The Ringer NFL Show - Reactions to Kyler Murray’s Extension

Episode Date: July 21, 2022

Kevin and Danny react to Kyler Murray’s five-year, $230 million contract extension. They analyze what the deal could mean for future QB contracts and how the Cardinals can improve this season. Host: Kevin Clark and Danny Kelly Associate Producer: Stefan Anderson Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome to a golf podcast unlike any other. This is Fairway Rowland on the Ringer podcast network. I am your starter. Joe House every week on Fairway Rowland. It is myself and our PGA tour correspondent on the ground, Nathan Hubbard, talking all things professional golf, amateur golf, amateur betting, professional betting, amateur drinking, professional drinking, by Birdie Buddies.

If you want to hit them straight out there, please check out Fairway Rowland every week. Available on Spotify. It is the Ringar NFL show, part of the Ringar Podcast Network. I am Kevin Clark, Emergency Edition. You were supposed to around this time hear Ben Stillach and Danny Kelly talk about

the top rookie wide receivers. Well, Traylon Burke's argument. Instead, Tyler Murray has signed $230 million five-year deal with the Cardinals that will keep him in Arizona, $160 million guaranteed. Danny Kelly is here to break down. Danny, what's going on, brother? What's happening, man? How are you doing?

I'm processing this. There's so much to unpack with the Cardinals just as an organization. I don't know where to start. Let's start here. Is Kyla Murray worth a mega extension? I think so, yes. I think there's obviously going to be question marks about his long-term future in the league because he's had some ups and downs as a passer.

But at the end of the day, I was just looking at, like, his numbers over his first three years in the NFL. And he's been, I mean, he's improved gradually every season he's been in the league. Last year, I was actually surprised to see he was third in PFF's passing grade, first and big time throw rate. So he's making big time play. First and big time throw, yeah. And over the middle of the field, he improved last year, which is important because his

height has been, his vision is height. Right. That has been something people have dinged him on. He improved. If he's not ever going to be Drew Breeze there, he's not ever going to be Peyton Manning, but he's improved in that area of the field. Yeah, exactly.

And look, I think there's always going to be limitations, like he said, but the improvement is there. His completion rate has gone up each year. His pass rating has gone up each year. His yards per temp has gone up each year. And the Cardinals record, by the way, has improved each year.

Wow. So it's one of those things where I look at this, I'm saying, like, we could get into the weeds about exactly how much they gave him. I'm not too worried about that because this is what quarterbacks make. I just don't think they can move on from him at this point. Like, they're pot committed.

It makes so much sense for them to re-up him and just basically hitch their wagon to him for the long term. Because, like, what else are they going to do? It just doesn't make any sense for them to move on from them. So, you know, I'm actually pretty bullish on Kylo or long term. He has some personality quirks, I think, that probably rub people the wrong way. but at the end of the day, like I said, he's improved each year. And, you know, I think he's still improving. He's still going to get better.

And they're doing a better job. It feels like of putting some talent around him. So I don't think it's a bad deal at all. Okay. First of all, you said something in there that should be the tagline for the entire Cardinals franchise, which is the phrase, what else were they going to do? Yeah, yeah.

Like, that's it. It just feels like that's been their operating mode for the past couple of years. When you say personality quirks, do you mean he's a gamer? No, I just mean, like, I think, you know, based on the interviews I've seen that some of the, like the scrubbing of his socials and all that, I know a lot of athletes do that these days. But I just think, you know, obviously he's not sort of the standard what I think a lot of teams have wanted a quarterback to be like gregarious in interviews and things like that. He sort of just doesn't really talk a whole lot kind of deal in the interviews that I've seen. So maybe that's the deal.

But yeah, again, like you said, they had to do it. Like they had no other choice, I really feel like. I don't, I have a couple things on that. Number one is that I was saying about this and I was going to say that this was a particularly ugly situation and it wasn't ugly at all. Like, Kyla Murray took off Cardinals from his Instagram and then Eric Burkhart, their agent, released a statement like in February. Like that was it.

Like it got, maybe it felt ugly, but like if this is the ugliest NFL contract negotiations can get, then NFL teams are doing pretty well with their franchise quarterbacks. Yeah. The personality thing, I kind of think we're in year like 10 of people, we see a franchise quarterback and we say, well, he doesn't really have the personality for it. Right. I don't think that this generation of quarterbacks, this isn't 1985 anymore. I think that there's a lot more low-key quarterbacks who, I mean, I would almost say, like, I was going to say lead by example, but they don't even have to do that. Like, I don't, I don't think you need.

