Cashing Out | August 30, 2026 | Hour 3

**Dustin Swedelson** (0:00)
From the Circus Sportsbook in downtown Las Vegas, Dustin Swedelson here, you there. Appreciate you tuning in, however you may be doing so. SiriusXM Channel 158 until September 1st, which is Tuesday. We will move to Channel 189, also YouTube TV, the Visa Watch app, and radio affiliates across the United States of God bless America.
College Football's here, Week is coming gone. We'll look ahead to Week 1 a little bit later on this hour, but the NFL is just a couple weeks away.
And join us now and help us break down Minnesota Vikings, we're going to bring in one of our favorites. Tyler Forness is our guest, atozsports.com, also covers the Vikings for Vikings 1st and SKOL on YouTube, at The Real Forno on X where you can find him on social media, and he joins us now on the Progressive Guest Line. And Tyler, I wanted to talk to you because there was a lot of weird reports coming out of Minnesota over the last 48 hours that JJ McCarthy was not going to make the final roster for this season. He is indeed on the 53-man roster. Were you surprised by the reports, or were you surprised that he made the roster? What stood out to you there with that?

**Tyler Forness** (1:04)
It's two-fold. I think I'll be surprised if he's on the week one roster. But the initial 53 really doesn't mean a whole lot because NFL teams will often use this as posturing. They'll cut veterans so then they can keep a guy on the roster for one more day to try and sneak him onto the practice squad. And then a lot of veterans, you can just re-sign them with no penalty. And you don't have to worry about it. And in the case of McCarthy, I think it's very simple.
They do want to move on is the vibe I get, but they don't want to give him away. And they have to at least get a certain amount of compensation back to feel comfortable letting him go.
Because at the end of the day, he is still 23 years old and there is a real chance that he could amount to something. But I think they view it as I do. It's an oil and water situation. Sometimes you just don't vibe and you need to move on and try something different. So I still think he's gonna end up moving on. They haven't found a partner yet that is willing to meet their quote unquote demand is kind of how I see it. And I do think that he'll end up moving on at some point here within the next few days.

**Dustin Swedelson** (2:13)
Yeah, that sounds about right. I think it's better for all parties involved. Plus the GM who drafted him is no longer with the organization. And clearly Kevin O'Connell is not a fan. My question is how big of a fan is Kevin O'Connell of Kyler Murray? We've seen KOC do more with less than Kyler Murray's abilities, but there also has been limitations to Kyler's game over the last few years. We've seen the highs. We've seen the lows. How does Kyler fit into what they want to do offensively?

**Tyler Forness** (2:40)
It's very interesting because if you look back at the history of the Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVeigh-esque trees, which is where O'Connell comes from, they've never had a quarterback with this type of skill set. The closest comparison you could make is Robert Griffin, the third in 2012, when the commanders took him second overall. But even he doesn't have the escape ability factor like Kyler does.
I know it's a short joke and I don't mean it that way. He reminds me of the Mighty Mouse cartoon from the 1960s, because of how he moves and he's got those short, copy steps, but he moves incredibly quick.
The fact that you've never seen this offense with that, to me is very intriguing, because how can you maximize some of these longer developing concepts that Kevin O'Connell likes to run? Can you utilize that? Then with guys like Jefferson and Addison, how are they going to adapt in some of these scramble drills that Kyler Murray is really great at utilizing because he's great at the escape ability factor? I think O'Connell, when he's given time in the off season to craft an offense for who's playing quarterback, does a fantastic job. But it's harder to completely craft an offense for somebody like Carson Wentz last year. He's a one read and dump off kind of guy. So they had to really shrink the playbook down for him, but they were able to run a capable offense for five weeks. Now that you give him a whole off season, hey, here's a guy with escape ability. Here's a guy who can scramble and run. Let's utilize that. And I think we're gonna see a lot of really good things, but O'Connell gets a bad rep for a lot of things. One thing he's great at is adapting the quarterback. And I think you're gonna see some really, really fun things early on in the season.