Arizona Cardinals: Murray didn’t deserve to be mentioned in Hopkins’ Top 5

When Arizona Cardinals wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins didn’t include Kyler Murray in his list of top five quarterbacks, the floodgates opened.

There is just a cluster of those in the NFL universe who, no matter what Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray’s situation is, and no matter how bad it gets, someone else is always to blame. Last season, for example, they blamed Kliff Kingsbury. 

And okay, I’ll concede that Kingsbury was awful at game management, playcalling, and was generally ill-equipped to be an NFL head coach. But Kingsbury also wasn’t dropping back and throwing the ball; Kyler Murray was. 

Kingsbury wasn’t the purported franchise quarterback for a Cardinals offense that had more than enough solid players at the skill positions to at least look like they had a ray of life. That was Kyler Murray, and he has rarely shown us why he’s worthy of being a franchise quarterback. To make matters worse for Murray, Hopkins did talk about rookie Clayton Tune in passing, before he rounded off his list of top five quarterbacks on the "I Am Athlete" podcast.

Arizona Cardinals receiver correct to omit Murray from Top Five

Hopkins listed Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson, and Justin Herbert in his top five, and to be honest, he could have listed at least five more quarterbacks before he even remotely thought about Murray. The five aforementioned names have all done more in their respective careers than Murray, and they aren’t the only ones. Here are a few more names Hopkins could have recognized:

• Dak Prescott
• Joe Burrow
• Daniel Jones (at least he won a playoff game)
• Jared Goff
• Kirk Cousins
• Geno Smith
• Brock Purdy
• Trevor Lawrence
• Jimmy Garoppolo

Could Murray rival a few of the names listed above? Absolutely, but when it comes to taking a team even into the second round of the playoffs, only Geno Smith hasn’t accomplished that. But following the former 2013 second round pick’s season in 2022, you have to rank him ahead of Murray for the moment. 

This is all speculative, obviously, but if you ask me, Hopkins could have easily mentioned another nine guys ahead of his own signal-caller. And until Murray shows us that he can be consistent, he doesn’t deserve recognition anywhere near the same breath as any of the names listed above. 

Source: Arizona Cardinals' DeAndre Hopkins slammed for Kyler Murray NFL quarterbacks list omission by Jeremy Cluff, AZCentral.com