Whitlock: Kyler Murray ‘answers’ Raiders challenge but remains a problem for Arizona



Right now, Kyler Murray is football’s Allen Iverson. You might read that analogy as high praise. It’s not.

It’s recognition of Murray’s dynamic skill, diminutive size, and uncanny ability to answer the problems he creates for the Arizona Cardinals.

A week after an embarrassing performance in the season opener, Murray added two more quarters of uninspiring play to his 2022 resume. At halftime on Sunday, his Cardinals had a real problem. They trailed the Las Vegas Raiders 20-0.

The pint-sized QB with a 2XL contract was a social media laughingstock around 2:30 pm Sunday. Twitter memes blamed Murray’s lackluster performance on a beta test of a new video game. Ninety minutes later, Murray was the toast of the NFL.

He razzled, dazzled, and rallied Arizona to a 29-23 overtime victory. Numbers don’t tell the Murray story. You had to see it to believe it and appreciate it. In a game of giants, the 5-foot-9, 205-pounder made would-be tacklers look like level-one ghosts chasing an elite Pac-Man video game player.

The two-point conversion run Murray converted early in the fourth quarter couldn’t be pulled off in a game of "Madden." Later in the fourth, on a play that will be forgotten, Murray escaped a sack, danced around in the backfield, and forced a holding call on Las Vegas that converted a fourth and four. Four plays later, Arizona tied the game with a Murray touchdown run and a two-point, seeing-eye laser to receiver A.J. Green.

Kyler Murray is the answer.

He’s also the problem. Same as Allen Iverson.

You couldn’t take your eyes off Allen Iverson on the basketball court. The undersized point guard captured your attention and imagination. You marveled at his skill and fearless approach. You were so impressed with his ability to dominate men twice his size, you overlooked his propensity to create his own problems. Iverson was an underdog. Who doesn’t love rooting for an underdog?

My problem with Iverson was he could’ve been Isiah Thomas. I’d rather be Isiah Thomas than Allen Iverson. Thomas was the solution, not the answer. Answers are temporary and change depending on the question.



Iverson won an MVP trophy, but never won an NBA title. Thomas never won MVP, but won two titles in the era of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird.

Thomas had a better career than Iverson. Thomas isn’t given the credit his accomplishments deserve. Winning two championships in an era when the NBA was heavily invested in promoting Jordan, Magic, and Bird is one of the most impressive feats in modern team sports.

I enjoy watching Kyler Murray. I don’t envision him winning a Super Bowl. He’s too inconsistent. His decision-making is too erratic. He doesn’t care about preparation. That’s why the Cardinals tried to impose a film-study clause in his contract.

Like Iverson, one day Murray will be captured in an interview mocking the discussion of practice.

“We talking ‘bout practice. Not a game.”

Murray’s career will feature a long list of highlights and Pro Bowl appearances. He might even win MVP one season. Being football’s Allen Iverson will make Murray memorable.

Same as Iverson. No one will forget Iverson’s crossover dribble against Michael Jordan. No one will forget Iverson stepping over Tyronn Lue in the 2001 NBA Finals.

But Iverson isn’t remembered as a winner or champion.

We live in a time when many athletes and fans would prefer Iverson’s legacy over Thomas’. Many people prefer style over substance.

I’m not one of those people. Iverson underachieved. Kyler Murray is headed down the same path.

Whitlock: The ‘bread’ showered on Kyler Murray and Deshaun Watson fuels NFL ‘circus’



The same billionaires willing to pay Kyler Murray and Deshaun Watson $46 million a year in salary are too racist to pay black men $5 million to coach Murray and Watson.

The argument that the NFL is a bastion of white supremacy hasn’t made much sense for nearly 50 years. You’d think this past off-season would be the final nail in the outdated narrative. But it’s unlikely to die. It will be kept alive by a constant retelling of the league’s flawed history and a simple-minded explanation of the league’s hiring practices related to head coaches.

Welcome to NFL season 2022. Pardon me for my lack of enthusiasm.

Training camps have opened. We’re XX days from the start of the regular season. I’ve never been less excited for the start of professional football. The game feels disconnected from reality. It’s used as a prop to make specious arguments denigrating the league and America as systemically racist. I don’t have the stomach for it.