Right, right. You can find the rah-rah guys in other parts of the field to run the line. to run the locker room and all that stuff. I don't think you need that sort of command the room leader of men. I don't think there's a lot of franchise quarterbacks who do that. I mean, look at the most of everybody loves Joe Burrow and Matthew Stafford, the two quarterbacks winning the Super Bowl last year. Neither of those guys are anything other than kind of chill bros.

So I think the personality thing to me, Herbert, these guys are, that personality thing to me has gotten overrated to the point that I think most of it is junk science. I think the bigger thing when you're talking about scouting quarterback personalities is work ethic, which I don't think has been questioned in any of the people that we just named over the course of their career. I want to talk about the Cardinals offense. So this team regressed

over the course of the season. It was real bad. It was real bad at the end. And the playoff game was a complete disaster. And I think that people started to question the long-term viability of everything that was going on there. Not just

Kyler, but Cliff, who got an extension. Kime, who got an extension, like, what direction is this flowing in? Yeah. Give me, first of all, the best case for this Cardinals offense this year. So the best case is they don't regress terribly

down the second half of the year, because that's happened, I think, every year that Cliff has been the coach. The best case is they don't do what they do all the time. Be consistent. They need to be consistent. I think, look, their injuries always are a factor. So you can obviously point to some of

injuries they sustained that contributed to their regression down the down the stretch. I also could say, you know, the Rams did end up winning the Super Bowl, so that was clearly a very good team. So you can't really, like, look too much into their performance in the playoffs. But yeah, I think number one, they need to be more consistent throughout the year, start to finish. I do think the addition of Marquise Brown will help them. You know, I think that the offense that they want to run, they need more explosive plays, I think. They need a little bit more. ump in their passing game in terms of like the talent at receiver

you know um I think he I do think he is an upgrade over Christian Kirk so I think that there's some room for optimism there maybe get more out of Ron Delmore in year two things like that there's some there's some good things that they can do um to improve down the stretch

and then getting you know obviously John Dre Hopkins back after six weeks suspension maybe he can be a little more fresh down the stretch or whatever I don't know like I don't know how exactly they're going to do it but they just need to be better just a second half. But I don't,

but what happened? Like what, I think we're all looking at it and saying, and you watch a hell of a lot more film than I do. I think we're all looking at it and saying like, why is this a tailspin? And I could never really get a read on it. Yeah,

I mean, I think there's probably something where you point to Cliff's play calling, getting a little bit stale, a bit predictable. Wow. You know, again,

I think the injury situations always, always seem to matter. Kyler has faded down the stretch in each of his, three seasons. I don't know if that's, you know, teams figuring him out or what. Could it be just his frame and just getting banged up? Yeah, I mean, he does seem to get sort of banged up each year. And so again, that's like why I think he wanted to run less. He's probably going to want to run even less this year. Be more of a just drop back passer,

take your hits, things like that. But I don't know. They're, I'm sure, searching for this answer of what they can do to not have this like collapse in the second half. But I think that is, again, it's the crucial thing for them. It's the key for, you know, continuing to build. And I think, again, like, if you look, it's funny because on a macro level, they have improved each year. But when you look at each season, they start hot and then fade down the stretch. They need to get out of that pattern, I think, to really take a next jump here.

It's really incredible because Cliff, every step, every season that he's been ahead of coach, even go back to college has faded down the stretch. And you just wonder, this is completely serious. separate situation. But like McVeigh had that where his EPA per play just plummeted in the second half. And I don't know. I think at some point you just need to have, you just

need to shake it up a little bit in the second half. I don't know what that looks like. Maybe it's predictable. I think one thing about Cliff is what it's disappointed me is that if you remember when he first came in to Arizona, I think we all had pretty low expectations for him. It was a strange hire. He had just been fired

from a college job. He was going to take the OC job at USC. and he becomes a head coach in Arizona with the first overall pick. And you just think this is a really weird place for a guy like that to be inserted where I think a lot of people would have taken that job. Okay. And part of it was

they, I think that from what I understand, they didn't like having an offensive coach the year before. They wanted a quarterback guru. Well, there were a bunch of other quarterback gurus. It's not like Cliff was the one guy. The only guy. Yeah, the only quarterback guy. There were a lot of them. And so he comes with low expectations.

