Time Running Out To Capitalize On Kyler Murray’s Rookie Deal

There are two ways you can look at the 2021 season for the Arizona Cardinals.

The first—it was a success. They ended a playoff drought that stretched back to the 2015 season and Kyler Murray demonstrated clear development as a quarterback.

On the other hand, the Cardinals suffered yet another slump in the second half of the season, winning just two games after the bye to slump from 9-2 to 11-6, surrendering a commanding position in the NFC West and finishing second in the division behind the Los Angeles.

With that collapse mirroring a 2020 season in which they missed the playoffs after heading into the bye at 5-2 only to then finish 8-8 and this campaign capped by a crushing Wild Card defeat to the Rams, it is fair to wonder how much progress has been made under Kliff Kingsbury.

Optimists will point to the progress of Murray, who was a top 10 quarterback by Ben Baldwin’s Expected Points Added and Completion Percentage Over Expectation composite metric and by Football Outsiders’ Defense-adjusted Yards Above Replacement and Defense-adjusted Value Over Average.

Yet, given the way in which they crumbled down the stretch and in the playoffs, it is fair to question whether the Cardinals have the roster to make the most of Murray’s abilities while he remains on his rookie contract.

Next season will mark the fourth year of Murray’s deal, while he play the 2023 season under the fifth-year option.

In other words, the Cardinals do not have a lot of time to win before Murray gets expensive, and the holes on the roster are plentiful.

The impact of the loss of DeAndre Hopkins to a knee injury is evidence of the lack of depth on offense. Any team would miss Hopkins, but the Cardinals sank from second in pass yards per attempt between Weeks 1 and 14 to 24th in the same category between Weeks 15 and 18 after he was ruled out.

That is an extraordinary difference for one player—albeit an All-Pro receiver—to make, though the Cardinals’ struggles on offense in the blowout defeat by the Rams were as much to do with their issues protecting Murray as a lack of receiving options beyond Hopkins.

It is something of a similar picture on defense. The household names, Chandler Jones and J.J. Watt, are in the second half of their careers and it is tough to identify young players beyond safety Budda Baker who can be viewed as definitive building blocks for Arizona.

The paucity of foundational players on defense is reflected by the Cardinals’ drop-off on defense after Watt suffered the shoulder injury that kept him out of the rest of the regular season. Arizona was second in EPA per play on defense between Weeks 1 and 7, but 23rd between Weeks 8 and 18 following Watt’s injury.

Scrutiny will naturally fall on head coach Kingsbury in the wake of the Cardinals’ meek end to the season, with Arizona yet to enjoy a year to justify his appointment after an unconvincing career in college.

Yet the Cardinals’ inability to contend to go deep into the postseason so far during the Kingsbury-Murray era is a failure of roster construction, rather than coaching.

General manager Steve Keim was allowed to pick a first-round quarterback for the second year in a row after whiffing on Josh Rosen in 2018, and his decisions since have done little to vindicate his continued presence in the role.

Of the 60 defensive snaps against the Rams on Monday, 2020 first-round linebacker Isaiah Simmons played 19 and 2021 first-round linebacker Zaven Collins played eight.

Put simply, the Cardinals invested premium picks for two players who were not trusted to contribute during the biggest game of the season, while their headline free-agency moves were to sign Watt and 33-year-old wide receiver A.J. Green, two players looking to cap Hall of Fame careers with Super Bowl rings.

They were win-now signings for a team that hadn’t sniffed the playoffs in half a decade and the result of those investments and misused draft capital is a roster ill-equipped to defeat elite competition when the likes of Murray and Hopkins cannot elevate the Cardinals to a higher level.

Arizona has the most valuable asset in the NFL, a top-tier quarterback on a rookie contract, but they are in serious danger of wasting that commodity.

Estimated to be just under $10million below the 2022 cap by Spotrac, the Cardinals do not have a lot of wiggle room in an offseason where Jones, Green and Zach Ertz are among their free agents.

However, neither Keim nor Kingsbury can afford another year where Arizona ultimately fails to find postseason success, and the onus is firmly on the former to ensure a roster lacking foundational pieces is in a better position to support a quarterback with the talent to put the Cardinals over the top.