The American economy is in free fall. Inflation has shrunk the middle class. Times are hard for most Americans. Except for those with some rare athletic skill and/or a willingness to ignore the absurdity of elite influencers getting rich for promoting games and narratives intended to distract from our descent into Babylon.

Murray and Watson have rare athletic skills and little else. This off-season, the Arizona Cardinals and the Cleveland Browns rained record contracts on the pair of quarterbacks.

Despite two dozen sexual assault allegations and a likely suspension hovering, the Browns traded for Watson and gave him a guaranteed contract worth $230 million. It’s the most guaranteed money in NFL history. Imagine that. The man with a league-shattering number of sexual assault allegations received the most guaranteed money in NFL history. That’s quite the combination. And it’s rather surprising, given the fact that the NFL allegedly suffers from systemic racism. Watson is black.

So is Kyler Murray. Murray has no off-field issues. His issues are on the field. He’s now the second-highest-paid player in the league, trailing only Aaron Rodgers, but he’s not one of the NFL’s 10 best quarterbacks or 50 best players.

The wear and tear of the regular season causes the pint-sized QB to melt in December. In three seasons and 13 games in the month of December, the 5-foot-9, 190-pound passer has thrown 17 touchdowns and 13 interceptions. The Cardinals are 5-8 in those games.

In 46 NFL starts, Murray is 22-23-1. He’s never thrown for more than 26 TDs in a season. In this era, elite QBs routinely toss 35+ TDs. In his first three years, Murray has thrown 70 touchdowns and 34 interceptions. In comparison, in his first 46 starts, Patrick Mahomes tossed 114 TDs and 24 INTs. In 49 starts, Lamar Jackson has thrown 84 TDs and 31 INTs.

Let’s don’t even compare win-loss records. Mahomes and Jackson led winning teams. Kyler Murray makes more money than Mahomes and Jackson.

That’s likely going to change as it relates to Jackson. The Ravens and Jackson have spent much of the off-season trying to work out a deal. The contracts awarded to Watson and Murray have complicated those negotiations.

Given Murray’s deal, what do you pay Jackson? Jackson won the league’s MVP award in 2019.

But I digress. The point of this missive is to call out America’s absurd culture, priorities, and debates. The NFL, America’s national pastime, is America’s primary supplier of bread and circuses. It’s entertainment designed to keep the masses happy while the masses are robbed of God-given rights and freedoms.

That’s why the NFL refuses to defend itself from allegations of racism. That’s why Colin Kaepernick remains in the league’s conversation. The Raiders granted him a tryout this off-season. It’s why the Pittsburgh Steelers hired Brian Flores, the former Dolphins coach who is suing the NFL for racial discrimination. The Dolphins fired Flores. He claims he was fired because he’s black.

The NFL is a willing participant in the overthrow of American values.

For years, I wondered why a league and industry that produces more black male millionaires than any other industry is so reluctant to defend itself from allegations of systemic racism. Commissioner Roger Goodell and and the league’s top black executive, Troy Vincent, know the league’s positive impact on black boys and men.

Why won’t they tell it? Why do they constantly bend to the woke mob?

They know racial bias and animus do not explain the racial disparity between black and white head coaches. The owners don’t care who they pay to lead their teams. The Browns just gave an alleged black serial predator $230 million to play quarterback.

The truth is the tattered and shredded black family structure has undermined American black people’s ability to produce male leaders. We’re a matriarchal culture. Because of the psychological damage caused by having no father in the home, black athletes do not respond well to black male authority figures, especially in a sport with a leadership model similar to the military.

Here’s another inconvenient and uncomfortable truth: The rise of the black quarterback is directly tied to technological advances that allow coaches to puppet-master QBs from the sidelines.

In the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, quarterbacks used to routinely call their own plays. That’s no longer the case. Football games, now more than ever, are orchestrated from the sideline and the press box. The players are less valuable as leaders. They’re paid for their raw talent. That’s why the Browns do not care about Watson’s character flaws. He’s not being paid to lead. He’s being paid to follow the instructions communicated in his helmet.

He’d rather those instructions be delivered by a white man. That’s part of the reason he was so comfortable last season skipping the opportunity to play for David Culley in Houston.

Black players don’t care about black coaches. The whole simple-minded conversation about black NFL coaches is manufactured bread and circuses for talk show hosts and lazy journalists.

Are you not entertained?