and then the expectations change because he actually adapted in a way I thought was pretty impressive. The way he used the wide receivers, the way he spread the ball out, his run concepts. I actually liked what he did over the first half of his first year. And so my expectations recalibrated, but there hasn't been anything beyond that. Like nothing Cliff has done since being not terrible has impressed me. So yeah, I mean, what you were referencing, I think, is they started out, Cliff came in. He wanted to run this four, five wide, like, air rate thing. realized you didn't really have the guys to do it.

And he adapted. He started running more three receiver sets, two receiversets, things like that. More, I guess, just traditional NFL offenses. And so he showed his ability to adapt. He showed, I think he proved that he's willing to change on the fly if something isn't working. But like you were also saying, he hasn't really taken the next step and, like, really turn this team around, turn this offense around, turned it into a juggernaut.

I am kind of intrigued, though. The one thing that always stands out to me is last year, like DeAndre Hopkins is just like lining up in the same spot every play and running the same routes, every play. Like, I would love to see them get a little more creative. You know, I think it's interesting that they re-sign Zach Ertz and then drafted a tight end in the second round. Maybe that means that they're going to do more lean even further into like two tight-end sets. Maybe that will help them get their run game going a little bit more.

They've always, they've had pretty like efficient run games. And I do like James Connor. But maybe they want to be a little bit more balanced. I don't know. I do think, though, like to your point, big picture is they need to become, I think, more like adaptable and more creative because that is probably why they faded down the stretch every season. It's like teams kind of start to figure out what they do and they become less efficient and the things that they're doing early in the year just don't work as much anymore.

So I would just like to see them become a little more creative, move guys around a little bit more maybe more, you know, frequency with like two tight end sets, things like that because, you know, that could be the key for them unlocking things in the second half. Joe Burrow is going to be the next quarterback who gets a mega contract at some point. 230 is the total value of Deshaun Watson's deal, difference being Deshaun Watson was completely guaranteed because somehow within a day of not being charged by the grand jury, he became the player with the most leverage in history of football. that was quite a swing. Anyway, how does this change the way quarterbacks are paid?

Because you alluded to this earlier, Danny, but this is the cost of doing business. Like, I'm more offended at the extensions for Cliff and Kime than I am at giving Kyler Murray $160 million. I'd say that, so $46 million is, which is what Kyler's, getting that puts him with mohomes and watson the mohomes deal being completely different because

it's it's 10 years it was signed it was supposed to be team friendly he's going to get 500 million dollars that the deal he's going to be fine um the watson thing already in a separate bucket Aaron rogers 50 million dollars one of the best quarterbacks in the history of the game still on his prime I get it so we got to wonder I feel like the Joe borough number 48 49 and we got to wonder how long it's going to take the Bengals to get there and realize this because for me, I think that there's a reason I haven't moved off of this analogy. It's like real estate over across the bridge here in Manhattan where I, you know, in 2010 I was hearing these numbers and I was going, there's no way. There's no way condo cost that much. And then,

you know, I should have just bought it. I should have just handed over. Yeah. I should just emptied out my accounts to over leverage myself to get it because it would have been a bargain, relatively speaking. And I go back to something, I've shared the story before, but when Matt Ryan became the first $30 million quarterback, I was with Dimitrov in his office, like, I don't know, like three days later. And I said, you know, I think that, I think it might be a bargain in like two years. And he joked and he was like, how long did you say? And I was like, oh, like, it might be a bargain like tomorrow. And he's like, yeah, yeah, that's it. That's more like it. And so any quarterback deal, as long as the guy is a true franchise quarterback,

of some like Dak Prescott, who got locked in for 40. Russell Wilson's still at 35 average year, but that will be redone with Denver at some point. Our guy, Kirk Cousins, is getting after it with 35. Always, always, always, always getting after it. So what does this do to the future quarterback back, Danny Kelly? Yeah, I mean, it's just going to keep going up, right? And I think obviously the cap is going to go up too.

