The Arizona Cardinals and quarterback Kyler Murray are clearly happy with each other heading into what all involved hope will be a successful 2024 season.
Murray offered quite a bold and optimistic prediction regarding the club's current regime during a recent chat with NFL insider Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated.
"Winning cures all," Murray said about those who may doubt he's the right quarterback to guide the club to where it wants to go. "We will win. I’m very confident in that. People are going to say what they want to say. It’s social media for a reason. You laugh at it. It is what it is."
Jonathan Gannon served as defensive coordinator with the Philadelphia Eagles for their Super Bowl LVII loss to the Kansas City Chiefs and then accepted the Arizona head-coaching job in February 2023 when Murray was in the early stages of his recovery from a serious knee injury he suffered in December 2022.
There were whispers that winter that the Cardinals could eventually explore escaping the five-year contract extension reportedly worth $230.5M with $160M guaranteed that Murray signed two summers ago, but the 26-year-old suggested he and Gannon never discussed such a scenario playing out.
"Honestly, I kind of compared it to when you meet your best friend," Murray said about his relationship with Gannon. "We hit it off instantly. It was a couple days off his Super Bowl, tough loss in the Super Bowl. The way he came in, the way he approached it, I could tell off the rip, within a minute of us talking, he knew ball. He understood the game."
As of Tuesday afternoon, DraftKings Sportsbook had the Cardinals at +270 betting odds to earn over 8.5 wins this coming season. While it's too early to say if Murray would be blamed for Arizona enduring a third straight losing campaign, he sounds confident that Gannon is the right man to lead the club back to the playoffs perhaps as soon as this coming January.
"That’s my type of guy," Murray added about Gannon. "I love what I do, and I know he loves what he does. That competitiveness we share. I understand what he’s saying. He wants to see me be who he knows I can be and who I know I can be. That relationship there, we’ve built a great one."
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