The long-awaited return of Kyler Murray is expected to happen this Sunday. Barring any sort of setback, head coach Jonathan Gannon told reporters this week that Murray is slated to be activated off of IR before the Cardinals host the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday. That would mark the first time he'll be on the field since suffering a torn ACL late last year.
Of course, considering the type of injury Murray is coming back from, it is interesting to see how the Cardinals will ease him back into things. After all, Murray is one of the more mobile quarterbacks in the league when healthy and suffered that injury on a scramble against New England during a "Monday Night Football" matchup a season ago. While Cardinals fans may be holding their breath whenever Murray does inevitably go on the move, offensive coordinator Drew Petzing has no concerns about his quarterback as a runner when he makes his return.
"He's healthy, he's ready to go and we will put him in position to be successful," Petzing said, via the official team website. "That's always the nature of the franchise quarterback, and you see it around the league when they are very mobile, there is an injury risk associated with that. We have to manage that as all teams with elite quarterbacks do."
In each of his four seasons in the NFL, Murray has rushed for at least 400 yards, which includes 2022 when he was limited to just 11 games. While the Cardinals have deployed Murray as a pure runner on designed runs, the quarterback has done a good job at avoiding contact, which, in theory, should limit his exposure to injury. For his career, Murray has rushed for 2,204 yards and 1,907 of them have come before contact. That means Murray typically slides or runs out of bounds to get out of harm's way before getting hit, so stylistically there should be less concern about him taking added abuse when he tucks the ball to run.
"Anytime he runs and gets tackled, no matter what the situation, from now until the end of time, there is going to be like, 'Get up. He's good?'" Petzing said. "Anytime you have a great player in that position you feel that way to some extent. He's so dynamic at it. He's going to get tackled, that's a fact."
Murray is returning to a Cardinals team that is 1-8 on the season. While the playoffs are a pipedream at this point, the quarterback still should be incentivized to play well to fend off any thought from the front office to take a new signal-caller atop the 2024 NFL Draft.
