Arizona Cardinals: Kyler Murray takes game into his own hands

The Arizona Cardinals may be a one-win team, but top pick Kyler Murray showed some of his incredible versatility in that victory.

As the Arizona Cardinals continue to build and shape their roster around Kyler Murray, the top pick in the 2019 NFL Draft, wins could be few and far between.

So, when the Cardinals win, it’s going to be worth noting the progress Murray is making as he appears poised to become one of the game’s top young stars before too long.

Murray and the Cardinals came close to a win in week one of the season, but ended up tying with the Detroit Lions and had lost three straight games since then. They got into the win column on the road on Sunday against the hapless Cincinnati Bengals, and their win was mostly due to Murray’s excellence as a dual-threat from the QB position.

Murray’s stat line

• 20-of-32 passing (62.5 percent)
• 253 yards
• 0 TD, 0 INT
• 10 carries
• 93 yards
• 1 rushing touchdown

There is nothing overly crazy about these statistics, although you love to see the completion percentage over 60 and the 93 rushing yards are high for a quarterback.

But every stat tells a story, and the way Murray was able to move the ball in this game in key situations is the reason this win is notable.

The Bengals were playing from behind much of this game, but they were also keeping it close and Murray had to do everything in his power on money downs to keep the game alive.

Starting from the first quarter, Kliff Kingsbury turned on the ‘aggressive’ setting and went for it on 4th-and-2, down 3-0. Murray ran a play-action fake and designed quarterback run, and made a couple of moves before he dove into the end zone for the first Cardinals score of the game.

Throughout the rest of the game, Murray was dropping absolute dimes all over the field, showing off his velocity, ability to make throws under some intense pressure from Geno Atkins, and the ability to put some air under the ball and drop it in tight windows that way.

Murray was absolutely outstanding in this game, and you can’t stress that enough.

He proved himself as a difference maker late in this game with the Bengals tying things up at 23 apiece. Murray took the ball with less than two minutes and on 2nd-and-2, made an incredible over-the-shoulder throw to running back David Johnson, who was covered by a linebacker. Murray saw the mismatch and anticipated the safety’s late arrival with an early throw, but a perfect one to beat the linebacker and safety while also keeping Johnson in-bounds.

Later on in the game-winning drive, with pressure bearing down, Murray escaped the pocket and sprinted 24 yards downfield to put the Cardinals in easy field goal range for Zane Gonzalez.

This game put every great attribute of Murray on display. We may not see it every week in his rookie year, and even though this was a depleted Bengals team, it was a great indicator of Murray’s progress in Kingsbury’s offense and the way he’s settling into the NFL.