The Arizona Cardinals have a vision with Kyler Murray.
Even in a dreadful first season for head coach Jonathan Gannon, this organization clearly wants the former No. 1 overall pick to get his feet wet again. Any exposure to the field should suffice after nearly a full calendar year without live NFL action following an ACL tear. During a 25-23 win over the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday, Murray and the Cardinals achieved just that. While it was obvious the franchise quarterback still had a lot of rust to knock off, he played well enough to guide Arizona to its second win of the season. That’s all the rebuilding Cardinals can hope for.
It’s also precisely what the New York Giants, Chicago Bears, and New England Patriots should be rooting for.
Cardinals win in Kyler Murray's returnhttps://t.co/AJoUOqeoKl pic.twitter.com/9Yqb9hmotv
— Tankathon.com (@tankathon) November 13, 2023
You see, each of the Giants, Bears (via the Carolina Panthers), and Patriots have a vested interest in staying at or near the top of the 2024 NFL Draft order. Each team’s future could very well be decided by how they’re positioned in the draft (Caleb Williams or Drake Maye, hello).
That means a still mostly awful Cardinals team being elevated by Murray down the stretch run could translate to Arizona playing itself out of a top-five selection — leading to improved odds and draft placing for three of the NFL’s most popular franchises in their dire times. Whoever said winning comes first at all costs in the NFL has never watched a lifeless team desperately hang on the edge of a cliff for the better part of two months.
These squads have a compelling case for (unofficially) waving the white flag and hoping Murray’s Cardinals hold up their end of the bargain.
Without Daniel Jones or Tyrod Taylor, it’s abundantly clear that New York is mostly hopeless and should start looking toward a new player under center. Any help from the outside from Murray in Arizona should be music to the Giants’ ears. As our Christian D’Andrea wrote in a delightful (and depressing) column, this iteration of Big Blue could become the worst in modern NFL history:
“Since 1970, the season that joined the NFL and AFL as one, there have been 42 teams (excluding teams in strike-affected seasons) to have had an average weekly margin of victory of negative-12 points or worse — i.e. you take points scored, subtract points allowed and divide that by the number of games played and you get negative-12 or lower. As it stands, the Giants’ 14.8-point average deficit per game only ranks 14th among them but remains the worst since 2009.”
In Chicago, Justin Fields purportedly possesses the talent to be a difference-making signal-caller. But we are nearly three seasons into the former first-round pick’s career. He entered the NFL as a dynamic athlete who could launch deep bombs with the best of them. Thirty-one starts in, he remains essentially the same player — a big-play quarterback who struggles to process basic reads, who flat-out ignores the middle of the field, and who needs a niche offensive scheme to sustainably work (if that’s even possible).
If the Bears finish within a screaming distance of another top quarterback draft prospect, it would be malpractice to give Fields a fourth season as Chicago’s unquestioned starter. Never mind that the Bears could still have a new head coach and general manager by then, who probably won’t be in love with Fields.
Per RBDSM.com, Fields is 48th in expected points added (EPA) and completion percentage over expected (CPOE) composite since entering the NFL in 2021. He shares illustrious company with Josh Dobbs (pre-Vikings), Cooper Rush, and Sam Darnold. Unless he explodes in his own return from a thumb injury, it’s hard to ignore the writing on the wall.
Finally, we come to New England.
Whether Bill Belichick is in the Patriots’ future or not is irrelevant to the question of Mac Jones. And by question, I mean Jones isn’t the answer. It’s over. Done. We can stop debating this, greater Boston area. Move on. If allowed to remain the starting quarterback in 2024, Jones will only continue dragging the Patriots into the muck. This team might not require a from-the-studs rebuild — especially on defense, with pieces like Christian Gonzalez and Matthew Judon — but it does desperately need a new plan at quarterback. Case closed. There’s no two ways about it. Any further time wasted on a glorified backup like Jones will only draw callbacks to what the Patriots usually looked like pre-Tom Brady — an afterthought continually twiddling its thumbs.
If the Patriots don’t own a top-three draft pick by April, they could be forced to settle for a lesser-touted prospect (Michael Penix Jr.? Bo Nix?). That’s more or less what happened in the 2021 draft when they invested in Jones in the middle of the first round. And we all know how that worked out (fart noise):
Fire Mac Jones into the sun. This is the worst throw of his career pic.twitter.com/0upOL2qNLn
— Ben Brown 🌻 (@BenBrownPL) November 12, 2023
Kudos to Kyler Murray.
He not only holds his immediate NFL future in his hands, but he might soon determine whether the Giants, Bears, and Patriots will be anything to write home about in the coming years. That’s a lot of power for one person.
