One of my favorite things about sports is its subjectivity.
Two people can look at the exact same performance, prospect, or play call and come to completely different conclusions. “He played terribly” vs. “He had a sneaky-good game.” “The guy is just a winner” vs. “He’s a product of his system.”
It’s what makes sports such a fertile breeding ground for discourse and debate.
Different players can be a bit of a Rorschach test as a sports fan. Are you hopeful or cynical? Do you value upside in a prospect or a secure floor? What speaks to you, stylistically?
As the Minnesota Vikings find themselves deep in the throes of yet another quarterback controversy, everyone seems to have “their guy.” Whether you’re shooting for the moon with your hopes for an elite player like Joe Burrow, or convincing yourself that one franchise’s trash can be another team’s treasure (ahem, Geno Smith), you’ve probably found yourself getting emotionally attached to one idea over the others.
I have no idea what the Vikings are going to do at quarterback this offseason, but I have some theories as to what your preferred quarterback might say about you as a fan.
Joe Burrow
You’re that guy in your fantasy football league who loves trading for the best player on the last-place team, trying to take advantage of their desperation.
Like all Vikings fans, you’re desperate to finally have a top franchise quarterback, and no amount of potential draft capital or injury risk will sway you away from this. The idea of reuniting Justin Jefferson with his college quarterback and watching those fireworks feels like a dream you never want to wake up from.
I suggest you get out your voodoo dolls and place every curse on the Cincinnati Bengals you can think of. The worse things get for them, the more likely this fantasy becomes, even the faintest possibility. For this divorce to become possible, things are going to need to get a lot messier than they are now.
I think it’s the kind of thing that becomes more realistic perhaps in 2027 or beyond. That said, keep annoying every Bengals fan you know; it’s payback for all the Justin Jefferson rumors they peddled a few years ago.
I can see it now. You sat on your couch watching Mac Jones fill in for Brock Purdy for the Los Angeles Rams in Week 5, you shook your head in disbelief as the former first-rounder balled out for 342 yards and two TDs, and you swore at your TV: “Dammit, why can’t our guy do that!”
Jones represents all your frustration with J.J. McCarthy in a nutshell. He lacks talent, with an average arm and athleticism, but Shanahan made it work. He just kept completing passes. It was functional.
The idea of that functionality in Minnesota is exactly the pendulum swing you’re looking for after a season of rampant dysfunction. He’s likely to cost money and draft capital, but you’re convinced that Minnesota can lowball its way to a competent starting quarterback.
Just don’t think back to the last time we saw Mac Jones not in Shanahan’s offense. Because I still remember the 2024 Vikings vs. Jacksonville Jaguars game, when Flores put that poor man through the shredder.
You definitely play video games, feel like shorter men don’t get enough respect, and love college football. You saw Kyler play like a human cheat code at Oklahoma and still have that image of the gunslinging, lightning-quick, shorter version of Lamar Jackson.
QB1 ON THE RUN.
Kyler Murray takes it 67 yards for the @OU_Football TD and we’ve got ourselves a game! pic.twitter.com/LwDOtn6EfK
— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) October 6, 2018
I say you play video games not just because you’re less likely to judge Murray for grinding his kill-to-death ratio on Black Ops 7, but because Murray is also exactly the type of quarterback you wanna use in Madden. And you feel like there’s an opportunity to resurrect Kyler’s upside if KOC gets his hands on him.
The problem is that Murray hasn’t exactly been the gunslinger he was early in his career. Whether that’s due to health or coaching, he’s become much more of a point guard these days than a big-game hunter. It would take a change in philosophy for O’Connell or Murray to make this marriage work, but the athletic potential is certainly there.
Geno Smith
The idea of finding success with the Seattle Seahawks’ sloppy seconds feels like karmic justice. You hand-wave off his catastrophic season with the Las Vegas Raiders as a Raiders problem, not a Geno problem. You convince yourself that his downfield aggression is a nice fit with O’Connell’s vertical passing game. There’s enough highlight film from Smith’s tenure in Seattle that you can convince yourself there’s still a viable player in there.
