Bickley Blast: Arizona Cardinals’ Kyler Murray has never been under a microscope like this

Bickley Blast: Arizona Cardinals’ Kyler Murray has never been under a microscope like this

Kyler Murray has been ridiculed, celebrated, mocked, measured, and memorialized by a statue at his alma mater, but he has never been under a microscope like this. When Murray returns to the starting lineup on Monday Night Football in Dallas, and that is only an assumption at this point, he must prove he is better than Jacobe Brassette. And that’s a tall order for a short quarterback who cannot see the field like his 6’4 backup. And then there’s the stress and what Murray might be feeling internally because for the first time in his football life, somebody is coming for his job. And that’s because Murray’s shortcomings have been laid bare by the veteran Brassette. And when he returns, he needs to stay in the pocket. He does. He can’t bail at the first sign of trouble. He needs to accept contact in the really big moments when absolutely necessary. He needs to feed his wide receivers down the field and Trey McBride in the red zone. He needs to keep this offense looking the way it has the past two weeks. And that folks will require more than his trademark twitchy elusiveness, off-schedule brilliance, and electrifying athletic ability. That will demand real courage. That means playing the position and now not out running the position. A time when Murray must stand and deliver or we all move on because more than anything, we need closure with this story and this player one way or another. Kyler has a tough job coming up. He really does because I think this entire city, maybe this entire country has seen this offense be capable of winning football, arguably against two of the best teams in football. All right, as I like to say, today’s Bickley Blast brought to you by my great friends at Chapman BMW. Now, back to Kyler Murray and what we’re going to see in the next couple of weeks. We’ve got two weeks of downtime. What is going to happen between now and then? As we discussed in the 6:00 hour after Jacobe Brassett’s breakout performance in Indianapolis, which was a revelation to everybody, it was everybody who was ridiculing Drew Petting’s passing schemes were like, “Oh, the these actually kind of work. Maybe they are open down. Maybe they are open down the field.” and then feeding the wide receivers. Wow, maybe we do have competent wide receivers. All that stuff came out of that game and has been in the air ever since. You heard Wolf yesterday, he thought Jacobe Brassette was better in his second game than his first game. So, you wonder what’s happening in that locker room. If if there are wide receivers now who have been fed, do they want to go back to Kyler Murray? If there are people in that locker room who really don’t like Kyler Murray’s brand of leadership, do they want to move on to Jacobe Brassette? We’ve heard people rave about Kyler Murray’s leadership. Marvin Harrison Jr. was among the most recent. So, I’m really just spitballing here. But these are very, very fair questions after a backup comes in and lifts the offense the way Jacobe Brassette did. And AQ Shipley joined us yesterday and kind of echoed some of the things you said in in the blast there. He’s got a tough job. He’s got to prove that he can operate this offense in a manner that we saw Jacobe Buret operate the offense. I think the offense certainly played well enough to win those games. I know they had opportunities to make one more play to actually win those games. But Beck, something that’s kind of struck me and I I I don’t know. This could just be speculation, conjecture. It’s certainly my opinion. I I’m getting the sense there’s something a little wonky going on and I I can’t quite put my finger on what uh Jonathan Ganon’s press conference answers as of late doesn’t mention Kyler by name. He’s very kind of quick almost reticent if you will uh with the nothing’s changed follow-up nothing’s changed. He was a little more loquacious with Burns and Gambo on his weekly radio show, but it’s too early to tell. You know, we’ll see with the fact that it’s still an assumption that he’ll play against the Cowboys is odd to me. You would think that that that would be a four-w week mark that they would since he was questionable for the Colts game. Yeah. And a game time decision. You would think that by the time the Cowboys game rolled around Yeah. they would be counting on him to be back. Yeah. For that. And it’s just kind of like Ganon’s kind of shut down the media in his press conferences talking about the quarters situation, talking about Kyler, mentioning Kyler B. I I don’t know. I I just wonder the trade deadline is the day after the Cowboys game. Okay, that’s very interesting to me. I I just I don’t I don’t That’s very interesting to me, Tim, because if if you were say if the Cardinals were thinking to themselves, okay, you know what, Kyler’s not happy, and again, this is just conceptual, theoretical, no reporting happening here. So, we’re clear. If Kyler Murray is in that room not happy for whatever reasons, okay, if the team is looking at Jacobe Brassette and saying, “We need more of that.” And if they’re worried about Kyler Murray um and next year and the contract and the cap hit and all that kind of stuff, would they be thinking of trading him right now? Because I’m telling you right now, you’ve got a team in the Minnesota Vikings that need a quarterback and