Cardinals Pick Kyler Murray First Overall, Stuff Josh Rosen In The Attic

Back in October, Texas Tech’s then-head coach Kliff Kingsbury had high praise for the Oklahoma quarterback his team was about to face, Kyler Murray. He told reporters that if he could, he’d take Murray with the first pick of the draft. The Cardinals appeared to take that comment into serious consideration on Thursday when they selected the Oklahoma quarterback with their No. 1 pick.

The addition of Murray shows that Arizona is quite committed to letting Kingsbury implement his “Air Raid” offense, given that the former Sooner was able to thrive in a similar system in college. The selection also created a couple firsts. Murray became the first player to get selected in the first round of both the NFL and MLB draft. Oklahoma became the first school to have two players from the same position selected first overall in back-to-back drafts.

Even Arizona had a notable landmark, though it wasn’t a first. The Cardinals became the second team in the common draft era to select a quarterback in the first round in back-to-back years. While it’s up in the air whether that will become an interesting factoid for football fans, one thing that’s certain is that it spells bad news now for Josh Rosen, a player who was touted as the guy in Arizona about two months ago.

The former Bruin was selected 10th overall by the Cardinals last year and, to put it mildly, stunk it up big time whenever he was on the field. But rather than give the young player a chance to develop, or even provide him with a stable environment to play in, Arizona has chosen to simply give up on him.

The Cardinals are clearly doing everything in their power to make people try and forget last year ever happened, and are hoping that Murray and Kingsbury can help them accomplish that goal. No pressure!