It’s that time of year once again! Football Absurdity will bring you a breakdown of every notable fantasy football-relevant player throughout June, July, and August. We start off with the quarterbacks, and today we look at the Arizona Cardinals’ Kyler Murray, who had quite the tumultuous offseason. First, he made a big stink about leaving the Cardinals, and then they went out and got his friend Hollywood Brown, and then we found out that his #1 receiver, DeAndre Hopkins, will miss six games next season with a suspension. What can we expect from Murray in our 2022 fantasy football leagues?
Kyler Murray ADP and AAV:
Average Draft Position: QB6, Pick 58 Overall
Average Auction Value: $6.3
Kyler Murray Statistics:
| Year | G | GS | Att | Comp | Comp% | Yds | TD | Int | Comp/G | Att/G | Yds/G | TD/G | INT/G |
| 2021 | 14 | 14 | 333 | 481 | 69.2% | 3787 | 24 | 10 | 23.8 | 34.4 | 270.5 | 1.7 | 0.7 |
| 2020 | 16 | 16 | 558 | 375 | 67.2% | 3971 | 26 | 12 | 34.9 | 23.4 | 248.2 | 1.6 | 0.8 |
| 2019 | 16 | 16 | 542 | 349 | 64.4% | 3722 | 20 | 12 | 33.9 | 21.8 | 232.6 | 1.3 | 0.8 |
| Year | 4 PPTD | 6 PPTD | 4 PPTD/G | 6 PPTD/G | Year | Att | Yd | TD | YPC | Att/G | Yd/G | |
| 2021 | 300.5 | 348.5 | 21.5 | 24.89 | 2021 | 88 | 423 | 5 | 4.8 | 6.3 | 30.2 | |
| 2020 | 378.7 | 430.7 | 23.7 | 26.92 | 2020 | 133 | 819 | 11 | 6.2 | 8.3 | 51.2 | |
| 2019 | 285.3 | 325.3 | 17.8 | 20.33 | 2019 | 93 | 544 | 4 | 5.8 | 5.8 | 34.0 |
| Year | Air Yards | aDOT | aDOT+ | Y/A | TD% | INT% | Sacks | Yds/Sack |
| 2021 | 3846 | 8.00 | 8.00 | 7.90 | 7.2% | 3.0% | 31 | 9.23 |
| 2020 | 4304 | 7.71 | -0.02 | 7.12 | 4.7% | 2.2% | 27 | 6.52 |
| 2019 | 4011 | 7.40 | -0.78 | 6.87 | 3.7% | 2.2% | 48 | 6.44 |
aDOT+ represents a player’s depth of target compared to the league average for that season. Air yards data is from FTNFantasy.com/air-yards. The remainder of the statistics are per Pro-Football-Reference.com
2022 Kyler Murray Fantasy Football Overview:
Kyler Murray is the player where my opinion on players and ADP really start to diverge. I have Kyler as my QB6, behind Jalen Hurts (he’s QB6, but behind Joe Burrow, in ADP). There are a couple of real reasons for this, but it mostly comes down to vibes, to be honest. I don’t like the vibes surrounding the Arizona Cardinals; there’s a chance the Kliff Kingsbury gets his walking papers at the end of the year, and a 5-12 collapse is well within the Cards (pun very much intended) this season. I’m sort of staying away from everyone but Zach Ertz in the passing game because of this, and that includes Kyler Murray.
Kyler spent the offseason fussing about his contract, and then got his buddy, Marquise Brown, at wide receiver. Then, with the DeAndre Hopkins suspension, things went topsy-turvy again. But, here’s the thing with Kyler Murray: even when things are going well, they’re about to go poorly. Throughout Kyler Murray’s career, he (and his fantasy managers) have fallen victim to the Kliff Kingsbury Kollapse Syndrome. While Kyler Murray averages 23.95 fantasy points per game in September, October, and December, he averages just 16.68 fantasy points per game in December and January. In fact, he’s had just four regular-season games above 20 fantasy points in those months, out of 16 games, or 25% of his games.
2022 Kyler Murray Fantasy Football Draft Strategy:
Kyler Murray Auction Value: $10
Draft Ranking: Find out for your league settings in a Beersheet! (coming in early July)
Given Kyler Murray’s predilection for collapse alongside the rest of the Cardinals’ roster, the topsy-turvy nature of his wide receiver corps, and his ADP, I am not too keen on reaching into the Kyler Murray bucket in redraft leagues. Sure, I might look silly in the first few months of the season, but the guy is yet to put a full slate of games together for fantasy football managers, but still goes like he’s a set-and-forget stud. I’m not particularly interested in that in snake drafts. In salary cap drafts, Kyler goes for $5, so if you want him, it’s an easier pill to swallow there. Still, I would prefer Jalen Hurts, who also goes for $5, at that slot.
Best Case Scenario:
Kyler Murray finally manages to put together a cold-weather campaign that is worthy of his fantasy football drafters’ time, rather than slowly collapsing and making people second guess their picks.
Worst Case Scenario:
Kliff Kingsbury gets fired, Hollywood Brown becomes a Twitch streamer, and DeAndre Hopkins quadruples down on the PEDs and Nuk comes back looking more powerful than a nuke.
Check out all our 2022 player profiles, here.
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[Image Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Cardinals_WR_DeAndre_Hopkins.jpg under CC BY SA 2.0]
