Vikings camp opens with the QBs and their teammates playing it cool over the spotlighted competition

EAGAN, Minn. (AP) — The starting quarterback audition that will shape this season for the Minnesota Vikings and perhaps define multiple careers is clearly the featured attraction during training camp.

For as consequential as this competition will be, Kyler Murray, J.J. McCarthy and their teammates have no interest in intensifying the spotlight or indulging in feelings about the process. The players themselves are trying to keep things as cool as they can.

“I’m not really too focused on the long-term vision of it,” Murray said Wednesday before the team's first formal practice of camp. “I’m really just focused on process, and that’s day to day, trying to put my best foot forward, and proving to the guys and the coaches what I’m capable of.”

McCarthy brings a decidedly different resume, style and personality to this derby, but his public stance on his approach to trying to keep the same job he had last year sure sounded similar to Murray's.

“It’s just refining every little detail, leaving no stone unturned and just trying to get better in every aspect,” said McCarthy, whose injuries have limited him to 10 starts in two seasons since he was drafted with the 10th overall pick in 2024. “That’s a constant battle with yourself every single day until you hang ’em up.”

Vikings coach Kevin O'Connell was remarkably transparent in his news conference this week about the plan for dividing up drills in practice between the two. Murray went first with the first team Wednesday, but the repetitions were equally split.

“It’s going to be more by certain periods. Maybe a guy’s gotten a little bit more third down work, so then we’ll make sure we try to even it out,” O'Connell said. “But I will say this, and I told the quarterbacks: ‘We don’t need to make this 50-50.’ It’s going to be that way to start when we’re on a time crunch, but when we get into some longer practices and some move-the-ball periods, there’s some periods where the amount of plays is unknown sometimes as you really start to get into what real football is.”

The Vikings made a series of moves to address their problems on offense last season, hiring former Miami Dolphins offensive coordinator Frank Smith as the assistant head coach with a particular focus on the running game, promoting Keith Carter to offensive line coach, and shoring up their offensive line depth after injuries frequently ravaged their 2025 lineup.

Murray, of course, was the most seismic change after McCarthy's rocky debut. As the first overall pick in the 2019 draft with 87 starts and more than 20,000 passing yards in his career, Murray is the clear favorite to win this competition. But O'Connell has committed to opening it up, and McCarthy has said he believes him.

“My job’s to make it right for either of them, so that’s kind of all I can focus on,” right tackle Brian O'Neill said. “It’s just like any other guy and any other position battle. That’s really what it is from my perspective.”

Murray mentioned earlier the challenge of mastering a new offense without taking all of the turns with the first team, but he said Wednesday he feels much better about the playbook after going through spring practices and continuing to immerse himself in it over the last six weeks.

McCarthy, too, said he has recovered from the time lost and the rhythm interrupted by his late-season injuries.

“I felt like I was hitting that upward trajectory, and I’m certain it’s still been going up since then,” he said.

The five-time captain and two-time Pro Bowl pick O'Neill will enter his ninth season with the security of a $96 million contract extension that stretches through 2030, a deal he signed Tuesday as players reported. He savored the commitment from his only NFL team but said he wasn't ready to reflect yet on his journey.

“I want to be most proud of when I’m done here that we went on a couple runs and gave ourselves a chance at the big one and turned this thing around and got over the proverbial hump,” O'Neill said.

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Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy (9) takes part in drills during the team's NFL football training camp Wednesday, July 29, 2026, in Eagan, Minn. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kyler Murray talks to reporters at the team's NFL football training camp Wednesday, July 29, 2026, in Eagan, Minn. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy talks to reporters at the team's NFL football training camp Wednesday, July 29, 2026, in Eagan, Minn. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kyler Murray (1) takes part in drills during the team's NFL football training camp Wednesday, July 29, 2026, in Eagan, Minn. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Minnesota Vikings quarterbacks J.J. McCarthy (9) and Kyler Murray (1) take part in drills during the team's NFL football training camp Wednesday, July 29, 2026, in Eagan, Minn. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The stop-start fighting between the United States and Iran appears to have entered a new phase as Saudi Arabia publicly joined military escalations against Tehran-backed proxies. At the same time, an already untenable diplomatic effort to end the war has faltered once again as mistrust deepens between the longtime adversaries.

Despite several days of relative calm, both sides carried out military strikes in the last 24 hours that once again risk a return to all-out war — and further expansion in the region — while little is clear about what strategy, if any, American or Iranian officials have for a path forward.

While President Donald Trump and his allies have spent recent days arguing that Iran is begging to return to the negotiating table, Iran’s deputy foreign minister said Tuesday that his country has made no requests to restart the diplomatic track in more than two weeks.

Following a thwarted attack on the U.S. base in Jordan, Trump turned back to threats Wednesday even while sustaining the prospect of continued talks.

“They’ve already apologized, but, you know, we got to smack them a little bit,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. He added: “It’s our turn, and we’ll see if we get there with an agreement at some point. But we’re going to hit them very hard.”

