The Arizona Cardinals, currently subsisting in the National Football League at a rate of zero Super Bowl titles every 56 years, just wrapped up a wickedly stupid week, even for them.
They made me sympathize with their quarterback, Kyler Murray, which, if that isn't dead solid impossible, it lives on the same street.
In the offseason, Murray and the Cardinals agreed to a new contract that paid the 24-year-old passer $46.1 million per season, which, were he to throw the same number of passes this season as last, means he gets $95,841.99 every time he lets one fly.
Incomplete?
$95,841.99.
Batted down?
$95,841.99.
Came out of his hand backward?
$95,841.99, or roughly $27,000 more than U.S. median family income for every pass, even the interceptions.
Thus even the notion of sympathy for this particular millionaire virtually tortures credulity.
But let the Cardinals work.
First, they installed within the Murray contract something called an independent study clause, assuring that the quarterback studies the material provided by the club to prepare for the "next upcoming game," thus implying that the $46 million quarterback's study habits are currently insufficient — just not insufficient enough, it would appear, to constrain themselves from providing him $230.5 million over the next five years, $160 million of it guaranteed.
Second, after NFL Network's Ian Rapoport came across the contract language while looking for something else, they ran out head coach Kliff Kingsbury to try and explain such perfect nonsense. And Kingsbury, of course, failed spectacularly. First he said he's had no issues with the amount of time Murray spends on film study, then he said he's not uncomfortable with the independent study clause becoming public knowledge.
"My man's got a quarter of a billion dollars, so you can only be upset for so long, I guess," Kingsbury said, as reported in the Arizona Republic. "Negotiations are negotiations. Everybody has their things and wants different stuff. I'm just thrilled that this young man got what I felt he deserves."
Third, the Cardinals watched in horror as Murray scared up an unscheduled press conference to announce that he was, uh, less than thrilled: "To think I can accomplish everything I've accomplished in my career and not be a student of the game, and not have that passion and not take this serious, it's disrespectful and almost a joke."
Almost nothin'.
Fourth, the Cardinals said, effectively, "Ya know what? Never mind." They pulled the independent study clause, mumbled the worn-out football axiom about "distractions," and hoped against hope that most fans will have failed to note what idiots they are.
Well, never mind "never mind."
The problem here is that while Murray is a phenomenal, generational athlete who decided only at the last moment not to play baseball instead, and who won the NFL's Rookie of the Year award and twice was named to the Pro Bowl, he has not, in his first three years, won a Super Bowl, much as the Cardinals haven't in the past 56.
Winning a Super Bowl is the only thing that matters in these kinds of discussions, something we learned long ago amid the deep folklore of the original Steelers dynasty. That particular chapter opens with rookie quarterback Mark Malone trying to learn the 1980 playbook and, at one point, struggling with an admonition from head coach Chuck Noll and offensive assistant Tom Moore. Never, said the coaches, throw a "dig" route against one specific defense of that era, one that deployed two free safeties, one short and one deep.
Then Malone had a bad idea: "I'll ask Terry Bradshaw — he's right down the hall."
"I got there and he was on the phone with Larry Gatlin of the Gatlin Brothers, they were working on some kind of country music deal," Malone recalled on the phone the other night. "So I waited for awhile. He got off the phone, and I asked about if he knew all the things we weren't supposed to do in this dig system.
"He said, 'Mark, let me tell you something. If Lynn Swann tells me he'll get open, I'll throw it to him — I don't care if there are six safeties there. I'll throw it high and hard and he'll get it.' I left thinking, 'Well, that's great for you; you've won four Super Bowls, but it's not gonna help me; I'm a little perplexed.'"
Malone got the Steelers to the conference title game four years later, so he wasn't perplexed for too long. Fast forward to the current century, Kyler Murray looked fairly perplexed at the end of his third season, throwing for a scant 137 yards and a 40.9 passer rating in his only playoff game, never mind that the Arizona defense helped put him in a 28-0 hole against the Rams. Contemporary Patrick Mahomes, by comparison, won a Super Bowl in his second season as a starter for the Kansas City Chiefs and continues to look decidedly unperplexed.
Yet the Cardinals gave Murray a contract worth more annually than Mahomes', a contract that in its original form suggested Murray didn't work hard enough, then came around to blaming the, uh, misperceptors.
"It was clearly perceived in ways that were never intended," read a club statement at the end of the week. "Our confidence in Kyler Murray is as high as it's ever been and nothing demonstrates our belief in his ability to lead this team more than the commitment reflected in this contract."
Yes, well, that's a little perplexing.
