After a successful recovery from a torn ACL, Kyler Murray looked the part of a franchise quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals down the stretch run of the 2023 season. But that isn’t stopping people from reading into the team’s admittedly weird messaging.
On Monday morning, just before the start of the 2024 NFL Scouting Combine, the Cardinals sent out a tweet endorsing Murray as their quarterback. Without thinking any harder about it, of course they did! They’ve got $35.3 million in guaranteed money committed to Murray next season, and many would likely agree he just needs better playmakers to start consistently playing like a Pro Bowler again.
But to randomly endorse Murray just before the start of the Combine? Yeah, something seems fishy here when you realize Murray’s dead salary cap hits precipitously drop every year after 2024:
Our franchise QB. pic.twitter.com/eVARCYF8wS
— Arizona Cardinals (@AZCardinals) February 26, 2024
The Cardinals have a precedent of moving on from highly-touted quarterbacks in this manner. In mid-February 2019, with the No. 1 overall pick in hand, the team sent a cheeky tweet trying to dispel any controversy surrounding former top-10 pick Josh Rosen. Arizona ended up drafting Murray later that spring and eventually traded away Rosen.
Something similar could happen again here, as Arizona is armed with the No. 4 overall pick this year, but it seems much more preposterous. Rosen was far from proven when the Cardinals offloaded him with a chance at the top quarterback prospect. Murray, by contrast, has a Pro Bowl track record, a massive contract, and the Cardinals would need to trade up to draft one of 2024’s top quarterback prospects (Caleb Williams, Drake Maye, and perhaps even Jayden Daniels).
The situations aren’t that similar, but it’s still not hard to connect the dots because it’s impossible to know how the Cardinals really feel about Murray. I’d say he’s safe as the face of their franchise, but wholly trusting an NFL team media apparatus this time of year feels like a foolish decision.
