Did previous bad business decisions force Cardinals to sign Kyler Murray?

Kyler Murray doesn’t deserve all the blame

The first person who deserves some blame is Head Coach Kliff Kingsbury. He has been consistently collapsing since his days at Texas Tech. To give you some data, Kingsbury has been a head football coach for nine seasons, six with Texas Tech and three with Arizona.

In the 1st 7 games of his 9 seasons he had a .667 winning percentage going 42-20-1. On the flip side of those 9 seasons he has managed just a .278 winning percentage with a record of 17-44.

So, with a record like that, over a stretch that long, the Cardinals would not do what they did with Murray and give him an extension without proving anything would they? They gave Kingsbury his extension first. They gave him a five-year extension on March 2nd of this year- a bad business decision.

But, the Arizona Cardinals have not just made this mistake with Murray and Kingsbury. They have made it with General Manager Steve Keim as well. Let us dive into the decisions of Keim:

Murray was drafted with the 1st overall pick in 2019. And even though you had just drafted Josh Rosen the year before to be your quarterback of the future (we will just ignore that mistake), selecting Murray was almost a no-brainer.

But since then the Cardinals have drafted linebackers with their 1st round picks. Isaiah Simmons in 2020 and Zaven Collins in 2021. In 2020 Simmons played 34% of the defensive snaps and 25% of the special team snaps.

In 2021 those numbers became 92% and 18%. Zaven Collins was used in 20% of the defensive snaps and 35% of the special teams. In a now 17 game season, Collins started 6 games and had 1 tackle for loss.

So, these are the guys Keim chose, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.