“The Athletic Football Show” is previewing all 32 teams leading up to the start of the 2026 NFL season. Below are select quotes from the show’s preview of the Minnesota Vikings. The quotes are edited for clarity. You can watch the whole preview on YouTube and in the embedded video below, or listen to the full NFC North preview wherever you get your podcasts.Robert Mays on what about the Vikings most excites him: I’m most excited about the entire experiment on offense. What does the offense even look like, passing-game wise? What are you going to ask of Kyler Murray? When I look back at the 2024 version of the Vikings, the amount of damage they were able to do in the intermediate-to-deep part of the field, especially outside the numbers, was huge. Kyler Murray’s biggest strength to me as a passer is his touch on intermediate-to-deep passes. It’s beautiful. And if you think about some of the big sail routes they want to throw, he’s really good at that stuff. Sam Darnold led the NFL in passing yards on intermediate and deep routes in the seams and outside the numbers in 2024. That’s what Kyler does well.The element that to me is a little bit harder to square is that Kyler did a decent amount of under center playaction in Arizona, but it was a lot of big guitar fakes where you’re getting him outside of the pocket. Afterwards, there aren’t a lot of plays where he’s setting up in the pocket off playaction. Sam Darnold did a (ton) of that in 2024. He had 49 intermediate and deep attempts off under center playaction from the pocket in 2024. I believe that was the second-highest mark in the league, per Next Gen. Kyler had 12 of those. So even in a world where he was using a decent amount of under center playaction, his frame just doesn’t allow you to do some of the same things they were doing with Darnold.