Arizona Cardinals: Kyler Murray already giving glimpses of bright future

Kyler Murray hasn’t won a game yet with the Arizona Cardinals but he’s already shown that the future is bright with him at the helm of the offense.

In just his second NFL game, 2019 first overall pick and Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray faced a Ravens defense that was a top-three unit a year ago on the road. Despite those odds stacked against him, Murray threw for 349 yards and finished with a passer rating of 90.5, though he didn’t throw a touchdown and the Cardinals.

Through two games with Arizona, Murray has thrown for 657 yards, two touchdowns and one interception while completing 57.4 percent of his passes, good for a passer rating of 81.7. By no means is Murray having the start to his career that someone like Cam Newton had when he first broke into the league back in 2011.

At the same time, it shouldn’t go unnoticed how interesting the Cardinals are compared to a year ago when they were an absolute disaster at 3-13 with Josh Rosen under center, a year in which the then-rookie threw 14 interceptions and 11 touchdowns. Arizona is the most exciting and intriguing winless team in football right now — and their ceiling is much higher than people give them credit for.

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The Cardinals offensive line is still a glaring weakness, as it was last year. The weapons don’t exactly blow you away either, at least outside of the ageless Larry Fitzgerald. Defensively, Arizona has taken a step back, especially with Patrick Peterson out of the mix for the first six games of the season due to suspension.

On the sidelines, new head coach Kliff Kingsbury is a decent offensive-minded coach, but he also went 35-40 overall and just 19-35 in Big 12 play at Texas Tech before coming on to the Cards. And from what we’ve seen out of him so far, he’s lacking some creativity in the play-calling, especially in the red zone.

For the most part, this offensive scheme is to line up four wide receivers and let Murray handle the blitz with his athleticism and maneuverability until he breaks the pocket. To this point, the rookie quarterback isn’t in a great position to succeed in the pocket as a passer. Of course, there’s also more than enough time to improve.

Murray’s ability to make any throw obviously helps him, but his football IQ and ability to avoid or just absorb contact make him a special young talent. He’s obviously a smaller quarterback that tips the scales at just over 200 pounds. But you’d never know that was an apparent issue given the way he deals with potentially devastating hits. He’s hard to even touch when on the run yet also knows when to slide and avoid unnecessary punishment.

Defenses are already blitzing him frequently to force him out of the pocket but Murray has kept himself safe. Yes, he’s been sacked eight times already behind a bad O-line but he’s shown strong durability when he does get brought down.

Say what you want about his lack of size and potential liability in terms of batted balls at the line of scrimmage. Say what you want about how bad the Cardinals are this year and how far they still need to go to develop a winning team. But Kyler Murray can play some football.

This team will be successful in a very short period because of the young quarterback — probably sooner than you would normally anticipate. This is not a three-win team. I think they win at least six games in 2019, starting with Week 3 against a Cam Newton-less Panthers team.

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Carolina plays mostly through their front seven, so they will likely dial up just as much pressure as the Lions and Ravens did in terms of the blitz. If Kingsbury opens up the field with four-wide receiver sets, though, the middle of the field should be open for Murray to pick apart.

We’re only two games into Murray’s career. But it’s clear already that the future is bright for the young signal-caller — and the present certainly isn’t bad either.

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