Kyler Murray’s roller-coaster career hits another peak vs. Rams

QB of the Week highlights the quarterback having the best week, on the field and within the context of the sport, and Week 2 provided an abundance of worthy options: Baker Mayfield, Derek Carr, Geno Smith, and Justin Fields are all 2-0, as is Week 1’s QB of the Week, Sam Darnold. Tropical Storm “Minshew Mania” has migrated into the Las Vegas desert. Captain Comeback came back on Monday Night Football. Aaron Rodgers won his first game as a Jet, while Andy Dalton found out that he could win his first game as a Panther starting in Week 3. And Malik Willis has done something that Joe Burrow, Matthew Stafford, and Lamar Jackson have yet to do this season, which is win a game.

However, the quarterback having a better week than the rest of the league is the one somehow not nicknamed “The Wizard” after Fred Savage’s video game-obsessed character in the movie of the same name, and less than a year ago had experts wondering if he was tradable or cuttable, is Kyler Murray. In fact, Murray’s performance in a 41-10 win over the L.A. Rams was so good that they’re literally putting him* in the Hall of Fame for it.

*His jersey

Go back to the beginning of the 2023 season and the talk was that the Cardinals were just biding their time until they could officially cut or trade Murray only one year after extending his stay with a five-year, $230.5 million contract. Murray missed the first half of the season recovering from surgery on his ACL, and there was talk at the time, especially from former NFL GM and Pat McAfee Show regular Michael Lombardi, that Arizona might as well sit him for the entire year because further injury could kick in more guarantees for 2024.

A report by The Athletic’s Jeff Howe on November 11, 2023, just one day before Murray’s return to the field, called Kyler “not tradable” and that “moving that contract is problematic” according to unnamed NFL executives. The same article posited that executives would expect Murray to be released, if he was indeed on the trade block.

For their own job’s sake, let’s hope those anonymous sources don’t work for the Titans, the Giants, the Steelers, the Panthers, the Broncos, or any team that would now gladly pay Kyler Murray an additional $230 million on top of the $230 million he’s already owed just to not have to watch Will Levis or Daniel Jones play in their offense again.

If Murray had actually ever touched the trade block, this is what was deemed “not tradable” months ago:

Even before last season started, ESPN’s Dan Graziano and Bleacher Report’s Kristopher Knox both wrote articles explaining why it was more likely than not that the Cardinals would “move on” from Murray after the 2023 season because of a probability, in their estimation, that Arizona would lose a lot of games and be too tempted to draft Caleb Williams or Drake Maye as a replacement. Graziano barely waited a year after Murray signed his extension to research how the Cardinals could get out of it:

“If the Cardinals decide to cut Murray after the 2023 season, they’ll have paid him $103.3 million for two years of service and they’d incur a dead-money cap hit of about $81.5 million in 2024 (or, if they cut him post-June 1, $48.3 million in 2024 and $33.2 million in 2025).”

It’s not that reporters and analysts were coming out of left field to make up outlandish hot takes for why Arizona needed to get rid of Murray either, so I only use Howe, Graziano and Knox as examples, not as outliers who don’t understand football. They weren’t alone; the idea of the Cardinals parting ways with Murray after the 2023 season was basically universal, and at best you would at least have people acknowledging that Murray’s post-contract fallout was not ideal for the quarterback or the franchise.

One year after celebrating his coming-out party as a true franchise quarterback, when he had the Cardinals off to an unbelievable 7-0 start in 2021 and was a legitimate MVP candidate, Murray had struggled in his lone playoff start against the Rams, stumbled to a 3-7 record to open 2022, then tore his ACL against the Patriots in December. Arizona then fired the only head coach or offensive coordinator he had known in the NFL, Kliff Kingsbury, as well as Steve Keim, the GM who had drafted him and extended him.

The organization could make a break with Murray and say that he was just not a fit for their new offense with coordinator Drew Petzing, a branch off the Kevin Stefanski tree and potentially someone who would want more of a traditional pocket passer at quarterback.

Murray’s future would depend on how he played with Petzing and if he would play with Petzing, assuming the Cardinals would let him come back last season.

In reality, the Cardinals could not wait to have Murray back because “tanking” in real life probably doesn’t feel as good as the idea of tanking sounds when the prospect of a No. 1 pick is on the horizon: At 1-8 following a 27-0 shutout to Stefanski’s Browns, Murray returned in Week 10 last season and led Arizona to a 25-23 win over the Falcons. The Cardinals would go on to win two more games with Murray as the starter, guaranteeing them the fourth overall pick in the draft, which turns out to be where the quarterback class dropped off and where the receiver draft class was red hot.

Despite “only” hitting 16 miles per hour in his NFL debut (roughly 15 mph faster than the people making fun of him), Marvin Harrison, Jr. flaunted why the Cardinals picked him fourth overall as the piece that was missing last season and since DeAndre Hopkins last played for Arizona in 2022. Murray and Harrison combined for the most improbable touchdown catch of the season thus far, according to Next Gen Stats, and he became the first rookie with four catches and two touchdowns in the first quarter since his dad in 1996.

If Harrison was forced to play with Josh Dobbs, Clayton Tune, or Ryan Tannehill, these are not touchdowns that would have ever happened. You know, we talk about “yards after the catch” and “yards after contact” but nobody has made a stat about “passing yards after escaping a sack” and Murray could be leading the NFL in that category since 2019.

Kyler Murray finished Week 2 having completed 17-of-21 attempts for 266 yards, three touchdowns, a perfect passer rating, and 59 rushing yards in a blowout win over Matthew Stafford’s Rams. As a weapon at quarterback of this level—in which the escapability factor is both amazing and yet also expected for a rare player like Murray—defenses will struggle to identify when to stack the box, when to spy, when to cover, because if you come after Kyler, he might run away from you; if you cover, James Conner (122 rushing yards in Week 2) will make you pay for it; if you stack the box, Marvin Harrison will beat you over the top.

It’s hard to believe we’re saying this about the Arizona Cardinals, but even harder to believe that we could say this about Kyler Murray’s Cardinals given how many people said his premature exit from Arizona was an inevitability. Kyler Murray was the biggest joke of the league when his “video game” clause contract became public a couple of years ago.

He was laughing all over the field in Week 2 and the Cardinals are feeling better about their investment than they ever have before.

What he said

After the 41-10 win, Murray noted that escaping the pocket to make a play only gets him more hyped and confident for the next play:

“You feel guys swarming around you, and you try to make them miss,” Murray said after a 41-10 domination of L.A. “Then I look up and I see Elijah in the back of the end zone. I had a feeling that once it left my hand that it was a touchdown.

“It’s a good feeling when you’re playing fast and guys are moving around in the scramble drill to be able to do things off schedule.”

And Murray told Fox in the post-game field interview that “We made them pay” after the win. But was he talking about the Rams, the skeptics…or the Cardinals ownership? Worth every penny this week.