The Most Interesting Man in Football, former Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray, will be at the Fort Worth Club on Monday night to accept the 2018 Davey O’Brien National Quarterback Award and face an assembled media throng for the first time since announcing on Twitter that he is all-in on an NFL career and completely done with the Oakland A’s and professional baseball.
Earlier this week, Murray chose to give back the brunt of his $4.66 million signing bonus from the team that spent a first-round pick on him in last year’s MLB Draft because he now projects as a consensus first-round pick in April’s NFL Draft. The move has sent shock waves through executives in both sports.
Throughout the NFL, general managers are debating whether the undersized Murray truly measures up to his listed dimensions in the OU media guide (5-foot-10, 185 pounds). They wonder if he can make the same dazzling plays at the next level that allowed him to claim the Heisman Trophy in his lone season as a starting quarterback in college.
It makes for a fascinating discussion, with personnel “experts” split on the merits of Murray’s NFL future.
Arizona Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury, whose team has the No. 1 overall pick, deemed Murray an athletic “freak” that he “would take … with the first pick of the draft if I could” while coaching last season at Texas Tech, shortly before the Sooners’ 51-46 victory in Lubbock on Nov. 3.
Executives with the New York Giants, meanwhile, consider Murray too tiny to take with the sixth overall pick in April. A team source told SNY’s Ralph Vacchiano earlier this week that Murray is “probably a little too small” to cause them to cast aside their existing height standards for the position. The Giants have not had a quarterback shorter than 6-foot tall on their roster since 1966.
So, what is the truth in the Curious Case of Kyler Murray as it pertains to his NFL future? Can he be a game-changer and a franchise-maker at the next level, or will he fall short of making an NFL impact like so many first-round quarterback busts selected in recent seasons?
As analysts seek, and fail, to draw convincing parallels between Murray and shorter-than-6-foot NFL quarterbacks of recent vintage (Russell Wilson) and days of yore (Eddie LeBaron, Doug Flutie, Sonny Jurgensen), there is one parallel that fits Murray to a “T.”
Kyler Murray is Johnny Manziel, Texas A&M’s 2012 Heisman winner, without the endless off-field drama and poor personal choices that led to Manziel’s current status as a JAG quarterback (just a guy) with the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League. Whatever you thought of Manziel’s chances to succeed in the NFL as a first-round pick in 2014 if he could get his personal life in order, think the same about Murray.
But understand this: Neither you, me, Kingsbury, ESPN analyst Mel Kiper, Jr. or Hall-of-Fame-bound talent guru Gil Brandt knows whether Murray can make it in the NFL. Deep down, neither does Murray. He just knows that he can sign for more than the $4.66 million that Oakland paid him to play professional baseball, if he’s a first-round pick as an NFL quarterback. Once that bonus check is banked, he’ll take it from there and try to succeed at the sport that is his greater passion.
Applaud that. The guy is a football unicorn, two inches shorter than Manziel when the former A&M star was drafted by Cleveland in 2014, but blessed with more foot speed, similar improvisational skills and a stronger arm. Murray also has something else in common with Manziel that makes evaluating him a challenge for NFL talent appraisers.
Brandt, the Dallas Cowboys’ chief talent scout from 1960-1989, raised the issue for the first time while watching a game between two other teams in Manziel’s historic 2012 season, when Johnny Football became the first freshman in history to win the Heisman.
“He’ll never be better protected in his life than he is right now,” Brandt said that day, singing the praises of Texas A&M’s stellar crew in the trenches. “He’s got three first-round NFL picks in front of him, and all five of those guys will play at the next level.”
Brandt made that assessment in October of 2012. Eventually, all five of A&M’s starting offensive linemen that season played in the NFL, with the three standouts (Luke Joeckel, Jake Matthews, Cedric Ogbuehi) entering the league as first-round picks, as Brandt envisioned.
With unprecedented protection, Manziel frequently extended plays to laughable levels before he found an open receiver up to eight seconds after taking the snap (usually Mike Evans, another first-round pick on that offense). If no one shook free, Manziel shook loose and scrambled for a first down to extend the drive, wear down the opposing defense and create some eye-popping offensive stats.
Fast forward six years, and Murray did basically the same thing at Oklahoma. The Sooners’ offensive line last season earned the 2018 Joe Moore Award, given annually to the nation’s best five-man front in college football. From tackle-to-tackle, Sooners starters averaged 6-foot-5, 316 pounds per man.
All five are expected to move on to the NFL, with four of them projected to be selected in the first to third rounds when their college careers are done. Because of the Sooners’ talent in the trenches, combined with a universal reluctance among Big 12 defensive coordinators to blitz Murray for fear of letting him scramble into the open field with his 4.3 speed, Murray enjoyed more unfettered time in the pocket last season than any college quarterback I have seen since Manziel.
