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Justin Carter looks at the case for and against Kyler Murray for the 2023 NFL season. Where should the Arizona Cardinals quarterback be drafted in fantasy football leagues?
Heading into 2023, there are not many NFL players who have a wider range of outcomes than Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray, who tore his ACL in Week 14 last season.
Murray could play early in 2023 and look like his old self. He could play and look like a worse version of the Murray we're used to. He could end up not playing for a good bit of the season. There's a lot of different outcomes here.
Let's look at the case for and the case against Kyler Murray in fantasy football in 2023, then figure out where we should feel comfortable taking the Cardinals quarterback.
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The Case For Kyler Murray Bouncing Back In 2023
Let's go with the best-case scenario here, which is that Kyler Murray is back by September. He misses a couple of games, but by, say, September 24 against the Cowboys, Murray's ready to go. In that case, I think the case for Murray is actually pretty simple: we assume last year was just a bad year and not a sign of Murray declining.
Over the first three seasons of his career, Murray threw 70 touchdown passes and averaged 3,826.7 passing yards per season. On the ground, he averaged 6.7 rushing scores and 595.3 rushing yards per season.
Even last season when Murray played just 11 games and post a career-low in touchdown rate, tossing one on just 3.6% of his throws, he still finished as the QB7 in per-game scoring, averaging 18.9 fantasy points per game. In what was undoubtedly his worst NFL season, he was a QB1.
I mean...we can't just ignore that, right? If Murray is able to get on the field, his history suggests that he'll be a productive quarterback. He's currently being drafted on average as the QB24, so there's just a ton of upside there, right? Well...maybe it's time to take a look at the negatives here
The Case Against Kyler Murray In 2023
The case against Murray has two main parts. The first is the injury part, which has two main sub-points. First, there's the question of when Murray will return and second, there's the question of how the ACL tear will impact his on-field play.
Let's start with when Murray's going to play in 2023. ACL tears usually take nine to 12 months to recover from. Since he tore his in early December, that basically makes the whole 2023 NFL season part of that window. A good recovery and he can be on the field in September or early October. A slow recovery, and we're looking at November, and then we get into the whole "what if the Cardinals are 2-11 when Murray's ready to go — would there even be a point in him playing then" situation? I will add that the latter scenario here feels like the extreme, but it's still within the realm of possibilities.
I really have no idea when Murray will return, and I'm not going to speculate here beyond saying what the best and worst cases are, and that reality is probably somewhere in the middle. I think a lot of people will be doing fantasy drafts with no real idea about Murray's return date, and that's just something you've got to accept.
As for how the ACL tear will impact Murray's play, that's something we have a little more evidence for, especially with how it might impact his rushing ability. We don't have a ton of evidence of rushing QBs tearing their ACL in recent years. Joe Burrow's rushing yards per game were cut in half in the year after his ACL tear, but that drop was just from 14.2 to 7.4 yards per game.
Our best recent examples are probably Deshaun Watson and Robert Griffin III. Watson tore his ACL in 2017, a year where he averaged 38.4 rushing yards per game. In 2018, he returned and averaged 34.4. RGIII tore his ACL as a rookie. He averaged 54.3 rushing yards per game that season, then saw a drop to 37.6 in his second year, which included 1.1 fewer yards per carry.
I think, then, it's fair to be concerned that Murray's rushing production is set for some kind of drop next season. Maybe not as dramatically as RGIII's drop since Murray doesn't run as much as RGIII, but enough that it can impact his overall upside.
The next question comes with his passing impact in 2023. Let's see, how do I put this nicely? The Cardinals receiving weapons are...concerning. After letting DeAndre Hopkins go, the Cardinals are set to enter 2023 with Marquise Brown, Rondale Moore, and Greg Dortch as the top three receivers, and Zach Ertz as the tight end.
Brown's field-stretching ability is great in theory, but he averaged a career-low 10.6 yards per reception last year. Murray was just 33rd in air yards per attempt, which was part of the problem. That was a big drop from 2021 when he was seventh in that same stat. More on Murray's arm concerns in a minute. First, let's get back to dissecting this receiving corps.
Rondale Moore is a third-year receiver who was solid in eight games last year, but he missed nine games last season, including the final six games as he dealt with a sports hernia and a pinky injury.
Greg Dortch has been in the NFL off and on since 2019, and last year was the only time he recorded more than 15 receiving yards in a season. Were his 52 catches for 467 yards a sign of a late bloomer? Or was it just about circumstances? It's also worth noting that 198 of those yards came over the first three games of the season. After that, he had just three games where he saw more than four targets.
Zach Ertz has been really good in the past, but he's going to turn 33 in November, and last season he averaged 40.6 receiving yards per game, marking his third straight season under 50 per game. That's notable because, before 2020, he'd had 58 or more per game in five consecutive seasons. 2023 Zach Ertz ain't 2018 Zach Ertz.
Beyond the concerns about who he's throwing to, there's also concern about his actual throws. Per PlayerProfiler, Murray had some poor showings in various metrics last year. In addition to the aDOT that I mentioned, he was 27th in adjusted yards per attempt, 32nd in deep ball completion percentage, and 30th in pressured completion percentage.
Murray just didn't look like the passer we expect him to be last season, and that's a pretty big concern going into 2023: can he bounce back as a passer with this group of weapons, in a year where he'd be returning from an ACL tear?
Where Should You Draft Kyler Murray In Fantasy Football
I laid out my reasons for and against Kyler Murray in 2o23. Ultimately, I'm more on the "against" side, because there's just so much that could go wrong.
Murray is also being drafted QB24, which is really low for someone who has always played like a top-10 fantasy quarterback when he's on the field. So, what do we do with this?
For me, I think I'm going to mostly side with the consensus here. There are a couple of names —Jordan Love, Kenny Pickett— being picked ahead of Murray that I probably wouldn't take over him, but anywhere in that 21-25 range feels right. Rookies Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud don't carry the same injury concerns, so I'd take them over Murray, but I'd still take him over the Jimmy Garoppolo/Sam Howell/Mac Jones tier.
He could also wind up as a league winner, depending on how things go. The problem is, if you draft him as a league winner, you might end up without a good QB option for the first half of the season, which could ultimately leave you in a position where you can't take advantage of a potentially strong finish from Murray.
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