Hours later, the strikes followed as the U.S. military said it launched a “a powerful response to yesterday’s attempted Iranian attacks on U.S. forces based in the Middle East” in a social media post. It did not immediately disclose the targets of the attack.

It reflects a deja-vu as the Republican president has vacillated for the past several months between insisting a deal was near to end the war and Tehran's nuclear program and using vulgarities and threats to get Iran to capitulate to U.S. demands — to no avail.

The stakes for continued U.S. military action have never been higher for Trump and his party as the conflict, unpopular among many Americans, has jolted the world economy just months before critical midterm elections in November. The renewed fighting also has killed and injured more American troops and been complicated by concerns that the U.S. is further drawing down stockpiles of key air defense systems needed to defend its bases and allies.

In the past day, Iran said it fired ballistic missiles at Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, a key U.S. military hub for the region, which Trump said were intercepted. And Saudi Arabia joined the U.S. in striking multiple logistics and weapons sites used by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq.

The first publicly announced joint U.S.-Saudi strikes followed drone attacks on the kingdom, complicating a conflict that now includes nearly every country in the region. A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to detail sensitive military operations, said the two attacks were not connected.

Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman was at the White House on Wednesday and met separately with Trump and Vice President JD Vance, according to a person familiar with matter who was not authorized to comment publicly about the private meeting.

Drone strikes also ignited fires on two natural gas vessels at a port in Egypt, a close U.S. ally and regional mediator that is one of the only countries in the Middle East to have been spared from direct military action during the war. A strike by Iran or its allies, if confirmed, would mark a significant widening of the conflict.

The U.S.-Saudi strikes came hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu departed his first meeting with Trump since they launched the war against Iran on Feb. 28.

An Israeli official briefed on the meeting Tuesday at the White House said Netanyahu assured Trump that it is the U.S., not Israel, that is in the driver's seat with Iran, attempting to push back on the notion that he’s increasingly out of step with his closest ally on the way ahead.

Yet, Israeli officials also have privately expressed concern that Trump, with midterm elections looming, is trying to “keep this war on a low flame,” according to a person familiar with Netanyahu's government’s internal deliberations. The person and the Israeli official were not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The person added that Israeli officials have become increasingly concerned about Trump’s sensitivity to surging oil prices as the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed to global energy shipments and about the growing trepidation among some in the U.S. administration about the burn rate of critical missile interceptors.

The recent fighting with Iran used up more of the U.S. military’s already diminished stockpiles of Patriot and THAAD interceptors, potentially putting American troops at more risk if hostilities resume, according to an analysis released this week from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has told Trump that the state of the munitions stockpile could have an impact on military operations in Iran, according to another U.S. official. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations, said the message was delivered as part of Caine’s regular duties of providing military advice and options to Trump.

The Trump administration does not seem to have a strategy to resume negotiations with Iran over ending the conflict.

Despite efforts by some mediators to get talks restarted — or at least find a point at which they could begin again — the administration is not actively pursuing talks at the moment, a senior U.S. official said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the latest developments in the region suggested that any resumption in direct diplomacy was not imminent.

Analysts called the uncertainty and lack of strategy a result of deep, growing mistrust between Washington and Tehran, especially after an interim ceasefire proposal signed in mid-June collapsed in recent weeks.

Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, said senior Iranian officials were nearly unanimous in their decision to approve that memorandum of understanding with the U.S.

“But now none of them believe that Trump is a reliable negotiating partner,” he said. "The problem, I think, is that Trump also has now the same impression about the Iranians."

In some respects, the on-again, off-again nature of talks and back-and-forth military attacks should not be surprising.

The history of U.S. negotiations with Iran after 1979 is littered with failure, false starts and stops, and military actions that have nonetheless stopped short of the kind of conflict the two countries are now in.

Despite its flaws, the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran secured by the Obama administration was the first major agreement between the two countries since the Algiers Accords in 1981 that ended the American hostage crisis and laid a patchwork path for the resolution of other issues, including the unfreezing of Shah-era Iranian assets seized by the U.S. after the Islamic Revolution.

However, even from the beginning, both sides accused each other of violating the terms of these deals.

Accusations of violations of the Algiers Accords, which led to a period of great animosity, including U.S. support for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, became the norm.

Despite the semi-rapprochement around the 2015 nuclear deal, Trump’s withdrawal from it in 2018 during his first term, his imposition of a “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign against Tehran, and the U.S. assassination of Iran’s top military leader Qassem Soleimani in early 2020, sent the relationship to new lows.

Amiri reported from New York. Associated Press writer Ben Finley contributed to this report.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, speaks to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, right, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, left, before the funeral of Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Tuesday July 28, 2026, at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Donald Trump attend the dignified transfer of four U.S. service members recently killed in the Middle East, Wednesday, July 22, 2026, at Dover Air Force Base, Del. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)