TEMPE, Ariz. — As Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray sat in the pocket with the clock ticking under 15 seconds in the second quarter of a Week 2 game against the visiting Carolina Panthers, his offensive line neutralizing the four-man rush, he had options unfolding in front of him.
Arizona was in a four-wide set with the receivers running a scissors route. Both slot receivers — Trey McBride and Michael Wilson — were running downfield then cutting outside, and both wideouts — Marvin Harrison Jr. and Zay Jones — were doing the same but cutting inside. All four were testing the Panthers’ soft Cover 2, trying to find open grass.
Arizona was up 13-3 at the time, the first half was winding down and the end zone was a throw away. Murray had a choice. Both McBride to the right and Wilson to left were options for a perfectly placed fade to the front corners of the end zone. Or Murray could’ve sent a dart down the seam to either Harrison or Jones.
Nobody would’ve thought twice if Murray tried any of those throws. Those aggressive plays have become expected out of Murray. His aggressiveness rate, as measured by NFL NextGen Stats, has been his highest over the past two seasons, at 15.3% and 16.8% in 2023 and 2024, respectively. His aggressiveness rate is 11.2% three games into this season.
Instead of taking the deep shot, and the accompanying risk that would’ve come with the potential high reward, Murray did the opposite. He chose the safe play: a quick, 3-yard pass to a wide-open Trey Benson, the running back who came out of the backfield and straight up the middle of the offense line before turning around at the 20-yard line and waiting for Murray to hit him. Benson turned the pass into a 12-yard gain, setting up an 11-yard touchdown toss from Murray to Wilson on the next play, which put the Cardinals up 20-3 with four seconds left in the first half.
“It was a great decision by him to evaluate down the field. It wasn’t there,” Arizona offensive coordinator Drew Petzing said of Murray. “They played a really soft zone, find the checkdown, move the chains and give us the chance to go get seven there before the half.
“That was awesome.”
It was the kind of play, one of 55 in the Panthers game, that gets easily forgotten about. Not sexy, not aggressive, not a touchdown.
Boring, actually.
And that’s exactly how Murray likes it.
In his seventh NFL season, Murray has learned that, sometimes, the boring plays are the best plays. He has four checkdowns through three games, according to ESPN Research, tied with the Buffalo Bills‘ Josh Allen for sixth most. Since he entered the league in 2019, Murray has thrown the eighth-most checkdowns in the NFL. And since 2023, when he started playing under Petzing, Murray has thrown for the sixth most — and that includes a shortened 2023 season in which he played just seven games after returning from an ACL injury.
“I would say that’s probably the secret,” Murray said. “Because in high school and college, you can kind of get away with doing stuff, trying to do too much. It doesn’t bite you in the ass like it does in the NFL. So, at this level, you throw a 5-yard hitch, nine times out of 10 you got to do that if it’s open. Don’t get greedy.
“It’s just those type of things at this position, yeah, that’s the kicker — it’s like, don’t get bored doing it.”
IT’S NOT HOW kids grow up wanting to play quarterback.
It’s not 300-, 400- or 500-yard games. It’s not throwing 50-yard go balls. But it’s how quarterbacks win games.
“I think I definitely learned, not only about him but just football in general, taking the checkdowns are winning plays and it doesn’t look crazy on the stat sheet,” Harrison told ESPN. “I know he wants to throw for 400 yards and he wants to rush for 100 yards too, and I know that. And I think for him, he’s prided himself in taking care of the football and making the right decisions.
“Sometimes, it comes down to checking the football down and not taking the shot.”
It’s one thing to want to do that, to talk about doing that, to think about doing that. It’s an entirely different thing to do it — and do it on a regular basis.
“It’s easier said than done because every quarterback wants to take the shot,” said Kevin Murray, Kyler’s dad.
Kevin has coached Kyler since he was 6 years old and has been a quarterbacks coach in the Dallas area for the past 20 years. Over the past two decades, Kevin has worked with the likes of former NFLers David Blough and Jerrod Johnson, the San Francisco 49ers‘ Tanner Mordecai and Arkansas‘ Taylen Green. In all, more than 30 of the quarterbacks Kevin has worked with have played college football.
For years, he has talked to Kyler about making the right, smart and safe decisions. If it’s there, he has told Kyler, take it. Trust your eyes. They’ll never lie, Kevin has said. A quarterback’s brain, on the other hand, will play games with its owner. And, he has shared with Kyler, don’t make predetermined throws.
“You don’t want to play defensive at the position,” said Kevin, who was a star quarterback at Texas A&M in the 1980s but had his career cut short by an ankle injury. “You want to be aggressive, but you have to be smart, as well.
