Kyler Murray just signed a 5 year, $230.5 million extension a few weeks ago. From this huge contract, you would assume Kyler has a better grip over the offense than he actually does.
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Kyler Murray has slowly turned into a household name that every football fan knows about. Murray was drafted first overall by the Arizona Cardinals 3 seasons ago and has showed MVP potential. However, with this potential has come some disappointing play.
Murray has continued to evolve through his last 3 seasons, trying to get better. But each season, Murray starts off hot but trails off towards the end. Most recently, this ended with a bad blowout to the Los Angeles Rams in the wildcard round.
The Arizona Cardinals have faith that Murray will continue to grow and extended him for another 5 years.
Kyler Murray highlights are even more unreal in slow motion 🤯
(via @akaSD)pic.twitter.com/SNWD7Xu1eG
— Yahoo Sports (@YahooSports) September 22, 2020
Kingsbury gave Kyler Murray play calling duties late in a blowout which did not yield good results
In the Cardinals first preseason game, they jumped out to a 36-9 lead with the 4th quarter remaining. At this point Kingsbury decided to give Kyler the play calling duties the rest of the way.
Kyler Murray called a few offensive plays in the Cardinals first preseason game vs. Cincinnati https://t.co/nycwIGFukN
— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) August 13, 2022
This could either be a statement to Murray saying, “Look at how hard my job is, maybe you should try it.” Or it could be Kingsbury just letting Kyler experiment with calling plays as it is an important skill in the NFL.
Either way, the experiment did not have good results. Murray was given 3 offensive drives in the fourth quarter which yielded 0 first downs and 0 points. The Bengals however scored 14 points within the period.
The first drive was a three and out in this order. On first down, the quarterback completed a two yard pass and then followed up with an incomplete pass. On the crucial 3rd down, he was sacked.
The second drive started with a 8 yard run and then a deep incomplete pass. On 3rd down, a delay of game was called which preceded a quarterback scramble that did not pick up sufficient yards. The last drive was just quarterback kneels in victory formation.
The failure of Murray calling plays can be attributed to bad play calls or bad execution. It is too small a sample size to tell just yet.