The Vikings are 3-0 and second in our NFL power rankings, and they have got there with Carson Wentz and Kyler Murray splitting the job between them. J.J. McCarthy, the quarterback they took tenth overall in 2024, is on the New York Giants roster and has not played a down this season.
Three wins, two quarterbacks, 462 passing yards
The quarterback play has not been the point. Here is all of it.
Wentz started the first two and Murray the third. Between them that is 462 passing yards in three games, 154 a week, which would be among the lowest figures in the league across a season. The Chicago game is the one to look at: Minnesota won 9-3 without scoring a touchdown, on three field goals, four sacks, an interception and a forced fumble.
The defence is the team. Fourteen sacks and four interceptions in three games, 37 quarterback hits, and 41 points conceded in total. The Vikings have a points differential of plus 30 and have scored 71, which means they are winning by keeping the other side under 14 a game rather than by pulling away.
The quarterback room
Wentz has the better line of the two: 23 of 39 for 276 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions at a 106.4 rating across his two starts, all three scores coming in the opening-week win over Green Bay. Murray is at 18 of 34 for 186 with one touchdown, two interceptions and a 54.3 rating, and his two appearances include a five-attempt relief spell in Week 1 that produced an interception and a 27.5 rating.
Max Brosmer is the third name on the roster. Neither Wentz nor Murray has been given the job outright across three weeks, which on a 3-0 team is unusual and is the thing worth watching from here.
Where McCarthy is
McCarthy was Minnesota’s quarterback last season: 140 of 243 for 1,632 yards, eleven touchdowns against twelve interceptions and a 72.6 rating in ten games. He is now on the Giants roster, listed active, with no appearances in 2026.
The Giants have used two quarterbacks this season and he has not been either of them. Jaxson Dart started the opener and threw three touchdowns at a 134.2 rating, split Week 2, and is on injured reserve. Jameis Winston started against Tennessee and threw for 118 yards. Even with Dart unavailable, the job went to Winston.
What the model thinks, and what the market does not
Tuesday’s rebuild moved Minnesota eleven places to second, the largest single move on the board, with the rating up 25 points and the playoff projection at 97 per cent. The model has decided the defence is real.
The futures board has not followed. Minnesota is priced between +2200 and +2500 to win the Super Bowl, about 3.4 per cent once the margin is stripped out, against our model’s 15.8 per cent. That gap of 12.4 points is the second largest on the whole board, behind only Buffalo, and it is the newest thing on it. Our NFL futures page has the full market-against-model table.
Whether you act on that is a judgement, not an instruction. A model disagreeing with a market does not make the model right, and three weeks is a small sample on both sides. But a team winning without its passing game is exactly the kind of profile a market is slow to price and a season simulation is quick to.
Next up: Dolphins at Vikings
Minnesota hosts Miami on Sunday 4 October at 4:05 pm ET. Our model makes it the second most confident call of the week at 85 per cent, with Minnesota favoured by 11.6 points, and that number itself moved this week: it was 78 per cent before the rankings were rebuilt. Miami is 0-3 with the worst points differential in the league. Every call is on the NFL picks board.
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