The Cardinals Are Reportedly Struggling To Hire A Head Coach Because Nobody Wants To Put Up With Kyler Murray's Shit
Patrick Smith. Getty Images.Why is the Arizona Cardinals head coach job taking so long to fill? If you are to believe what people in Mobile are saying, it’s due to Kyler Murray — and it’s not because the quarterback has a large say in the matter.
Rather, many of the desired candidates don’t want to take the job knowing they’ll be tied to the hip of Murray for the next four seasons. Murray signed a five-year, $230 million contract in late August, and anyone who takes the Cardinals job will have no options in the foreseeable future at quarterback.
The greatest thing about Senior Bowl week in Mobile, Alabama, is typically getting a look at top NFL Draft prospects, because 'tis that SZN for any fan base who's not playing in the Super Bowl next Sunday. However, people also tend to spill tea about huge offseason storylines, and that's what we have here with the Cardinals and Kyler Murray.
Newly minted Arizona GM Monti Ossenfort is a longtime Patriots guy. We see most of these ex-Pats try to replicate the success they've had in New England elsewhere by hiring former Bill Belichick assistants as their head coach and purging the roster to fit their "WAY" of doing things. Almost always ends in spectacular failure.
So while I'm fully anticipating Ossenfort to hire Brian Flores because that's just how these Patriots castoffs tend to do things, I understand why Flores and other candidates don't want to marry themselves to Kyler. Dude seems like an absolute nightmare to deal with.
Funny how local media and Cardinals fans react to any callouts related to their face of the franchise. I guess they have no choice but to defend Kyler, because what other hope do you cling to at this point?
Notable here is how many strays fired coach Kliff Kingsbury catches. "Fringe NFL-level preparation and modeling", "bad coaching", and "coddling"…? OK maybe some of that is true. Also possible: Kyler, uh, skated by on his knowledge of a college-style offense, refused to evolve to make the scheme more sophisticated, or was otherwise incapable of executing it on that level at this point in his career.
What I'm getting at here is, Kyler doesn't get a total free pass just because Kingsbury didn't have the goods. From my view, Kingsbury was making the most out of an untenable situation. I've put Kyler on blast a fair amount but only because the criticism is warranted and shit keeps happening that fuels it all.
I feel like Kyler hasn't really maximized his potential or his capacity to understand football. That's how you get clauses in your nine-figure contract for bare-minimum film study requirements. From a pure talent and excitement standpoint, Kyler is about as electric as it gets. Hence my ongoing frustration with what appears to be perpetually entitled behavior on his part.
Could a fresh start under a new regime, and a humbling, brutal recovery from a torn ACL be what Kyler needs to turn the public perception about him around? I sure hope so. It blows that he blew out his knee toward the end of a lost season. I empathize with him on that front. This guy is an all-time athlete at the quarterback position and I want to see him fight through all this early-career adversity and lift the Cardinals to new heights. I just don't know if he'll ever get out of his own way.
That seems to be a concern shared by Arizona's coaching candidates. And please don't come at me with the trite "HE'S SO MISUNDERSTOOD!" take. Name me one time in professional sports where the "misunderstood" athlete turns out to be, in fact, a great human and winds up winning at a prolific rate without fundamentally changing their personality. You can't.
Twitter @MattFitz_gerald/TikTok