Kyler Murray’s incredible talent has created a thorny problem.
As he prepares to head to the Scouting Combine, which will consist of many face-to-face hotel-room interrogations with potentially interested teams, he’ll have to persuade them that, if they draft him, he will come. More accurately, that he’ll sign a contract.
The fact that Murray became a first-round pick of the Oakland A’s, signed a contract, and collected a seven-figure signing bonus is enough to make teams skeptical of his Heisman-fueled change of heart. The fact that the A’s reportedly remain ready and willing to try to outbid the wage-scale-limited financial package he’ll get based on when he’s drafted doesn’t help. But until the time comes to sign a contract, there’s nothing Murray can do other than say that he will.
The question is whether that will be enough before then to get a team to roll the dice.
While Murray may fully believe what he’s saying, it’s still possible that his beliefs will change based on when he’s drafted, and by whom. When, for example, he says that “I didn’t know how the NFL felt about me before this season because I hadn’t played,” he leaves the door open (intentionally or not) to later say that his ultimate draft position and location means that the NFL actually doesn’t feel about him the way he’d thought it did.
History is filled with quotes that later became meaningless based on changed circumstances. In Murray’s case, there’s surely a spot at some point between No. 1 overall and Mr. Irrelevant that would cause him to say, “Baseball likes me better.” The question becomes where that spot is, and whether a team will risk being on the wrong side of it.
That’s why nothing Murray says now will matter. And anything he says when meeting with teams this week can and will be used against him, if he folds under questioning.
The only other way to get a team ready and willing to take the risk would be to put together performances at the Combine and his Pro Day that are so obviously dominant that a team would be willing to risk accept the risk having him play baseball if the reward is getting him to play football.