Is Murray Done?

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26/36
72.2
308
8.6
2 TD
0 INT

Murray was great for his 2nd game in a row completing another 4th quarter comeback in consecutive weeks. His biggest play
imo, was the 7 yard scramble on 3rd and 4 and Kyler's smart sense to stay in bounds on the final drive. Outstanding game
by K1. Kyler needs to stack strong performances and the Cards stack wins. Cardinals should enter their bye @ 6-4.
Two winnable home games against the Bears and Jets. Go Big Red!

The Cards front office and coaches by end of season should be able to assess if KM1 is the QBOF for this team or just a talented player who has enough "short"-comings to take the team even into a playoff run to the NFC championship game in the future.

His contract though means he'll definitely be on the roster in 2025 but be a very tradeable contract starting in 2026.  Every year we watched KM1 and wondered is the inconsistency mostly KM1 or K2's fault ?   I postulated that maybe the couple of seasons under K2 in which the Cards 1st half of season looked promising only to fall apart was due to defenses getting used to K2's offensive sets and usage of players (DHop running 90% of routes between the left hash and sideline).   Well we'll see if Jaydon Daniels' stats fall appreciably after about games 8-9 for the Commanders.

Now -- Cardinal fans are assessing blame on the sub-par offense as to how much fault can be placed on Petzing/KM1/MHJ.  Is MHJ more frustrated with Kyler or Drew?  Well this past week Kurt Warner surmised that KM1 is getting off his reads too fast which is causing the timing with the WR's to be off.  For a host of reasons this seems very plausible as a central cause even going back to the game vs. Bills in which Kyler on last drive looked at MHJ but quickly moved off him right before the Bills safety jumped forward to go after Dortch and MHJ went down the right sideline with no one within 15 - 20 yds of him.   ADDITIONALLY, the one player in which Kyler has a connection with and is having by far the best reception/target % success is TE Trey McBride.  NOW  the above critique by Warner makes sense because if Kyler's 1st read is either left or right outside the hashes and he moves off of it too quickly then reads the middle of the field as the 2nd option would frequently catch McBride making his separation move on the defender and getting open.

Even thinking about last year when Kyler had less weapons, he got a repore going with Michael Wilson as an outside receiver.  It looks like the reason for this was the increased usage of play action which does 2 things - 1) pauses the LB/safeties from inside the hashes to help the outside corners and 2) SLOWS down the READ process for Kyler -- in other words the fake to the RB and THEN Kyler looking to the primary wideout happens a third to half second later than the normal pace of things which then catches the first-read WR going into the open part of the defense.

In conclusion - can I see Petzing get more creative including more boots and rollouts, KM1 under center more with use of play action, have coaches discuss the above with KM1 and the wideouts ... then make a proper evaluation on maximizing KM1's talents to elevate to a top 6-8 QB in the NFL?  Of course if the reason is because Kyler is only 5'10" AND he is not proficient enough in Pre-Snap reads to know what half of the field the ball should be going ... then he needs to be traded in 2026.   

SUGGESTION:  I believe there is a QB playing college ball at a high level right now who will be coming out in the 2025 draft which could be this years Brock Purdy and his strengths are reading defenses and highly accurate throwing arm ESPECIALLY completing back-should throws.   Just like Brock Purdy, by end of this season he will have 48 or more starts in his college career (Bill Parcell used to say he didn't like to draft a QB who had less than 36-40 games starting in college) and prior to this weekend when he didn't play due to thumb injury, his team is NUMBER one in points scored in all of college football.

His name ..... Kurtis Rourke QB of Indiana Hoosiers.   Due to the fact he is not a dynamic runner, age 24 and is Canadian (IMO he would light up the CFL), he can probably be drafted 5th round or later; however when you watch him play, the IU offense is always in rhythm due to his excellent assessment of the defense pre-snap and gets the ball out quick.   See links below to learn more about him -- Monti always will trade down to get more 3rd-6th round picks and in 2025 one "free" pick on a trade-down should be used on Rourke who has very similar physical traits to Tune but has run more sophisticated pro-style offenses than Tune did at the U. of Houston.

Kurtis Rourke improves draft stock

Oh Yea - he is 6'5" and 230 lbs so you can keep him in for the "tush-push"