In Jonathan Gannon’s first press conference after being hired as the Cardinals head coach, he called Kyler Murray an elite quarterback and said “everything we do will be structured around the quarterback position to maximize his skillset.”
The Cardinals have settled on Drew Petzing as their offensive coordinator and Gannon revealed some of the team’s plans for Murray during a conversation with Peter King for Football Morning in America. Murray has played almost exclusively out of shotgun since entering the NFL — per NFL Research, under three percent of his snaps have come from under center in the last three seasons — but Gannon envisions a different approach now that he’s calling the shots in Arizona.
“If Kyler Murray isn’t here, I don’t take this job. I think this offense will look much different,” Gannon said. “This guy does things that it completely handcuffs you how you play defense – at times. I think we can take him to another level and unleash his full skill set. We’re not gonna put him in gun all the time, I’ll tell you that. We’ll have two significant offenses with his skill set: one being under center and one being in the gun. Then obviously we’re gonna do what’s comfortable with him. The way to take pressure off the quarterback and the O-line is to put him under center at times. That’s the missing piece I thought they had with Kyler. They were in gun all the time. When you’re in gun all the time, you don’t make the defense defend certain play types. Now, when you get him under center, the defense has to defend a lot more type of play types. So there’s really two offenses I see us using.”
Murray played out of a lot of shotgun looks in college as well, so mixing in more snaps from under center would mark a big change for him as he moves into his fifth NFL season, but it will be a welcome one if it leads to more success than the Cardinals experienced in 2022.