess they were last year but not as dynamic as the talent on the field suggests they should be. I also think we’ll see a few games with JJ McCarthy at quarterback next year, either due to injury or because the issues on offense are severe enough that O’Connell decides to abort the Murray experiment. I don’t buy that there is a genuine preseason competition between the two, but I think Murray’s leash could be pretty short.

All that said, if the defense sustains its level of play it should be enough to bump the Vikings up to 10 or 11 wins and get them into the mix for playoff contention. And this is where I want to step back and address where my true pessimism about the Murray signing comes from, which is what it means about the Vikings’ big picture goals as a franchise.

Before O’Connell was hired, the Vikings went through a decade-long period that was best defined by a dogged fixation on the present with little consideration for the future. Their goal was to put the best team they could on the field every single year, a plan that pretty consistently produced between 7 and 11 wins.

This was most evident in their approach to the quarterback situation. After the Teddy Bridgewater pick failed, they addressed the position with a series of veteran bandaids that did just enough to keep them afloat. When Bridgewater went down they traded a first round pick for Sam Bradford. When Bradford got hurt, they rolled into Case Keenum. When they wanted to move on from Keenum, they signed Kirk Cousins. And when they couldn’t find anything better out on the street, they kept kicking the Cousins can forward for six years that resulted in two playoff appearances and one playoff win.

This approach was driven by head coach Mike Zimmer and GM Rick Spielman, but it also filtered down from ownership. The Wilfs are not interested in rebuilding. They want a competitive team every single year, even if “competitive” ends up being a fairly loose term.

When O’Connell was hired alongside former GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, they managed to convince the ownership to try a different approach. Not a complete teardown, but a “competitive rebuild”, which would focus on adding veteran talent while targeting a cheap rookie quarterback that they hoped they could slide into the machine. This has been done successfully in the past, most notably by the Kansas City Chiefs, who let Alex Smith walk for an unproven and raw first round pick named Patrick Mahomes.

And it might have worked in Minnesota too. They just got the wrong quarterback. This is the downside of this approach. Because quarterback scouting remains maybe the hardest thing in football, and there are very few young quarterbacks that carry no possibility of failure. (The only recent ones that come to mind are Joe Burrow and Trevor Lawrence, and they both went first overall.)

Failure is an essential risk of the process. What really defines a team in the long-term isn’t whether they fail, but how they react to the failure. In 2013 the Bills spent a first round pick on EJ Manuel. That didn’t work out, so in 2018 they drafted Josh Allen. In 2021 the Patriots drafted Mac Jones. Three years later they took Drake Maye. The Bears failed twice, with Mitch Trubisky in 2017 and then Justin Fields in 2021. So in 2025 they took Caleb Williams, and now they appear set to be competitive for the next decade.

Drafting a quarterback should ultimately be a volume strategy. Because it only has to work once to make it all worth it. Yes, there is a risk you end up in a Jets-like cycle where you get failure after failure after failure. But most teams eventually do get it right.

This is what bothers me the most about the Murray signing. Because on the surface it appears to be the Vikings taking the wrong lesson from the failure of McCarthy. Rather than setting themselves up in the best position to try again, they are scrambling to find their way back to mediocrity.

I can’t see inside Kevin O’Connell’s head. It’s possible he is genuinely enthused about having Murray as a quarterback. But based on everything I said above, and based on every other quarterback he’s brought into the Vikings, I would be surprised. This feels more like something he feels forced into, because if he doesn’t find a way to get back into playoff contention he won’t be the head coach of the Vikings in 2027. This once again feels like something trickling down from ownership. They saw the 2025 season as an unacceptable outcome, and they will do everything in their power to prevent it from happening again.

Murray is only on a one-year contract, and the future after that remains very murky. How well does he have to play for them to sign him to an extension? How well does he have to play before they find themselves in a bidding war for his services? If he moves on after 2026, where do they go from there? Do they try to find a different guy to keep them afloat year by year? Maybe Mac Jones in 2027, Daniel Jones in 2028? Drop Bryce Young or Jaxson Dart in there somewhere along the way?

Right now the message that ownership is sending is that any risk of failure is not acceptable. But nearly every top quarterback in the league had some risk. Patrick Mahomes came out of a gimmicky offense playing a reckless style that almost always ended in disaster in the NFL. Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson completed less than 60% of their passes in college. Drake Maye and Caleb Williams were phenomenally gifted talents who needed to struggle through a tough rookie season before they finally figured out how to put it together.

The Vikings have no interest in anything like that. All they want is another Kirk Cousins, to keep them from ever feeling like there’s anything actually at risk.