Leading OFF
Why the Arizona Cardinals should take Kyler Murray with the No. 1 pick
Go ahead, Arizona Cardinals. The dare is staring you in the face.
Choose Kyler Murray with the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft and chalk up a win, one way or another.
Murray, the most intriguing prospect surrounding this week’s NFL scouting combine, is the same dynamic quarterback who new Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury gushed about last fall before he could even imagine he’d wind up with the chance to build an NFL team around the reigning Heisman Trophy winner from Oklahoma.
Way back in October, when Kingsbury coached at Texas Tech, he had this to say to KLBK-TV in Lubbock, Texas: “I’d take him with the first pick of the draft if I could. I know he’s signed up to play baseball, but he is a dominant player, and I would take him with the first pick.”
Now, with Murray turning his back on pursuing a baseball career despite being drafted in the first round by the Athletics, the Cardinals can put their money where Kingsbury’s mouth was, in more ways than one.
Sure, the Cardinals already have a young franchise quarterback of the future in the house in Josh Rosen, last year’s first-round pick. But Rosen is so 2018. Much has changed since Arizona plucked Rosen out of UCLA with the 10th pick overall.
The Cardinals bucked conventional NFL wisdom by dumping coach Steve Wilks after just one season — that, like, never happens just months after a team invests heavily in a young quarterback — and rolling the dice on a flyer like Kingsbury, who has never coached a down in the NFL.
Well, why stop there. Kingsbury might become the next Sean McVay. Or he’s destined to be another Lane Kiffin. Regardless, if the Cardinals were so willing to go out of the box in trashing Wilks, they need to employ the same aggressiveness in managing the golden prospect who comes with the No. 1 pick.
“Franchise quarterbacks are extremely valuable,” Jimmy Johnson, the Fox Sports analyst with two Super Bowl championships on his resume, told USA TODAY. “If you have an opportunity to get one, regardless of what you have already, it pays dividends.”
Johnson knows. When he left the University of Miami as a national championship-credentialed coach to join the Cowboys in 1989 — unconventional because he joined former Arkansas teammate Jerry Jones and replaced the legend who was Tom Landry — he inherited the No. 1 pick.
They drafted Troy Aikman. Nothing unconventional there.
A few weeks later, Johnson took his Miami quarterback, Steve Walsh, with a first-round pick in the supplemental draft. Whoa!
It turns out it was Walsh, not Aikman, who quarterbacked the Cowboys to their only victory in 1989 when both rookies played significant snaps. After a 1-15 finish, the supplemental pick wound up with value as No. 1 overall. In 1990, Johnson traded Walsh to the Saints for first-, second- and third-round picks.
What did he do with those picks? Two of the choices were packaged in a trade with the Patriots that allowed Dallas to move up to draft defensive tackle Russell Maryland No. 1 overall in 1991. The thirdround choice turned out to become right tackle Erik Williams, an NFL All-Decade player who might ultimately be another Hall of Famer from those three Cowboys’ Super Bowl title teams of the ’90s.
So, when Johnson speaks, the Cardinals should listen.
“If they think he’s a great player, if they think he’s that good,” Johnson said of Murray, “they can decide who to move later. Rosen has shown enough that they could probably get a first-round pick for him. Everybody needs quarterbacks. They’re not going to lose money.”
It’s about options — and competition. If Rosen beats out Murray, there’s value to be had in dealing Murray. If Murray is the player Kingsbury crowed about, deal Rosen.
“We already had Aikman, but we took Walsh anyway,” Johnson reflected. “And Steve helped with our transition, even though we knew we weren’t going to keep him. He helped us down the road.”
The Cardinals could play it safe and perhaps select Ohio State’s Nick Bosa, widely projected as the top edge rusher in the draft. Bosa would boost the D, but using the premium quarterback market to ultimately secure more picks seems like a better option for a franchise that won’t be in next January’s Super Bowl. The Cardinals have such wide-ranging talent needs that one NFL head coaching candidate turned down the chance to interview with the team after Wilks was fired after getting an analysis from his team’s personnel department, a person with knowledge of the situation told USA TODAY. The person was not authorized to speak on behalf of that team and requested anonymity.
Johnson isn’t sure Murray would be his pick at No. 1 in a draft that will also feature Ohio State’s Dwayne Haskins, projected by some as the top quarterback.
“Kyler is a head-scratcher,” Johnson said of Murray, whose height — maybe 5 feet, 10 inches — raises flags to some. “He can put you right in the playoffs or, alternately, he could be hurt in the second game.
“But I love him as a player. He’s very exciting.”
Johnson isn’t so much turned off by Murray’s lack of height, which he compensates for with a cannon arm and exceptional mobility. Besides, Drew Brees (6-0, 209) and Russell Wilson (5-11, 215) have shown size isn’t the only factor.
“He absolutely has to go to a system that fits his style,” Johnson said. “Everyone talks about his height. But he’s not thick, like Russell Wilson. That scares me.”
Still, Kingsbury, despite being fired as Texas Tech coach and quickly bolting as Southern California’s offensive coordinator when the Arizona job opened, has the track record and system that could be a perfect match for Murray.
With Cardinals general manager Steve Keim holding the keys for personnel decisions, it’s not Kingsbury’s decision alone to draft Murray. Yet what general manager worth his salt doesn’t want to acquire the type of players the coach desires, especially a coach who they have already bet the house on.
“Let everybody speculate,” Kingsbury, often reminded of the Murray buzz, told The Arizona Republic last week. “That’s your job this time of year, to have fun with all those scenarios. It’s a unique opportunity for the Cardinals and the media market here to have the first pick, and we understand that. I think it’s great, all the attention it brings to our brand. But we’ll continue to be behind the curtain and work on what we’re working on.”
If it’s about building a winner for the long haul, the Cardinals need to get out of the box and, well, swing for the fences.