you got a team in the Minnesota Vikings with a head coach who thinks he can rehabilitate anybody and he’s got a real good track record to prove it except for Carson Wentz who is probably unredeemable. It’s just a thought because because if you were entertaining that then he wouldn’t play Monday night in Dallas, right? But the thought is like did Kyler Murray do enough this year that they have now made that decision that we don’t need him the rest of the season that we’re giving up on this season and that we are giving up on them. Does that mean you’re giving up on the season? If you trade Kyler Murray, they they Why? They played arguably two of their best football games of the season. Have you watched those last two games? They lost both of the games just like they lost the pre they’ve they won two games with Kyler Murray. They won zero games and Jared they actually you could make the Wolves said they played the best game of their season against the Packers. You could actually make the case they played better against the Colts and Packers than they did against the Saints and Panthers. And these are two teams expected to make deep playoffs. The offense looked better. I agree with you completely. I just find it hard that like Well, you can’t you you’re not going to pin the defense on Kyler Murray. Are are you moving you’re you’re saying that you’re moving on from Kyler Murray based on those first five games of this season? I’m saying that that would you think of trading him if you now realize we need a pocket quarterback. We need somebody to do what Jacobe Brassette does. We need to because Jacobe Brassett’s under contract for next year. So you could have Jacobe Brassette as your guy. You could draft a quarterback especially if this season goes south. you might have that top five pick. Well, I’m just I’m just this is all conceptual, folks. And also though, it what does Kyler Murray think right now as if if if Kyler Murray is kind of in a a mindset or a mental place where he’s now not happy and he wants to move on. I I I don’t know. I mean, and that cuz that’s a factor as well. Well, you wonder like are is the coaching staff telling them like, did you watch these last two games? We need you to play like this. This is how our offense works. And if Kyler’s saying, “Well, that’s not how I play.” Yeah. I don’t I don’t get You don’t design an offense for me to accentuate my strengths and Yeah. I I’ve had enough of this, too. I I don’t That’s what I’m saying, man. And it’s ever since that game in Indianapolis, there have been it’s eggshells around this topic. That’s what it feels like to me. Just in their verbiage, the way they handle press conferences, everything. And that’s all I’m saying. To me, this is just instinctual on my part. Could be wrong, could be nothing. There just appears to be something, I’ll use the word again, something wonky going on between the Cardinals and Kyler Murray in this entire situation right now here today. Burns and Gambo during a great interview with Jonathan Ganon asked if that kind of offense, the deep throws, the chunk plays, if they can translate with Kyler Murray. Yeah, I mean, if if that’s what the defense is giving them, you know what I mean? So, there’s a there’s an element to that, too. What plays are we calling? um you know what they decide to play in those moments. You know the one long one went to Z yesterday. You know they played a version of cover two uh and I call that a honey hole shot. you got a chance to throw a honey hole shot, you you know, you can try to rip it in there and he did, you know. So, it’s it’s it’s a it’s a little bit a tough answer for me, I guess, to answer that. But, yeah, I think we need to continue on offense um to be aggressive when we can. Um try to generate explosives because we know explosives lead the points. Sure. uh and staying on the field, being efficient with what we’re doing on mixed downs and then obviously moving the chains on third down and then scoring points in the red zone. You know, when you look at our red zone last yesterday, um that’s a that’s a you know, a thing an area in that game where you look at everything and how could we be a little more efficient down. All right, that was Jonathan Ganon on that. More on this. We’re going to be over this all week actually for a couple weeks now. This is quite a uh twist in the football season. Thanks for watching Bickley and Marada. Click to see the latest Bickley blast and hit the button in the middle to subscribe to Arizona Sports.

Dan Bickley breaks down what the Arizona Cardinals should do with Kyler Murray after the team’s bye week on his Bickley blast.

Subscribe to the Arizona Sports daily newsletter: https://bit.ly/3QWcj1x

Read articles from Arizona Sports: https://arizonasports.com/

Download the Arizona Sports app: https://arizonasports.com/the-arizona-sports-98-7-fm-app/

Sign up for texts from Arizona Sports: https://arizonasports.com/text-alerts/

Listen live to Arizona Sports: https://arizonasports.com/listen-live/

Watch live: arizonasports.com/watch-live

Follow the team: https://bit.ly/3R0PIAJ

ARIZONA SPORTS SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArizonaSports/

X: https://x.com/azsports

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@arizonasports987

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arizsports/

ARIZONA SPORTS PODCASTS: https://arizonasports.com/category/podcasts/

Video: Felisa Cárdenas and Jeremy Schnell/Arizona Sports