Murray, Mayfield more alike than not
NORMAN — Kyler Murray isn’t likely to run down the field, arms wheeling around after a touchdown pass.
Most often, an understated fist pump will do.
Murray isn’t one to make headlines with bombastic comments directed toward other teams and players that he’s crossed paths with.
Instead, Murray stays low key but confident in press conference settings.
Murray is not what Baker Mayfield was at Oklahoma and remains in the NFL. But the players and coaches who have been around them both say they’re more similar than they might appear on the surface.
“In some ways,” Sooners coach Lincoln Riley said. “Radically different in some ways (too).”
Now, just like Mayfield did each of the last two seasons, Murray is heading to New York to represent the Sooners as a Heisman Trophy finalist with the potential to give Oklahoma back-to-back wins. Murray’s sense of humor is different than Mayfield’s, but he’s displayed it more and more recently, throwing out playful digs at reporters and cracking one-liners in press conferences.
His teammates say that’s the Murray that they’ve known since he arrived.
“He seems quiet, but he’s not all that quiet,” wide receiver Marquise Brown said.
The biggest similarity between the two, Riley said, comes down to confidence — not just confidence to perform but confidence to speak his mind when he feels like something isn’t right.
That was a big part of Mayfield’s rapport with Riley and has continued with Murray at the helm.
“He says what’s on his mind and he has zero issues doing it,” Riley said. “Sometimes people like that, it can be pretty funny what they blurt out. He absolutely falls in that category. It always makes him a lot easier to coach. There’s never any doubt in my mind what he’s thinking or where he’s at with something, which I love. I’ve had two quarterbacks like that.”
Murray wasn’t exactly happy sitting behind Mayfield in 2017, after he arrived on campus thinking Mayfield’s eligibility would be finished after the 2016 season. But a Big 12 rule change gave Mayfield an additional year of eligibility.
“It was unexpected,” Murray said. “When he (Riley) recruited me to come, that was the plan — Bake had one year and I sit down and get better on and off the field and then be ready for my opportunity. But that didn’t happen.
“It was obviously an adjustment. But for me, being the competitor that I am, I wasn’t going to sit back and let it kill me or anything like that. I just had to work and here we are.”
Murray said he wouldn’t be where he was without that year under Mayfield.
“I think I’m doing what I’m doing now after going to battle with him,” Murray said. “The preparation, sitting out and sitting back and having to mature on and off the field and trusting the process and just everything that went into it. I think that’s why we’re having the season we’re having.”