INDIANAPOLIS — As much as we’d all love the position to be perfected, there’s no such thing as an ideal quarterback at any level. Philip Rivers has a weird throwing platform he’s learned to deal with. Tom Brady isn’t exactly the world’s most fluid downfield runner. Ben Roethlisberger and Eli Manning have always alternated stretches of greatness with spurts of alarming inconsistency. Drew Brees and Russell Wilson do not fit the height paradigm at the position, and their NFL teams have developed work-arounds for the perceived limitations of those quarterbacks, because those quarterbacks bring so many attributes.
Quarterback height is the subject everyone’s taken up now, since Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray made the decision Monday to step away from a professional baseball career. Pre-combine, Murray’s official measurements are 5’10” and 195 pounds, which places him below the “You must be this size to ride this ride” paradigms held by some NFL teams, and just enough in the ballpark for others. Now that he’s officially measured at 5’10 1/8″ and 207 pounds with 9 1/2-inch hands, we can do away with the speculation that Murray is too short or slight for the rigors of the NFL.
Still, it will be assumed by some that Murray won’t be able to see over his linemen, that he’ll have too many balls batted down at the line of scrimmage, that he’ll miss coverage over the middle because of what isn’t visible, and on and on.
“I don’t think anything is happening different,” 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan said this week at the combine about short quarterbacks in general. “It’s just you see one person do it and other people realize it’s possible. You watch snowboarding and people never thought you could do more than whatever two 360s is – what is that, 720? Then all of a sudden, he does three of them. A year later, 10 of them do it. Yeah, we’d all like tall guys with the biggest arm in the world who can run faster than everyone and know how to play quarterback. You haven’t seen those all over the years. Drew Brees is as good as anyone who’s ever played. He’s a smarter one. It goes by percentages.
“The odds are, if you’re taller, it should be easier; if you’re faster, it should be easier; if you have a better arm, it should be easier. But like I’ll say about every position, there are no absolutes about anything. If guys can throw and play the position, they don’t have to dunk. They can be small and still dunk. Everyone gets too big into … Odds are the taller you are, the easier it is. But short guys can play and that’s being proven over and over again.”
Like Brees and Wilson, Murray has adapted to the visibility issues caused by the behemoths in front of him by moving around and outside the pocket to take advantage of throwing lanes. He also has the ability to slide out of contact—like Wilson especially, you rarely see him take a hard hit. While there are some issues on tape with him making questionable throws over the middle and deep, it’s not always correct to attribute those throws to his height. In fact, there isn’t a single repeated negative issue Murray shows with his style of play that can be blamed on his height, and would absolutely prevent him from succeeding in the NFL.
As far as the batted passes thing… maybe we should stop making this a short quarterback problem.
The stats seem to prove Murray’s excellence. In 2018, his one full season as the Sooners’ starter (and Baker Mayfield’s replacement), Murray completed 260 of 377 passes for 4,361 yards, 42 touchdowns and seven interceptions. He led the NCAA in yards per attempt and Adjusted Passing Yards per Attempt, finished third behind Ohio State’s Dwayne Haskins and Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa in passing touchdowns, and only Haskins and Washington State’s Gardner Minshew threw for more yards.
Advanced metrics make Murray’s case even more convincingly. Per Sports Info Solutions, Murray led all 2019 quarterback draft prospects in On-Target Percentage, Independent Quarterback Rating, Expected Points Added per Dropback, Rushing Expected Points Added, and Total Expected Points Added. While SIS ranks Haskins higher in its scouting guide, there’s no question regarding Murray’s statistical superiority.
To skeptics, the question would then be: How does the tape match up with the stats? After all, there are NCAA quarterbacks whose numbers are ginned up by systems and weak defenses. Mayfield was viewed with some suspicion because he benefited from easy openings created in Lincoln Riley’s offense, and it wasn’t until he made the leap that he was able to prove the doubters wrong.
So, let’s look at the tape. While I may do a more comprehensive multi-game tape piece on Murray after the combine, I wanted to focus on his performance in the Orange Bowl against Alabama—without question, the best and most NFL-similar defense Murray faced in his collegiate career. In that 45-34 loss, Murray completed just 19 of 34 passes for 308 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. He struggled, especially early, but in the end, he created several impressive plays.
The Sooners were already down 28-0 to the Tide when Murray made this 32-yard throw to receiver CeeDee Lamb with 12:05 left in the first half. Watch how Murray quickly sets to throw after the playfake–he’s not completely set because of the quick release, but he still gauges Lamb’s position against the defender and makes the throw where Lamb can get to the ball and Alabama defensive back Patrick Surtain II can’t. Notice also how Murray doesn’t leave the pocket, and he’s got big guys on both sides of the ball in front of him.
On Oklahoma’s next drive, there’s this 17-yard pass to Lamb, where the receiver uses his body to come back to the ball over Surtain’s coverage. Watch the touch and accuracy here–Murray is a full-field thrower who has the best arsenal of back-side throws of any quarterback in this class. Watch also how he gets the ball over the outstretched hand of defensive lineman Isaiah Buggs. Buggs is 6’5,” and Murray doesn’t seem to have trouble throwing the ball a foot over his head with excellent accuracy.
This seven-yard run early in the third quarter may have you thinking that Murray just bailed out of the pocket when his first read was closed, but watch the end zone replay closely–Murray has his eyes downfield for an extended period of time, and he doesn’t have one of his own targets crossing the middle of the field until late in the down. He’s probably got an intermediate opening to tight end Grant Calcaterra (No. 80) if he takes that chance, but this isn’t just a guy runnin when things break down. Murray has an excellent sense of his place in the pocket, and when to cut his losses and run.
If there’s one thing that shows up consistently that Murray needs to fix, it’s the timing with his receivers on short to intermediate throws. Murray completed 69% of his passes in 2018, but he would have bumped that completion rate over 70% if he had worked better to time his throws with the geometry of his receivers’ routes. These two plays are not isolated incidents; you can find at least one example of Murray corking off a weirdly uncatchable ball in every game.
But it’s stuff like this that has to make even his staunchest doubters re-think their positions. This 49-yard touchdown pass to Charleston Rambo late in the third quarter would have NFL analysts scrambling for words if Brees or Wilson had thrown it. Murray is clearly comfortable navigating through pressure in the pocket, and just as comfortable launching off his release point and making an ideally-timed pass. With his consistent combination of timing, touch, and accuracy, Murray brings a skill set to the NFL that any team evaluator would find attractive.
Still, there are those who will shy away, and it won’t be because of Murray’s specific attributes or liabilities.
“He’s a special athlete, but it takes more than that,” one NFC executive told NFL.com’s Lance Zierlein about Murray. “We just don’t know with him because he’s had one year in the Big 12 with a great system. I like him, but I wouldn’t be ready to risk my job for him yet.”
And that’s the rub. Whether he succeeds in the NFL or not, Kyler Murray comes into the process as an outlier, and outliers frighten NFL executives. Outliers have unpredictable failure rates. Outliers tend to get people fired.
And that is the primary reason people are still undecided about Kyler Murray: He doesn’t fit the suit. That one NFL team has a great chance of finding their franchise quarterback by bucking that fear speaks to Murray’s talent and potential.