“But you just have to consistently make the right decisions. That’s why Kobe was Kobe. That’s why Mike was Mike. You realize how hard it is to control your thoughts, to program your brain, to do what we’re talking about doing for 17 weeks? Nobody’s perfect. Our natural instinct is to want to push it down the field. Our natural instinct is to want to stick it in somebody’s ear hole 25, 30 yards up the field. That’s our natural instinct as a quarterback is to want to throw it over the top.”
As Cardinals quarterbacks coach Israel Woolfork put it: “Everyone loves the highlights. You turn on ‘SportsCenter,’ everyone wants to see the ‘Top 10.'”
The restraint to not always push, push, push is a learned trait. But that tug is real.
Those quarterbacks who can shake off the urge to constantly take a chance are the ones who start separating themselves from the rest of the league. Since 2017, the first year ESPN Research began tracking checkdowns, the top 10 quarterbacks to have thrown the most represent a who’s who of the sport: Derek Carr leads the list with 177, followed by Russell Wilson, Tom Brady, Jared Goff, Kirk Cousins, Matt Ryan, Josh Allen, Matthew Stafford, Dak Prescott and Justin Herbert. Murray is No. 11, followed by Drew Brees at No. 12.
Petzing has seen the great signal-callers in the NFL come to realize the importance of the safe decisions, but it took them time throughout their career. And the benefits go beyond the box score. Those plays also can help maintain a quarterback’s health and help keep an offense on track, Petzing said.
It takes repetition, he explained. That’s not always glamorous.
“I always say, if you’re going to be great at this job, you can’t get bored,” Petzing said. “How many slants has Kyler thrown in his life? Don’t get bored doing that. This is a repetition game.
“We run the same plays. We’re not reinventing the wheel. Yes, we have nuances and dress it up, but at the end of the day, the core foundation of what allows you to win at any position is doing that job over and over and over again at a high level. He’s going to take a five-step drop; he’s going to throw an in cut. He’s going to take a seven-step drop and throw an out cut. That is going to happen over and over and over and over. And if you get bored doing it, you’re going to drop in your technique or understanding of why you’re doing it or where the ball should be.”
To Murray, a 28-year-old who is playing in his seventh NFL season, getting to the point where knowing the checkdown is the smarter, safer play than the deep shot or forcing a pass somewhere it shouldn’t go is part of the maturation process of a quarterback.
After the Cardinals’ joint practice with the Denver Broncos in August, Murray talked with NFL great Peyton Manning about that evolution.
“You really cherish those, the checkdowns, the throwing the ball away or taking a sack when you need to or not taking a sack — just the little nuances of the position that when you’re a rookie, second-year guy, you don’t really understand or you’re in college, you don’t understand,” Murray said.
“Just being in that position now as an older dude knowing what we’re trying to accomplish, not always trying to make the flashy play and just keeping the offense on schedule, we’ll be fine.”
WOOLFORK, THE CARDINALS’ QBs coach, knows he sounds like a broken record by now.
He has been repeating the same edicts, the same lessons and the same warnings to Murray for three straight years. They are the coaching points that Woolfork teaches and stresses, the ones he wants Murray to abide by.
“I didn’t play quarterback in the NFL, and I can’t see what he sees,” Woolfork said. “So, a lot of times I say, ‘Hey, what’d you see here? Let me get your point of view before I sit from my sideline, my comfy seat, and I say, you should have done this.'”
Woolfork listens, digests and diagnoses with Murray in games, in practices and in meetings, sometimes agreeing, sometimes questioning and sometimes suggesting.
His is a two-pronged approach with the goal of transforming Murray into the quarterback the Cardinals envisioned when head coach Jonathan Gannon and his staff were hired in February 2023.
Back then, the process began with small, basic tweaks while Murray was rehabbing from a torn ACL suffered in December 2022.
They changed Murray’s cadence from signals and clapping to a verbalized cadence with playcalls that can be 14 words long. He has spent significantly more time under center than he did in former Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury’s offense. Murray had to adjust his feet in his stance. He had to transition from an offense based on Air Raid concepts to a West Coast scheme.
The Cardinals haven’t completely moved away from what Murray’s known his whole football life. They’ve been able to mesh some of what he did in his previous Air Raid offenses with Petzing’s scheme.
Getting to this point has been a balancing act for Petzing.
“You never want to take away that edge, but you also don’t want to get too conservative, either,” Petzing said.
The most important part of all of Petzing’s conversations with Murray, the third-year coordinator explained, has been asking his quarterback why he made a certain decision in a certain situation.
