Mulling over Murray
Cardinals’ draft conundrum begins at what to do at QB
Kyler Murray wanted to clear up any confusion. Instead, he heightened the intrigue.
Two months ago, the two-sport star from the University of Oklahoma officially chose football over baseball. Even though he was drafted ninth overall by the Oakland Athletics in June, the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback announced on Twitter that he was singularly focused
on the NFL.
The mystery now is whether the Arizona Cardinals will use the No. 1 pick on Murray — angling for some Baker Mayfield magic — and open a defense-heavy draft with a bit of offensive flash.
If Thursday night’s first round has a pivot point, it’s right at the top. If the Cardinals take Murray, they’ll make history — no team has ever selected quarterbacks in the opening round of consecutive drafts. And if they don’t take him, it likely will prompt a quarterback-needy team to trade into the top five to get him.
Break out the magnifying glass, because everyone is pretending to be Sherlock Holmes as what the Cardinals are going to do. General Manager Steve Keim only fueled the speculation at the scouting combine in February when asked whether Josh Rosen, the No. 10 pick last year, was Arizona’s quarterback.
“Is Josh Rosen our quarterback?” Keim said, sounding as solid as quicksand. “Yeah, he is. Right now. For sure.”
Again, a team has never spent first-round picks on quarterbacks in back-toback drafts, although the Dallas Cowboys did take Troy Aikman first overall in 1989, then used a first-round pick on quarterback Steve Walsh in the supplemental draft three months later.
Rosen was shaky at best last season, but he played behind a patchwork offensive line, had an underwhelming cast of receivers aside from Larry Fitzgerald — who’s in the sunset of his career — and had to deal with a midseason change at offensive coordinator.
There are clues that point to Murray going to Arizona. Some are compelling, while others are cockamamie. The parallels to Mayfield are intriguing.
Both are undersized playmakers from the same system, with Murray following the Heisman-winning Mayfield at Oklahoma. The Cardinals made an outside - the box coaching hire in Kliff Kingsbury, who some see as a pigskin Picasso when it comes to drawing up offenses.
When Kingsbury was struggling at Texas Tech and getting his team ready to play Oklahoma in October, the coach said of Murray: “Kyler is a freak. … I would take him with the first pick of the draft if I could.”
Now, Kingsbury and Murray have the same agent. So they could keep the loop pretty tight when it comes to sketching a potential deal before the draft opens Thursday. And there’s the fact the Cardinals have not really tipped their hand either way, not indicating they’re going to take a quarterback, yet certainly not ruling it out.
As for the conspiracy theories, there are plenty. Word spread after the Keim comment that Rosen had removed all his Cardinals photos from Instagram. Proof the former UCLA star had one foot out the door? Not really. Turns out, all his photos
were deleted and subsequently restored. Rosen also had written on Twitter before the Keim remark that his Instagram account had been hacked.
Then there was word that one Nike store in Arizona had slashed prices on Rosen jerseys to $60 from $100 — a sure sign he was as good as gone.
The story lost steam, though, when the Cardinals pointed out the prices on all jerseys were reduced to make room for new inventory, and jerseys bearing the name and number of the team’s most popular player, Fitzgerald, had been marked down nearly $100.
Rosen addressed the speculation recently in an interview with Sports Illustrated video feature on him.
“I think the best advice I’ve ever gotten, from so many different people is ‘control what you can control,’” Rosen said. “And whatever decisions are made, it’s my duty to prove them right if they keep me, and prove them wrong if they ship me off.”
Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio made a case last week that Murray’s decision to attend the draft hints at him being the top pick.
Wrote Florio: “If he didn’t believe he’d be the first overall pick at a time when so many expect it to be him, would he walk into the embarrassment that necessarily would flow from sitting there in the green room while someone else becomes the first person to make the walk across the stage for a bear hug with Roger Goodell?”