Kyler Murray Dishonorably Discharged

Kyler Murray will be released by the Arizona Cardinals next week. This isn’t surprising news. In fact, the only reason that Murray’s release is noteworthy is because the NFL offseason has been, to this point, so utterly inert. The 2026 draft class is underwhelming, and the UFA pool is even worse. A lot of teams are in desperate need of help at QB, to the point where the San Francisco 49ers can go to the combine and tell other teams, with a straight face, that they want a first-round pick for Mac Jones (no one has yet to take them up on the offer). That makes Kyler Murray officially “intriguing” to the Jets/Steelers/Dolphins/Vikings/Browns of this world. The problem is that Murray’s entire career, to this point, has been far more about intrigue than production. Let’s go back. It’s 2019 and the Cardinals have decided that one year of Josh Rosen at QB is all the Josh Rosen they’ll ever need. So with the No. 1 overall pick that April, they take a mulligan and draft Murray. He goes on to win Rookie of the Year in his first season. The following spring, then-Arizona GM Steve Keim finds himself the beneficiary of Bill O’Brien’s idiocy and gets Texans WR DeAndre Hopkins, then in the prime of his career, for next to nothing. Suddenly the Cardinals, who haven’t won a title since 1947, have a franchise QB plus a top-level weapon to pair with him. The following November, Americans stranded by COVID get to witness those moves bear tasty fruit: