For the most part, the list of big-name quarterbacks who are set to be officially released at the start of the new NFL league year next Wednesday (Kirk Cousins, Geno Smith) or rumored to soon join that list (Tua Tagovailoa) make perfect sense.
Then there is Kyler Murray.
ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that the Arizona Cardinals have informed Murray he’ll be released next week if a trade isn’t reached in the meantime.
Now, this isn’t a surprise, per se. Murray’s future with the Cardinals has been the source of speculation since the decision to shut him down for the remainder of the 2025 season following an attempted rehab and return from a Week 5 mid-foot strain.
And to be fair, there’s no denying Murray’s time in Arizona has been ultimately disappointing. The No. 1 overall pick in the 2019 NFL Draft out of Oklahoma, he went 38-48-1 as a starter over seven seasons with the Cardinals with the team playing just one playoff game in that stretch.
Murray owns his role in that, but there’s plenty of blame to go around — starting with the questionable-in-the-moment and abject failed hiring of Jonathan Gannon as head coach. Gannon was fired after three straight losing seasons, a 15-36 overall mark and a 5-19 record over his final 24 games.
Murray was the 2019 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year and made two Pro Bowls (for what those are worth nowadays). In fact, he was pretty damn good for his first three seasons and getting better each year:
2019 (16 games): 64.4% passing for 3,722 yards, 20 TDs and 12 INTs; 544 rushing yards, 4 TDs; 48 sacks
2020 (16 games): 67.2% passing for 3,971 yards, 26 TDs and 12 INTs; 819 rushing yards, 11 TDs; 27 sacks
2021 (14 games): 69.2% passing for 3,787 yards, 24 TDs and 10 INTs; 423 rushing yards, 5 TDs; 31 sacks
In that 2021 season, Murray had led the Cardinals to a 7-0 record before sustaining an ankle injury late in a Week 8 loss to the Green Bay Packers. He missed the next three games before returning, but Arizona’s season never fully recovered.
The Cardinals would lose four of their final five regular-season games despite Murray averaging 321 combined passing/rushing yards over that stretch with 5 TDs and 3 INTs, as the Cardinals gave up 30, 30, 22, 22 and 38 points. They still finished 11-6 nonetheless and made the playoffs, getting blown out 34-11 by the eventual Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams. Murray did struggle in that game, passing for just 137 yards, 0 TDs and 2 INTs.
For whatever reasons, the Murray Era in Arizona never got back on track.
The Cardinals went 4-13 each of the next two seasons while Murray was limited to 11 and 8 games, respectively, due to a torn ACL in Week 14 of the 2022 season that also cost him the first nine games of the 2023 campaign.
The team overcame a slow start in 2024 to pull to 6-4 before it all fell apart with five losses in the final seven games to again miss the playoffs. Murray played the full season, though, throwing for 3,851 yards, 21 TDs and 11 INTs and rushing for 572 yards (the second-best total of his career) and 5 TDs.
How The 2025 Season Played Out For The Cardinals
It was basically status quo to start 2025, as the Cardinals opened 2-0, then lost a pair of competitive, close games to two of the best teams in the league at San Francisco (16-15) and four days later at home vs. Seattle (23-20). In Week 5 vs. the Tennessee Titans, Murray sustained his foot injury in the third quarter and quickly returned to the game, but Arizona went scoreless in the second half and watched a 21-6 lead turn into a 22-21 loss.
With Murray, the Cardinals went 2-3 with three losses by a combined 5 points, including one to the eventual Super Bowl champions and another to an eventual 12-5 playoff team.
Without Murray, the Cardinals went 1-11 as journeyman backup Jacoby Brissett took over. Like Murray, Brissett wasn’t actually the problem either most weeks, as the team’s defense was among the worst in the league and gave up the fourth-most points in the NFL at 28.7 per game — despite having a defensive-minded head coach in Gannon.
All of that is to say this …
Sure, it’s not totally illogical that the Cardinals would decide it’s time for a reset and to make a change at quarterback, and maybe even in the best circumstances Murray would have proven not to be the guy to get the team over the top.
But Murray’s pending release has been treated as just as obvious and certain as the Las Vegas Raiders parting ways with Smith, just because it’s been forecasted for so long now that it became accepted as a foregone conclusion. That doesn’t mean it makes irrefutable logical sense, though.
More to the point — it actually doesn’t.
Why It Would Have Made Sense For Arizona To Hang Onto Murray
If you break it all down like we just did, it’s hard to really say Murray was the problem all this time.
So, to counter what has become a seeming consensus otherwise, it is actually plenty questionable what Arizona hopes to accomplish with this move.
Per ESPN, Murray was guaranteed $36.8 million for 2026 and would have been guaranteed another $19.5 million guaranteed for 2027 if he was still on the roster March 16. Some of that will be offset by whatever contract Murray signs with a new team, but that is expected to be for the veteran’s minimum to leave Arizona on the hook for the bulk of that guaranteed money.
Per OverTheCap.com, the Cardinals will be stuck with $54.7 million in dead money as a result of releasing Murray “and do not have much leeway in the way they account for it.”
All just to get rid of a quarterback who was pretty damn good at times albeit inconsistent?
A QB, for that matter, who is now being heavily rumored to likely sign with the Minnesota Vikings — shouldn’t it be telling if a team built to contend immediately eagerly signs Murray and sees him as a solution to its problems?
And to do all of this in a year with an almost barren free agent quarterback market, where Malik Willis is the most attractive target based on two games of relief work for the Green Bay Packers, while Smith, an aging Cousins and perhaps eventually a much-maligned Tagovailoa are the next-best options? Or a trade market highlighted by the Indianapolis Colts’ Anthony Richardson, who is just a more raw and unproven version of Murray (in a bigger frame)? And with an even more thin quarterback draft class?
What is the Cardinals urgency to dump Murray at significant cost and ride it out with Brissett or one of those even more flawed paths outlined above?
Especially after finally moving on from the disastrous Gannon hiring and bringing in an offensive-minded head coach in Mike LaFleur, the former Rams offensive coordinator, why not see if he can bring out the best in Murray next year while the team is paying the QB either way? (We didn’t especially like the LaFleur hiring either, but hey, it’s something different at least).
Is that enough fair and justified questions to make our point?
Maybe the problem is actually the person calling the shots in Arizona.
General manager Monti Ossenfort’s first big move with the Cardinals was to hire Gannon, who had all of two seasons as the Philadelphia Eagles defensive coordinator after just three years as a full-fledged NFL position coach with the Colts. He was arguably the worst or at least a bottom-three head coach in the league during his tenure, who seemed to lack the personality for the position first and foremost, and whose area of supposed expertise is defense while his Cardinals’ defenses ranked 25th, 21st and 27th in yards allowed.
And now with Ossenfort’s second head coaching hire he picked LaFleur, who struggled as the Jets offensive coordinator for two years and then walked into the best situation for any OC in football in needing to merely keep the Rams’ loaded offense under Sean McVay on the tracks. Yes, surely LaFleur was the reason Matthew Stafford, Puka Nacua, Davante Adams and Kyren Williams piled up yards and points — what other explanation could there be?
Anyways, that digression aside, the Cardinals releasing Murray is not the clear-cut obvious decision it’s generally being framed as in coverage of the news this week.
What the Cardinals’ plan is now to address the position is anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, let’s look at the most logical next moves for a freshly motivated Murray.
Ideal Landing Spots for Kyler Murray
Minnesota Vikings
This just makes too much sense all around.
The Vikings went 14-3 two seasons ago with Sam Darnold at QB. They missed the playoffs last year after foolishly letting Darnold depart to Seattle while entrusting a ready-built contender on unproven second-year QB J.J. McCarthy who was quite frankly a disaster.
The general manager who drafted McCarthy, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, lost his job for the blunder, and the Vikings know they can’t waste another season counting on McCarthy to morph into a competent NFL starting quarterback.
Minnesota will bring in a veteran to at least compete for the job, if not become the clear-cut starter from Day 1, and there are really only two moves for the Vikings that make sense — sign Murray or convince Aaron Rodgers to postpone retirement for another year and do it in Minnesota rather than Pittsburgh.
And, honestly, Murray is the more intriguing of those two options.
For Murray, meanwhile, the Vikings should be his preferred destination as well, with the Atlanta Falcons next on the list.
Stepping into an offense led by one of the better coaches in the league in Kevin O’Connell, with a top-5 WR in Justin Jefferson and other talented targets in WR Jordan Addison and TE T.J. Hockenson, and an offense that two years ago revived Darnold’s career … Murray should be grateful the Cardinals cut ties if he’s able to sign with the Vikings.
Atlanta Falcons
The Falcons offer a lot of the same advantages as the Vikings.
Newly hired Kevin Stefanski is an offensive-minded head coach and two-time NFL Coach of the Year, and the Falcons have a loaded offense with star power in RB Bijan Robinson, WR Drake London and TE Kyle Pitts.
Atlanta is also in reset mode at the quarterback position, set to release Cousins and with former first-round pick Michael Penix Jr. recovering from yet another major knee surgery (after an oft-injured college career) while mostly underwhelming in his first two NFL seasons. The Falcons also turned over their front office after underachieving despite their talent, so the door should conceivably be wide open for Murray to come in and stake claim as the QB of the present and future there.
Miami Dolphins
The Dolphins haven’t yet told Tagovailoa that he’ll be released, but that remains the expectation with a new regime taking over in Miami.
But there’s a lot of buzz that new Dolphins GM Jon-Eric Sullivan and head coach Jeff Hafley, who both came over from the Packers, may prioritize Willis after watching his work last year in Green Bay up close.
If not, then Murray makes a ton of sense. There are only two quarterbacks in the upcoming NFL draft expected to go in the first round in Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza (considered a lock to go No. 1 to the Raiders) and Alabama’s Ty Simpson. Unless the Dolphins were overwhelmed by Simpson at the NFL Scouting Combine last week, free agency seems the best path to addressing the postion.
Pittsburgh Steelers
Rodgers continues his now perennial pondering of his NFL future with no decision or even decision timeline known as to whether he’ll retire, return to the Steelers or perhaps look to move elsewhere to a more ready-made contender like the Vikings.
If he doesn’t come back to Pittsburgh, the Steelers are left with veteran backup Mason Rudolph (not the answer) and 2025 sixth-round pick Will Howard.
The problem for Pittsburgh is it might not have an answer on Rodgers, should it choose to wait him out, before Murray makes a move on his future.