And so you really want to look at percentage of the cap that these quarterbacks are making. I think the one thing, the first thing that I thought of that was interesting, was that he didn't get a fully guaranteed deal. There was, I think, some fear when Deshaun Watson got his deal that this was going to be the new paradigm for how contracts are done for quarterbacks and it would change everything and all that. And this is clearly not happening.

Like, I think that's probably, you know, something that all the ownership, all the teams want to not be the case. And so I think that's an important thing. And then the other thing, of course, is even before Burrow, we got to figure out what's going on with Lamar too. Lamar Jackson is still negotiating. his deal or maybe not negotiating it. It sounds like there hasn't been a lot of movement yet.

So I'm going to be very interested to see what he gets too. But yeah, from Lamar to Borough to, you know, eventually these other younger guys. It's going to be, it's just going to continue to go up. So Lamar? Yeah, sorry, go ahead. I don't even bat. I added it. It's exactly what you said where it used to be a bigger deal when you see some of these

contracts and you're like, holy crap, that's crazy. Like, how could they do that? But then like the next week, someone gets an even higher one. you know, a few months later, someone gets an even higher one. And then all of a sudden, like two years down the road, all these other deals look like bargained. So I'm just not even batting an eye at that, really. Well, I would also say that there was a,

there was a year there where, I think it was the 2016, 2017 era, where all these guys were going back and forth with the highest paid quarterback in the NFL. And they were way worse than the guys now who are the highest paid. Like, I'd rather have Mahomes and Aaron Rogers and Josh Allen, these guys be at the top. Like Derek Carr was the highest paid. paid quarterback in the highest paid

player in the NFL in 2017 for a couple weeks. I'm not mistaken. I think Stafford passed him after that or maybe that was reversed. I love that. The reason I didn't bring up Lamar is because, first of all, I think that that's a separate category to me. Because it looks like it looks like he's going to play the franchise

tag game. I don't know. I don't know. It just seems like they haven't been engaging. Maybe it all gets done very quickly. But it feels like Lamar once to see how close he can get to the free market, which we've never,

we've seen Kirk Cousins, which was a separate category. He was so offended by Washington, and then Washington bungled it and then, yeah, yeah, listen, we don't need to relitigate what Washington did with the cousins. But, and then he goes,

Kirk has two choices, the Jets and the Vikings, and he ends up taking the Vikings, and when I talked to Rick Spielin about it a couple days after it happened, he said, listen, we had to guarantee that money because somebody else would. That's what happens to the quarterback goes in the free market. If Lamar got to the free market, what are we looking at?

Yeah. 60, 60 a year? I mean, keeping in mind, they can tag them three times. Right. So this is like, it's going to be so long and drawn out. I think the, you know, the balance, a lot of these quarterbacks are going to want to make it. And like, maybe Lamar just has the nerve to like not care and just ride it out. But like they want the security, the long term security, the guarantees, you know, especially for a guy like Lamar who runs so much.

Like, you know, it's going to be, that's going to be the team's leverage. is like we're going to be able to, you know, give you this long-term security and long-term money. So if you do get hurt, you're still going to be, you know, a very rich person. So I think that that's going to be the thing that's seeing that maybe you're right. Like maybe this will just play out over a few years. It's going to be kind of, it's going to be very interesting to see. So, but, you know, at the end of the day, I do think like all these quarterbacks are worth the money. Like, you know, they're, they're so, so important to the success of a team that I think teams have no choice

and they're right to pay these guys this amount of money. Expectations for the 2022 Cardinals. I actually think that they're going to be a playoff contender. You know, I think a lot of teams are maybe saying it's going to be the 49ers. Well, it did make the playoffs last year. True. I hope they're a playoff contender. I'll be totally honest with you.

When I was kind of like prepping for this pod, looking at some of the like recent numbers with Kyler and with the team overall, I'm like, I don't really understand exactly why everyone's so low on the Cardinals. I do think it is sort of the way that they faded up the last few seasons. And I get that. And that makes a lot of sense. But the trajectory for this team overall has been pretty solid, honestly. They've been getting better.

