Many people once questioned whether Kyler Murray was making the right financial decision by choosing football over baseball, but the star quarterback now has $230M reasons to feel like the choice was a wise one.
Murray agreed to a massive contract extension with the Arizona Cardinals on Thursday. The deal is worth $230.5M and includes $160M guaranteed. Murray is now second in average annual salary at $46.1M behind only Aaron Rodgers.
Before Murray entered the NFL Draft, the Oakland Athletics took him with the No. 8 overall pick in the 2018 MLB Draft. He would have had a $4.66M signing bonus. The A’s offered him an additional $14M in an attempt to convince him to forget about football.
Murray still made much more money on his rookie deal with the Cardinals than he would have in his first MLB contract. The risk was always what would happen down the road. MLB stars make more guaranteed money than NFL stars. If Murray became a bust, he would have been looking at backup money or worse with his second NFL contract.
Instead, his new average annual salary is almost the same as the entire A’s payroll.
Perhaps Murray would have become the next Mike Trout. However, the path to MLB stardom is typically a very long one. It would have been years before Murray had a chance to make the same type of money playing baseball that he is now making with the Cardinals. It turns out he knew what he was doing all along.
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