At the next level, Murray won’t be able to sit in the pocket and count to “12 Mississippi” before the first pass rusher gets in his grill. Guys like Von Miller, J.J. Watt and DeMarcus Lawrence arrive quickly and hit hard, which is one of my biggest questions about Murray. Can he take a “big boy” football hit?
He’s been sliding at the feet of defenders, or running out of bounds, to avoid contact since his days at Allen High School. I understand self-preservation, but can he stand up to a blind-side hit from an NFL defender? At that level, those are inevitable for any quarterback.
Not everyone can. Check out the YouTube moment that unfolded last week in the AAF, when San Antonio linebacker Shaan Washington – a former TCU and Texas A&M player – laid a legal blind-side hit on San Diego quarterback Mike Bercovici (6-0, 204). There was no flag, but Bercovici’s helmet flew off his head and landed at least five yards away. Bercovici also left the game to enter concussion protocol.
Could Murray, who probably will not measure a full 5-10 at the NFL Combine, stand up to something like that? How about a hit like the one former OU teammate Tre Brown delivered in last year’s Big 12 championship game on Texas quarterback Sam Ehlinger (6-3, 236) that resulted in a game-turning safety during the Sooners’ 39-27 win? Ehlinger never saw Brown coming, at full-speed, on a blind-side blitz but popped back up and handed the ball to the official.
If I am a general manager thinking about investing a $20 million signing bonus on Murray, his durability remains a huge unsettled issue that cannot be answered before draft day. The rest of his game is impressive and entertaining to watch.
Another concern is his ability to throw the ball over the outstretched hands of NFL pass rushers. However, Brandt believes that will not be an issue at the next level.
Earlier this week, on his Twitter account, Brandt posted this observation: “Lots of talk about whether @TheKylerMurray is big enough to throw over NFL linemen. Never was problem at Oklahoma … He found throwing lanes w/ pocket movement. Also had sixth sense w/ blind-side pressure. He’ll be just fine.”
In fairness, batted balls have never been an issue for Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson (5-11), the NFL’s only starting quarterback shorter than 6-foot with a Super Bowl ring. Wilson has yet to post a double-digit total for batted-down passes in any of his seven seasons as a starter, while the league leader in each of those years has been someone 6-3 or taller. The largest total in that stretch belongs to Brandon Weeden (21), with 6-5 Blake Bortles leading the league with 20 in both the 2015 and 2016 seasons.
If Wilson can avoid that problem, so can Murray. What he cannot avoid are ongoing questions about how much his physical stature might impact his ability to become a star at the next level. Murray will begin putting his spin on those questions Monday night in Fort Worth, but the real answers will come when he is weighed, measured and quizzed at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis. The day for quarterbacks at this year’s combine is March 2.
Those answers will determine how he is viewed when NFL teams begin making first-round picks April 25 in Nashville, Tenn. At this point, every mock draft that has been posted online projects Murray as a first-round pick. The range goes from the top overall pick, held by Kingsbury and Arizona, to No. 15 overall by Washington.
The most popular destination, based on 20 mock drafts consulted for this story, shows Murray going to Miami with either the No. 9 pick (projected trade-up) or the No. 13 pick the Dolphins own. ESPN’s Kiper and Todd McShay both project Murray to wind up in Miami with the 13th pick.
“Yes, the risk is apparent,” McShay wrote. “Murray is undersized … But he has an electric arm and some of the best athleticism I’ve seen at the position in years.”
During a recent appearance on ESPN’s NFL Live, shortly after Murray pledged allegiance to an NFL career, Kiper said, “Now we know he’s fully committed. He’s all-in. You can’t be a part-time quarterback in the NFL, like defensive backs and running backs have been in the past. At the combine, … it’s not about throwing. We know he’s got a great arm. We know he can run as fast as anybody. It’s about the height. Is he 5-9, 5-9 ½? How teams assess that, how he looks physically in terms of his frame and body type, and then the interview session is going to be critical. That is always the most critical part of the evaluation process, those one-on-one interviews with those NFL teams.”
Regardless of which team selects Murray, Kiper is confident it will be precedent-setting because Murray and Ohio State’s Dwayne Haskins are the only quarterbacks worthy of first-round grades, in his estimation.
“The height issue is going to be something teams are going to have to debate,” Kiper said. “This will be the first time ever that a franchise quarterback at 5-9 or 5-10 is going to go this high. Russell Wilson went in the third round, so I think this is groundbreaking. This is something nobody has ever done. A GM that does this will do something completely new to the NFL.”