Kyler Murray is expected to be released by the Arizona Cardinals next week. This isn’t surprising news. In fact, the only reason Murray’s release is noteworthy is because the NFL offseason has been completely lethargic so far. The 2026 draft class is underwhelming and the UFA pool is even worse. Many teams desperately need help at QB. So much so that the San Francisco 49ers could go to the combine and honestly tell other teams that they want a first-round pick for Mac Jones (no one has taken up the offer yet). This makes Kyler Murray officially “interesting” to the Jets/Steelers/Dolphins/Vikings/Browns of this world.
The problem is that Murray’s entire career so far has been much more about plot than production.
Let’s go back. It’s 2019 and the Cardinals have decided that one year of Josh Rosen at QB is all the Josh Rosen they will need. So with the first overall pick that April, they took a mulligan and drafted Murray. He won Rookie of the Year honors in his first season. The following spring, then-Arizona GM Steve Keim found himself the beneficiary of Bill O’Brien’s idiocy, getting Texans WR DeAndre Hopkins, then in the prime of his career, for nothing. The Cardinals, who hadn’t won a title since 1947, suddenly had a top-tier weapon with a franchise QB. Next November, Americans stranded by COVID-19 will see this move bear delicious fruit.
Hopkins finished the season with 115 catches for 1,407 yards and six touchdowns. In theory, things will get better. A fantasy championship window was now wide open for Arizona. Pam Bondi testified to Congress that the market for pubic hair is now well over 50,000.
Little did fans realize that this would be the best season Murray and Hopkins would ever play together, and by a significant margin. Hopkins lasted only two more years in the literal desert before being thrown into the proverbial sea. Meanwhile, Murray’s relationship with the Cardinals organization began to deteriorate from the moment they signed the QB to a contract extension in the summer of 2022. You may remember the contract extension, specifically the clause in which Keim mandated that Murray study game tape on his own for at least four hours each week. The meaning was clear. The thing is that Murray was lazy and started the game. call of duty More than he has ever played professional football.
Now the Arizona Cardinals are a breathtakingly stupid organization, and smearing their QB as a disgruntled person right after giving him $160 million in guarantees was breathtakingly stupid. But the label still stuck, as fans and media members focused on Kyler’s every loss, every injury, and every grimace that followed.
Kyler Murray is only 28 years old. It’s a bit surprising if you’ve followed him throughout his career, but it can be entirely explained by the fact that he pried his trade from Arizona, where quarterbacks age faster than bananas at Safeway. Murray is by far the best QB drafted by the Arizona Cardinals. Still, his career lasted only seven seasons, and the Cards spent $38.6 million in dead cap money to get rid of him this season. In fact, the team made Murray memorable in the second half of 2025, just to get him out of the face a little early. As a treat. It is an inexplicably sad death. Hail Murray was seen as the beginning of something, not the culmination of it.
If you’re making it sound like Murray was purely a victim of circumstance, let’s go ahead and acknowledge that he’s been a horribly inconsistent professional quarterback. He has never reached 30 TDs in a season. He has never won a playoff game. He has played only one season since 2020. He struggled under pressure and often had to run out of the backfield for minutes at a time before catching a pass. He’s proven strangely incompetent at building on-field relationships with his top wideouts, whether it’s Hopkins or recent draftee Marvin Harrison Jr. And yes, he probably isn’t that fun at parties.
But he’s cheap. Like Russell Wilson’s in 2024, Murray’s contract included conflicting language, meaning his 2026 salary would be paid almost entirely by his former team rather than his new one. So any team can sign him to a one-year deal for the league minimum ($1.3 million). that Discovering potential savings for the 2026 offseason.
The recent success of reclamation projects such as Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold will create a market for Murray’s services. Teams like the Jets and Vikings, who are already connected to the former Heisman winner, could take a risk-free flier on him and end up with a serviceable bridge QB or, if they’re lucky, a late-blooming franchise QB. Perhaps those teams will be able to unleash Murray’s potential in a way the Cardinals seem to have denied him. Maybe they can get him to click with the top wideouts, get rid of the ball quicker, and get out of bounds when the linebackers double their weight and screw the shit out of him. Maybe they could get him into bird watching instead of the PlayStation. Maybe maybe maybe maybe. This could be the NFL’s season, with the released Kyler Murray offering more upside per dollar than any other QB. he is interestingEven if he doesn’t promise more than that.