And I think that in some ways they got better for next year. I think that there's definitely question marks, you know, on maybe like their offensive line and things like that. It could be an Achilles seal for them. But, you know, I think that they're going to be a pretty good team. And I think that this division, the NFC West division is very, very good. So, you know, I do think the one thing, that you mentioned at the very beginning is like the decision to to retain

Kime and Kingsbury long term, which happened before this, was to me the more interesting thing than like what is the natural progression here with Kyla, which they needed to resign him. I think deciding to roll with these two guys, the GM and the coach for the long term, I think it's like,

you know, obviously that's in the past, it's happened, but to me that was an interesting decision. And I think it was more just like they didn't want to try and change everything again. Like they just wanted some continuity. for the sake of continuity.

Well, they re-signed those guys at the combine, and I will tell you that that was, that bewildered much of the league, I would say, to resign those two guys. When they're trying to get their quarterback under contract, and the theory I heard on the statement that Kyler and his team released was that they were trying to create urgency

because they didn't want a, this is somebody from another team told me that this is sort of how these things go, is that they didn't want Kyler to be the last person to sign because then the team can say, well, we only have this much money. You want the quarterback to be the first person

to sign in those wave of extensions for a team because then afterwards they'll say, well, we sign this left tackle, we sign this linebacker, don't you want to help the team, why don't you take $10 million less? And I'm like, nah, decided not to do that. And that's when it gets really ugly. We didn't get to that spot.

Obviously everybody's happy, all that. So I don't, I think this ended as well as it could have for, for Kyla. He gets paid. He gets to prove himself. Cliff keeps his job, which apparently is the most important thing to fear his own infrastructure. Is the common cliff get to continue there? So yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't think that this is some huge shock to anybody.

Yeah. I mean, the alternative is they just blow everything up. And then maybe Tyler's like, you know, I don't want to come back. And then they really have to. from zero. That would have been like, that would have been the alternative. That would have been the alternative

to extending Kime, to extending Kiley, is they decide this isn't working out. We're going to start from scratch. We're going to have to start get a new GM. We're going to have to get a new coach.

You know, because I don't know if they're going to give Kime another opportunity to hire a new coach and, you know, potentially trapped another quarterback. Kailor ends up leaving if the relationship is ours.

So, yeah, I really look at this as like they just chose continuity over the actual individual people involved, if that makes any sense. Yes. That's exactly right. That's what they did.

They just said, oh, this guy's here. That sounds good to me. Let's just roll it again. Yep. All right. Well, anything else in this? NFC West, not the Seahawks aren't competing anymore. Yeah, the Seahawks, I mean, man, this, in particular, like,

the Seahawks are just the most boring team now in the NFC West. like the NFC West has been good for a long time. I don't agree with that. I cannot wait to see this quarterback competition. Yeah, but not for like a reason like it's actually exciting. It's more like you're morbidly fascinated with what will happen kind of deal, maybe. Can you go to camp? Can we get you out there? To cover the most depressing quarterback competition of all time. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, let's do it. Did you, are you picking a winner right now? I didn't listen to the pot you guys did the other day yet. Did you guys, did you declare early winner yet for that competition? Oh, no.

Where do you lean? I think it's, I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be Gino Smith. He knows the system. I do too. The guy who's like the most allergic to turnovers in the world and Pete Carroll, do we really think Drew Lox can start her? I, I'm done.

You're more of a Seahxologist than I am. Yeah, I don't know. Every time I text you and me about the Seahawks, I, I get the feeling that I've made your day much worse. Like I feel, you know what I'm saying? Like bringing it up.

Stop bringing it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where I'm just like, oh, every time those guys, you say, I'm sending me text back to be like, oh, this is, this actually is not nearly as fun as I thought it was going to do. Anything else, we have a great time. But if I'm just like, if someone tweets something

about the quarter of a condition, I throw it towards you guys. I'm like, oh, this really brought the mood down. Talking about the thing you guys like more than anything in the world. Yeah. All right, guys. We'll be back. when's your next week we'll have the we'll have you want to give us 10 seconds yes you want to give us 10 seconds

on trile on berks yeah trail on burke's highest variance receiver in this draft class cannot wait to see this whole thing play out does he have asthma is he just out of shape is he going to be awesome is he going to be terrible i don't know but it's going to be really fun to watch questions we're all facing our daily lives are we just out of shape or are we going to be awesome or both or both in my case, certainly. All right. Danny Kelly, see you later, buddy.

This has been the Rennerfell Show on Learner podcast. Now we're thank you to Spine Anderson with additional production supervision by Arjuna Ramon.