You’re probably the kind of parent who tells your kid to “Rub some dirt in it” and “Walk it off” when they should definitely be going to the hospital.
Sure, he’s got bad hips, bad ankles, and scrambled eggs between the ears, but that’s just the price you pay for playing a man’s game out there! Beyond the injury history, there’s the strange mismatch of Tua’s lack of arm strength and rotation tanking his downfield velocity with a coach obsessed with throwing the deep ball.
Tua actually has played his best ball when he’s able to go deep, but he doesn’t do so with long-developing play action or seven-step drops. His game is to hit his back foot, grip it, and rip it, using anticipation and pre-snap reads to make decisions fast. If he can read things correctly, it can lead to shots outside the numbers, just getting that ball out early in the play while still in his range.
Tua’s first TD to Tyreek Hill — Kyle Hamilton legitimately has no idea where Hill is until he’s three yards past him.
Marcus Peters also gets out of his backpedal as he’s even with Hill — and y’all know the phrase… pic.twitter.com/tZbvgPIGsm
— Marcel Louis-Jacques (@Marcel_LJ) September 19, 2022
There’s money involved, but you feel there’s a skill set for KOC to develop.
Your mom loves this idea. She always liked Kirk Cousins and thought he was a nice role model for young boys. And you like him too.
Whether it was embracing the Kirko Chainz memes of yesteryear, or you were someone who planted your flag on the pro-Kirk side of the debate, you look back fondly on his tenure in Minnesota. Life seemed better back then, and you like knowing what you’re getting. You’ve seen the marriage between O’Connell and Cousins work once, and you’re convinced it can happen again.
Perhaps unrelated, but you also loved the Thielen trade when it happened last August. (Right there with you, buddy!)
You squint, and you feel like you can see a young Cam Newton. Coincidentally, Richards also squints, because he may or may not have only one eye these days.
Even with both eyes, he was pretty awful in Indianapolis. A change of scenery is necessary if Richardson is ever going to reach the perceived ceiling he had on draft night, but it feels strange to move on from one project just to take on another. Or perhaps worse, have Minnesota’s coaching staff multitasking two projects at once.
Even going back to college, we’ve yet to see extended periods of good play from Anthony Richardson — but those traits are simply too good for you to pass up. He’s got the arm, the size, the speed. There’s just that pesky problem of him being bad at football.
You can fix him, though, if he just gives you a chance.
You’re wrong. Pick a new one.
J.J. McCarthy
You don’t give up. You refuse to let the Vikings organization become the Cleveland Browns, cycling through quarterbacks without allowing them to truly develop. J.J. McCarthy reviving his career elsewhere, Sam Darnold-style, would haunt you forever.
You likely staked your claim on McCarthy early in the process, whether it was defending the pick on draft night or fighting against McCarthy’s meme-ification this past season. You’re convinced there’s still something there, and think the organizational scapegoating over a 23-year-old’s struggles 10 games into his career is embarrassing.
You might be able to convince yourself that the team needs a QB2 upgrade over the likes of Carson Wentz, but moving on from McCarthy feels like betrayal and cowardice. Your lucky number is 9.
Who you pick says a lot about you
However, things shake out with the Vikings QB situation, I see where you’re coming from. (Unless you’re a Derek Carr advocate; in that case, what are you doing?) That subjectivity is what makes sports great. And no matter how vehemently I disagree with you, I’ll do my best to see how you came to that opinion.
The scary thing is, if we can all disagree this much, imagine what the opinions are like inside the Vikings front office right now, especially amidst the power vacuum in the wake of Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s firing.
All this conjecture and speculation is subjective. Whether or not any of these ideas work out, and the Vikings manage to win football games in 2026, will become very much an objective fact starting in September.