The Minnesota Vikings have announced they will start Carson Wentz at Quarterback for Monday Night Football against the Buffalo Bills. Kyler Murray is nursing a hamstring injury and will be unable to suit up. There is already plenty of speculation that this is a “soft benching.” I’m not a doctor, nor do I have any interest in pretending to be one, so I’ll take the team at its word and assume Murray is injured.
What I do wonder is whether the Vikings might actually be better off this week because of it.
Wentz helped the Vikings win their first two games, though nobody is going to confuse those performances with the 2017 version of Carson Wentz. The 9-3 victory over Chicago was about as exciting as watching paint dry, but he avoided the catastrophic mistake and let the defense do the heavy lifting.
At this point in his career, Wentz is not the future. The problem for Murray is that he hasn’t exactly looked like the answer either. Through seven games, the offense has remained the weakest part of a team that sits at 6-1 largely because of its defense, special teams, and ability to force turnovers.
I picked the Vikings to win last week because they have the best defense in football. I probably would’ve picked them to lose this week regardless of which quarterback was under center.
