Two's Better Than One
© Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
The Arizona Cardinals are a mess.
Three seasons removed from an appearance in the NFC title game, the bottom fell out in the desert, as the team won a meager three games. American sports, however, tends to reward sheer incompetence with the ability to select the best “amateur” athletes on the market. As a result, the Cardinals are slated to pick number one overall this Thursday evening as the NFL draft kicks off, and all signs point to them selecting Oklahoma QB Kyler Murray with the number one overall pick.
Murray lit the nation on fire last year, leading the Sooners to a 12-1 record, a Big 12 title and their second consecutive College Football Playoff appearance. Oklahoma proved to be woefully outmatched against Alabama in the semifinal, but Murray held his own in the 45-34 loss to the Tide, finishing with 308 passing yards and 2 TD’s. Casual fans will point to his 51 percent completion percentage in that game as a red flag, but anyone who watched the game knows the Sooners were completely outmatched in the trenches. Murray showed he belongs.
It is with this backdrop that Arizona, alongside their boy wonder and ridiculously handsome new head coach Kliff Kingsbury, will likely select Murray first. Of course, the natural inclination in response to that move is to shop around Josh Rosen, the QB the franchise took at number 10 overall a year ago. That would be a mistake.
Photo: Tim Warner (Getty)
The jury may still be out on whether or not Rosen is a viable long term starter in the league, but it certainly isn’t clear yet that he doesn’t have what it takes. When you take a guy at number 10, especially a QB, one season with an awful roster is an inadequate measuring stick by which to make future decisions. Furthermore, there’s a certain QB that had an underwhelming rookie season as of late, and he ended up playing in the Super Bowl this past February. (Though Jared Goff looked extremely lost that entire game, but that’s a different article.)
Considering the myriad of holes the Cardinals need to fill, the most sensible move for Arizona would be to trade down in an effort to accumulate more draft capital. If the team is against trading down, or simply isn’t able to find a suitable haul for the pick, selecting either Nick Bosa, Josh Allen or Quinnen Williams would be a solid foundation on which to begin a three to five year rebuild. None of these options seem to be likely.
In the NFL, new leadership almost always means a new QB. Kingsbury and company didn’t draft Rosen, therefore, they feel no allegiance to him. Kingsbury feels Murray will be a better fit for his offense, in the mold of Russell Wilson, and has seemingly fantasized about coaching Murray for years. The new king gets to pick the guy he puts in charge of the troops.
But the rumors around Rosen’s soon departure may be the Cardinals showing too much of their hand, and illustrating to other teams that despite picking in the top 10 again, they still don’t understand the value of the leagues most important position.
Regardless of some of the obtuse conventional wisdom, the first round of the draft is still overwhelmingly the best shot any franchise has at landing a quality QB. The few examples of elite guys (hey, Tom Brady) really good, long term starters (sup, Tony Romo) and other serviceable guys that will make a living on Sunday’s for quite some time (Dak Prescott) often make us forget that nearly every QB taken outside the first round ends up not being very good.
The fact that Rosen only has one year under his belt but can very likely garner a second round pick speaks to the high demand of quality QB play but the increasingly low supply. If Arizona drafts Murray, they’ll have two QBs from the top ten of the draft. If nothing else, Kingsbury could look to camp and preseason results to get a true evaluation of which signal caller is better. He could also choose to run Rosen against second and third team defenses, allowing him to hopefully look like the top tier QB prospect he was just twelve months ago, all in an attempt to further inflate his value and bait some desperate team into parting with a first and second round pick for him, if not more.
If Murray ends up the starter, as should be the expectation for the first pick, some teams may devalue Rosen, with the thought process being if he couldn’t beat out a rookie, why would we pay a premium? The QB market is so decrepit, however, that some team is willing to bite, and for good reason. If Rosen’s value is high now, said value likely only increases as we edge closer to the season. If the most precious thing in the NFL is a good QB on a rookie contract, why not keep two and let each of their values appreciate? The most basic principle of investing is buy low, sell high, but in the process, exercising patience can lead to much larger yields than originally anticipated. Sure, Arizona could get a reasonable return for Rosen now, but when you invest as much as they already have in him, it may be worth a little more time for growth and development before going all in on another unproven stock.