After Murray threw an interception in the first quarter of Arizona’s first preseason game in August against the visiting Kansas City Chiefs, Petzing asked Murray what he saw. The Cardinals were inside the red zone and marching toward a touchdown. Murray got picked on a throw headed Harrison’s way by Chiefs safety Jaden Hicks, who was assigned to tight end McBride but had dropped to become one of three defensive backs around Harrison.
Murray told Petzing he thought he could get his pass over Hicks, which, if he had, would’ve resulted in a throw only Harrison could catch. Petzing questioned making that throw at that point in the game when McBride was open for the easy, safe play.
It also was the type of play that a coach questions if it’s not successful but loves it if it works.
“Not all errors are created equal, depending on what made you make that error,” Petzing said.
Once Petzing understands Murray’s thinking, he is able to tailor his coaching to how Murray was approaching certain aspects of the game. It also is critical to Petzing for Murray to understand why he is asking the QB to do certain things. That has helped Murray see the value in what Petzing has been saying. Murray wanted to throw downfield more? Then he needed to work on his run-action and keepers.
“You’re immediately going to see that these create easy completions, free-access, out-of-the-pocket throws, for you,” Petzing said.
There have been signs that everything Woolfork and Petzing has preached and taught to Murray has been working.
Murray led the Cardinals to a Week 7 home win over the Los Angeles Chargers last season on “Monday Night Football” thanks to a checkdown he threw to running back James Conner with 1:45 left in the fourth quarter and Arizona down by a point. The play went for 33 yards and set up Arizona for a game-winning field goal.
Three weeks later, Murray completed his final 17 passes in a home victory versus the New York Jets. It was a result of Murray keeping it simple, his father said. Of those 17, 14 traveled 10 or fewer yards in the air. It was an exercise in patience for Murray. It was the kind of flow that leads to a Zen-like state, Woolfork said.
“I think that that comes from controlling the details,” Woolfork said. “Your feet are telling you this, your eyes are telling you this and that’s going to improve in your decision-making.”
THROUGHOUT MURRAY’S CHILDHOOD and into high school then college, Kevin Murray referred to his son as a “fast-break quarterback.”
That’s not the case anymore. Kevin now calls him a walk-it-up point guard, and that’s OK with the elder Murray.
“This has been an adjustment for him,” Kevin said. “Which is even why patience is even more important. But at the same time, it creates issues for the defense because they do so much when you get under center.
“It’s been a challenge for him but a good one, because he’s had to learn nuances about the position.”
Murray has gone from being under center for 6.8% of snaps in Kingsbury’s final two seasons — the last of which, 2022, included Murray tearing an ACL — to 25.3% under Petzing’s direction.
“It’s a complete, I want to say, culture shock a little bit,” Woolfork said.
“A lot of stuff kind of factored into the whole maturation of getting to where we are today.”
Murray is in a different, better place than he has been in a while.
Age has something to do it. So does his experience. His ACL injury played a part. So did the regime change in 2023.
“I think stability helps a lot,” Kevin Murray said. “And having great leadership and having [Cardinals general manager] Monti [Ossenfort] at the top; when you trust guys that you work for, your job becomes a whole lot easier. And I think that’s kind of where he’s at now, and at this stage in his career, I think he feels better about walking in the building every day. I think he feels great going to the practice field, his relationship with J.G. [Gannon], his relationship with Drew [Petzing], his relationship with Izzy [Woolfork]. I mean, these guys are working for one common goal.
“And when they tell him something, he listens, and they listen to his feedback and his opinion. And that matters because it’s the quarterback position. I mean, you’re the one between the lines. I mean, you can see things they can’t see. And so I think they value his input, and I just think it’s a good fit on and off field.”
There already have been a number of plays this season that have exemplified Murray’s approach to the boring parts of playing football.
And there’ll be more.
Murray’s maturation as both a person and a player has a lot to do with it. Harrison said Murray has learned to put himself aside in favor of playing winning football.
The moment Murray opted not to take a shot at the end zone with 15 seconds remaining in the first half against the Panthers while his four top receivers were all trying to find an opening in Carolina’s defense was proof.
“It’s just as you grow older, you realize that you don’t always need the big play,” said Arizona wide receiver Greg Dortch, who has been Murray’s teammate since 2021. “And once you take the checkdowns and you dump it down, that brings the deep defense up, that allows further big, explosive plays.
“So, he’s an explosive player and obviously he’s a quarterback and wants to throw 70-yard bombs. So, just having the patience and the maturity to know that I can take my checkdown and just move to the next play, that’s what the really good quarterbacks do.”
