Kyler Murray ranks in the bottom-half of the NFL in PFF quarterback rankings

Despite winning Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2019 and improving across the board in 2020 the Arizona Cardinals quarterback is still not considered a top half of the league quarterback.

At least to Pro Football Focus.

PFF released their annual quarterback rankings which clearly is something to drive hate clicks because no one except Kansas City Chiefs fans will be happy with where their teams quarterback is ranked, but as usual it is the players ahead of Kyler Murray that gives me pause.

First, from PFF:

17. KYLER MURRAY, ARIZONA CARDINALS

Murray took a nice step forward in Year 2, raising his passing grade by over 16 points and adding 822 yards on the ground. The Cardinals did well to utilize his skill set, as his rushing stats were a mix of designed quarterback runs and scrambles.

With the NFC West being as competitive as ever, Arizona continues to do a good job building around Murray. However, the signal-caller has to show more development in the intermediate passing (10-19 yards) game, where he ranked 24th while in rhythm. It’s an area where he can raise his level of play and make the players around him better.

It is interesting that Murray being a better passer already according to PFF (77.2 v 76.9) than Jackson isn’t really taken into consideration when ranking, as Lamar Jackson was ranked eighth (also Murray’s run grade was higher than Jackson’s).

Murray does have to improve throwing in the 10-19 yard range to the right, but when you look at who is throwing to in that area, it makes sense that he has struggled there.

I mean, in Murray’s defense he did improve drastically from ‘19 to ‘20 when his PFF grade was 53.4 and in ‘20 it went up to 75.5 throwing in the 10-19 yard range.

Of course, PFF may need to look at their own stats to understand the improvement, I know those $140 subscriptions can get pretty pricey though.