In 2024, no division was more wide open than the NFC West.
The Los Angeles Rams were bouncing back from the retirement of Aaron Donald, one of the best defensive players ever. The San Francisco 49ers’ aging core seemed to pile on injury after injury. While capable of making the playoffs, Geno Smith and the Seattle Seahawks were a shaky choice for a division winner.
This should have been the year of the Arizona Cardinals. The year that former No. 1 pick and Heisman winner Kyler Murray should have led his team to glory. Or at least the playoffs.
Trey McBride had proved himself to be a formidable weapon. With the fourth pick in the draft, the Cardinals took a supposed “generational” wide receiver talent in Marvin Harrison Jr. Budda Baker remained a top talent on the defensive end.
Everything was set up for the Arizona Cardinals to succeed. At one point during the season, they even led the division.
Yet, at the end of the season, Arizona achieved a familiar result— playoff elimination.
With this elimination comes many questions, but the most important one remains: Is Kyler Murray good enough to deliver real success to this ailing franchise?
Kyler Murray’s High Expectations
He was billed as a superstar right out of the University of Oklahoma.
He was such an exceptional athlete that he had to make one of the rarest decisions in professional sports: whether to play baseball or football, as he was a top prospect in both.
Eventually, he chose the NFL and was drafted by the Arizona Cardinals first overall.
Is Kyler Murray the Future of the Cardinals?
Sadly, Kyler Murray has hit a glass ceiling in his NFL career.
Murray is an exceptionally talented QB. Unfortunately, his play doesn’t justify the absurd amount of money he is being paid. Put simply, this is because he is not a top-five or even top-ten quarterback.
Currently, Kyler Murray takes up around 20% of the Cardinals’ cap space, all on his own. In NFL history, teams have won very few Super Bowls without an elite quarterback. For the few that have (Nick Foles in 2018 comes to mind), typically, the quarterback is paid so little that he can have an elite team surrounding him.
More than that, Murray plays fewer games than his peers due to injury concerns surrounding his style of play. He has also made the playoffs once in his six seasons in the NFL. In that game, he played very poorly, putting up 137 yards and two interceptions in an embarrassing blowout to the Rams. While his statistics look good on paper, from game to game, his play fluctuates drastically.
His lack of consistency has prevented him from being elite, and Cardinals fans must be wondering: Should they trade Kyler Murray?
Leave a comment