Kyler Murray’s Minnesota debut lasted 11 offensive plays. What followed was the strangest 39-22 win of the NFL’s opening Sunday, and it belonged to the quarterback the Vikings had named his backup four days earlier.
Carson Wentz replaced Murray late in the first quarter after the former Cardinals starter was hit on a slide and diagnosed with a concussion, then threw three touchdown passes as Minnesota erased a 22-10 deficit with 29 unanswered points, 22 of them in the fourth quarter.
Two of the scores went to Justin Jefferson. The Green Bay Packers, who had led for more than 40 minutes of game clock, did not score again after the 5:09 mark of the third quarter.
For a franchise that spent its offseason rebuilding the quarterback room around Murray, the day delivered both the nightmare and the insurance policy inside the same game.
How Murray went down
The injury came on Minnesota’s third possession. Facing third-and-7 from his own 33 with 6:16 left in the first quarter, Murray scrambled right for 2 yards and went to the ground.
Packers safety Javon Bullard hit him after he was already down and edge rusher Lukas Van Ness made contact with his helmet, which came off. Bullard was flagged for unnecessary roughness, Murray stayed down for a couple of minutes and then walked to the locker room under his own power.
Kyler Murray just got knocked out COLD 😬 pic.twitter.com/9vFPHxbhmG
— LakeShowYo (@LakeShowYo) September 13, 2026
The official play-by-play tells the rest in bureaucratic shorthand. The Vikings first listed Murray as questionable to return, then, one play into the second quarter, as out of the game, per the league’s Game Book. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported the concussion evaluation at 4:04 p.m. CT and the ruling-out 12 minutes later, posting on X that the Vikings had ruled Murray out for the rest of the day.
Vikings now have ruled out Kyler Murray for the remainder of today’s game. https://t.co/G1614SN6oL
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 13, 2026
Murray’s line before the hit was three completions on five attempts for 18 yards and an interception on his first pass as a Viking, a deep throw toward Jalen Nailor’s replacement, Jordan Jennings, that Keisean Nixon picked off. It was not the opening act the 29-year-old or the Vikings imagined when he signed a one-year deal in March after the Cardinals released him.
The NFL’s concussion protocol has no fixed timeline, and the Vikings had not issued a further update as of Sunday evening. Minnesota plays at Chicago next week.
The backup decision that decided the game
The reason Wentz, and not J.J. McCarthy, jogged onto the field was a decision Kevin O’Connell announced on Wednesday, and it drew plenty of criticism at the time. McCarthy, the No. 10 overall pick in 2024, was demoted to the emergency third quarterback for the opener, with Wentz installed as the No. 2, according to NFL.com’s Kevin Patra.
“I’m looking at that right now as a week-to-week thing,” O’Connell said. “Carson, he’s got almost 100 career starts. What he was able to do last year from a standpoint of very limited repetition, but being able to apply a career’s worth of experience, that’s kind of what you need to do as a backup quarterback when so much of the emphasis is gonna be on getting Kyler as comfortable as we can possibly get him.”
The coach’s reasoning leaned on Wentz’s nearly 100 career starts and his five relief appearances for Minnesota last season, when McCarthy missed time with a high ankle sprain. As the emergency third quarterback under league rules, McCarthy could only have entered Sunday’s game if Wentz had also been hurt.
That put the season, at least for three quarters, on a 2016 No. 2 overall pick who has now started for six franchises. Wentz finished 12 of 19 for 133 yards and three touchdowns without an interception, a 123.5 passer rating, and was sacked three times.
His touchdowns went to Jefferson from 39 yards late in the first half, to T.J. Hockenson from 16 yards in the third quarter and to Jefferson again from 9 yards with 3:55 to play. He also hit Jefferson for the two-point conversion that gave Minnesota its first lead at 25-22.
The context for the depth-chart shuffle is a season of numbers Minnesota would rather forget. McCarthy completed 57.6 percent of his passes for 1,632 yards, 11 touchdowns and 12 interceptions in 10 starts last year, and Murray’s 2025 in Arizona was limited to five starts before the Cardinals moved on and handed the job to Jacoby Brissett.
The Vikings signed Murray to compete with McCarthy, kept Wentz as a hedge and, one game in, the hedge is the reason they are 1-0.
How the Packers gave it away
Green Bay led 22-10 after Trey Smack’s third field goal with 5:09 left in the third quarter, and the Vikings’ 239 total yards for the day, against 419 for the Packers, say how much of the comeback was Green Bay’s doing.
The turning point is recorded in the fourth-quarter play-by-play. With 13:21 to play and a 22-17 lead, Smack made a 40-yard field goal on fourth-and-6 from the Minnesota 22, but Dallas Turner was offside.
Matt LaFleur declined the points and went for it on fourth-and-1 from the 17, and Jordan Love’s sneak was stopped for no gain on a virtual measurement. Minnesota took over and drove 83 yards on nine plays, aided by four Green Bay penalties, including an illegal contact that wiped out a third-down sack, a roughing-the-passer on Chris McClellan and a defensive holding on Xavier McKinney that erased an Evan Williams interception in the end zone.
Aaron Jones scored from 3 yards on the next snap against his former team. The collapse accelerated from there.
Love was sacked on consecutive plays on the following drive and fumbled on the second, with Andrew Van Ginkel recovering at the Green Bay 8 and returning it to the 1. Jordan Mason scored on the next play.
Two Green Bay snaps later, James Pierre intercepted Love, and Wentz found Jefferson three plays after that. The Packers were flagged 12 times for 98 yards; the Vikings three times for 15.
Love’s day was a study in volume without reward: 21-of-42 for 387 yards, two touchdowns, an interception, four sacks and two fumbles, one lost. Christian Watson caught six passes for 147 yards and both scores, but five of the catches and 131 of the yards came before halftime.
The fourth-down call and the sneak were the two decisions that turned the game, and the Packers now carry a pattern of surrendering big leads.
What comes next
The Vikings travel to face the Bears next week, and the Packers visit the Jets. Whether Murray is available will come down to the league’s independent-neurologist process rather than the calendar, and O’Connell said on Wednesday that the backup role behind Murray would be reassessed weekly.
The uncomfortable subplot is McCarthy. The Vikings have now told the league, in the most public way possible, that their 2024 first-round pick is the third-best quarterback on the roster, and the veteran ahead of him just won a division game.
A prolonged Murray absence would make Wentz the starter and leave McCarthy exactly where he was Sunday, one snap from relevance and two from the field.
Fantasy read
Wentz is a waiver claim in two-quarterback and superflex formats and a bench stash in 12-team leagues until Murray’s status clears; his 123.5 rating came on 19 attempts in a run-heavy plan, so treat him as a streamer, not a set-and-forget starter.
Jefferson is untouched: nine targets, eight catches, 92 yards, two scores and the two-point conversion, and his target tree does not change with the quarterback.
Jordan Addison is the concern, with two targets and no catches, which is a sit until the passing volume returns.
In the backfield, Mason out-carried Jones 15 to 12 and had the 28-yard long run; both scored, and this is a split, not a lead role, so Mason is a flex with Jones a touchdown-dependent flex.
For Green Bay, Watson’s 147 yards on eight targets makes him a start every week Love is throwing 42 times, and Matthew Golden’s 12 targets, the most in the game, are the quiet number to buy before his 6-for-95 line becomes a touchdown game.
